Annie Besant
Autobiography
Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK. CF24 -1DL
Annie Besant
Autobiography
ANNIE BESANT
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY
SECOND EDITION
PREFACE.
It is a
difficult thing to tell the story of a life, and yet more
difficult when
that life is one's own. At the best, the telling has a
savour of
vanity, and the only excuse for the proceeding is that the
life, being an
average one, reflects many others, and in troublous
times like ours
may give the experience of many rather than of one.
And so the
autobiographer does his work because he thinks that, at the
cost of some unpleasantness
to himself, he may throw light on some of
the typical
problems that are vexing the souls of his contemporaries,
and perchance
may stretch out a helping hand to some brother who is
struggling in
the darkness, and so bring him cheer when despair has
him in its
grip. Since all of us, men and women of this restless and
eager
generation--surrounded by forces we dimly see but cannot as yet
understand,
discontented with old ideas and half afraid of new, greedy
for the
material results of the knowledge brought us by Science but
looking askance
at her agnosticism as regards the soul, fearful of
superstition
but still more fearful of atheism, turning from the husks
of outgrown
creeds but filled with desperate hunger for spiritual
ideals--since all
of us have the same anxieties, the same griefs, the
same yearning
hopes, the same passionate desire for knowledge, it may
well be that
the story of one may help all, and that the tale of one
should that
went out alone into the darkness and on the other side
found light,
that struggled through the Storm and on the other side
found Peace,
may bring some ray of light and of peace into the
darkness and
the storm of other lives.
ANNIE BESANT.
THE
THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY,
17 & 19,
AVENUE ROAD, REGENT'S PARK, LONDON.
_August_, 1893.
CONTENTS.
CHAP.
II. EARLY CHILDHOOD
III. GIRLHOOD
IV. MARRIAGE
V. THE STORM OF DOUBT
VI. CHARLES BRADLAUGH
VII. ATHEISM AS I KNEW AND TAUGHT IT
VIII. AT WORK
IX. THE KNOWLTON PAMPHLET
X. AT WAR ALL ROUND
XI. MR. BRADLAUGH'S STRUGGLE
XII. STILL FIGHTING
XIII. SOCIALISM
XIV. THROUGH STORM TO PEACE
LIST OF BOOKS
QUOTED
CHAPTER I.
"OUT OF
THE EVERYWHERE INTO THE HERE."
On
light(?) of a
A friendly
astrologer has drawn for me the following chart, showing the
position of the
planets at this, to me fateful, moment; but I know
nothing of
astrology, so feel no wiser as I gaze upon my horoscope.
Keeping in view
the way in which sun, moon, and planets influence the
physical
condition of the earth, there is nothing incongruous with the
orderly course
of nature in the view that they also influence the
physical bodies
of men, these being part of the physical earth, and
largely moulded
by its conditions. Any one who knows the
characteristics
ascribed to those who are born under the several signs
of the Zodiac,
may very easily pick out the different types among his
own
acquaintances, and he may then get them to go to some astrologer
and find out
under what signs they were severally born. He will very
quickly
discover that two men of completely opposed types are not born
under the same
sign, and the invariability of the concurrence will
convince him
that law, and not chance, is at work. We are born into
earthly life
under certain conditions, just as we were physically
affected by
them pre-natally, and these will have their bearing on our
subsequent
physical evolution. At the most, astrology, as it is now
practised, can
only calculate the interaction between these physical
conditions at
any given moment, and the conditions brought to them by a
given person
whose general constitution and natal condition are known.
It cannot say
what the person will do, nor what will happen to him, but
only what will
be the physical district, so to speak, in which he will
find himself,
and the impulses that will play upon him from external
nature and from
his own body. Even on those matters modern astrology is
not quite
reliable--judging from the many blunders made--or else its
professors are
very badly instructed; but that there is a real science
of astrology I
have no doubt, and there are some men who are past
masters in it.
[Illustration:
Horoscope of Annie Besant.]
It has always
been somewhat of a grievance to me that I was born in
blood and all
my heart are Irish. My dear mother was of purest Irish
descent, and my
father was Irish on his mother's side, though belonging
to the
sturdy English
type, farming their own land in honest, independent
fashion. Of
late years they seem to have developed more in the
direction of
brains, from the time, in fact, that Matthew Wood became
Mayor of
religious and
gracious royal husband, aided the Duke of
niggard hand,
and received a baronetcy for his services from the Duke
of
Chancellor in
the person of the gentle-hearted and pure-living Lord
Hatherley,
while others have distinguished themselves in various ways
in the service
of their country. But I feel playfully inclined to
grudge the
English blood they put into my father's veins, with his
Irish mother,
his Galway birth, and his Trinity College, Dublin,
education. For
the Irish tongue is musical in my ear, and the Irish
nature dear to
my heart. Only in
a worn-out
ragged woman the way to some old monument, she will say:
"Sure,
then, my darlin', it's just up the hill and round the corner,
and then any
one will tell you the way. And it's there you'll see the
place where the
blessed Saint Patrick set his foot, and his blessing be
on yer."
Old women as poor as she in other nations would never be as
bright and as
friendly and as garrulous. And where, out of
will you see a
whole town crowd into a station to say good-bye to half
a dozen
emigrants, till the platform is a heaving mass of men and
women,
struggling, climbing over each other for a last kiss, crying,
keening,
laughing, all in a breath, till all the air is throbbing and
there's a lump
in your throat and tears in your eyes as the train
steams out?
Where, out of
streets on an
outside car, beside a taciturn Jarvey, who, on suddenly
discovering
that you are shadowed by "Castle" spies, becomes
loquaciously
friendly, and points out everything that he thinks will
interest you?
Blessings on the quick tongues and warm hearts, on the
people so easy
to lead, so hard to drive. And blessings on the ancient
land once
inhabited by mighty men of wisdom, that in later times became
the
the Wheel turns
round.
My maternal
grandfather was a typical Irishman, much admired by me and
somewhat feared
also, in the childish days. He belonged to a decayed
Irish family,
the Maurices, and in a gay youth, with a beautiful wife
as
light-hearted as himself, he had merrily run through what remained
to him in the
way of fortune. In his old age, with abundant snow-white
hair, he still
showed the hot Irish blood on the lightest provocation,
stormily angry
for a moment and easily appeased. My mother was the
second daughter
in a large family, in a family that grew more numerous
as pounds grew
fewer, and she was adopted by a maiden aunt, a quaint
memory of whom
came through my mother's childhood into mine, and had
its moulding
effect on both our characters. This maiden aunt was, as
are most Irish
folk of decayed families, very proud of her family tree
with its roots
in the inevitable "kings." Her particular kings were the
"seven
kings of
parchment, in
all its impressive majesty, over the mantelpiece of their
descendant's
modest drawing-room. This heraldic monster was regarded
with deep
respect by child Emily, a respect in no wise deserved, I
venture to
suppose, by the disreputable royalties of whom she was a
fortunately
distant twig. Chased out of
shown, they had
come over the sea to
reckless
plundering lives. But so strangely turns the wheel of time
that these
ill-doing and barbarous scamps became a kind of moral
thermometer in
the home of the gentle Irish lady in the early half of
the present
century. For my mother has told me that when she had
committed some
act of childish naughtiness, her aunt would say, looking
gravely over
her spectacles at the small culprit, "Emily, your conduct
is unworthy of
the descendant of the seven kings of
with her sweet
grey Irish eyes and her curling masses of raven black
hair, would cry
in penitent shame over her unworthiness, with some
vague idea that
those royal, and to her very real, ancestors would
despise her
small, sweet, rosebud self, so wholly unworthy of their
disreputable
majesties.
Thus those shadowy
forms influenced her in childhood, and exercised
over her a
power that made her shrink from aught that was unworthy,
petty or mean.
To her the lightest breath of dishonour was to be
avoided at any
cost of pain, and she wrought into me, her only
daughter, that
same proud and passionate horror at any taint of shame
or merited
disgrace. To the world always a brave front was to be kept,
and a stainless
reputation, for suffering might be borne but dishonour
never. A
gentlewoman might starve, but she must not run in debt; she
might break her
heart, but it must be with a smile on her face. I have
often thought
that the training in this reticence and pride of honour
was a strange
preparation for my stormy, public, much attacked and
slandered life;
and certain it is that this inwrought shrinking from
all criticism
that touched personal purity and personal honour added a
keenness of
suffering to the fronting of public odium that none can
appreciate who
has not been trained in some similar school of dignified
self-respect.
And yet perhaps there was another result from it that in
value
outweighed the added pain: it was the stubbornly resistant
feeling that
rose and inwardly asserted its own purity in face of
foulest lie,
and turning scornful face against the foe, too proud
either to
justify itself or to defend, said to itself in its own heart,
when
condemnation was loudest: "I am not what you think me, and your
verdict does
not change my own self. You cannot make me vile whatever
you think of me,
and I will never, in my own eyes, be that which you
deem me to be
now." And the very pride became a shield against
degradation,
for, however lost my public reputation, I could never bear
to become
sullied in my own sight--and that is a thing not without its
use to a woman
cut off, as I was at one time, from home, and friends,
and Society. So
peace to the maiden aunt's ashes, and to those of her
absurd kings,
for I owe them something after all. And I keep grateful
memory of that
unknown grand-aunt, for what she did in training my dear
mother, the
tenderest, sweetest, proudest, purest of women. It is well
to be able to
look back to a mother who served as ideal of all that was
noblest and
dearest during childhood and girlhood, whose face made the
beauty of home,
and whose love was both sun and shield. No other
experience in
life could quite make up for missing the perfect tie
between mother
and child--a tie that in our case never relaxed and
never weakened.
Though her grief at my change of faith and consequent
social
ostracism did much to hasten her death-hour, it never brought a
cloud between
our hearts; though her pleading was the hardest of all to
face in later
days, and brought the bitterest agony, it made no gulf
between us, it
cast no chill upon our mutual love. And I look back at
her to-day with
the same loving gratitude as ever encircled her to me
in her earthly
life. I have never met a woman more selflessly devoted
to those she
loved, more passionately contemptuous of all that was mean
or base, more
keenly sensitive on every question of honour, more iron
in will, more
sweet in tenderness, than the mother who made my girlhood
sunny as
dreamland, who guarded me, until my marriage, from every touch
of pain that
she could ward off or bear for me, who suffered more in
every trouble
that touched me in later life than I did myself, and who
died in the
little house I had taken for our new home in
out, ere old
age touched her, by sorrow, poverty, and pain, in May,
1874.
My earliest
personal recollections are of a house and garden that we
lived in when I
was three and four years of age, situated in Grove
Road,
dinner-table to
see that all was bright for the home-coming husband; my
brother--two
years older than myself--and I watching "for papa"; the
loving welcome,
the game of romps that always preceded the dinner of
the elder
folks. I can remember on
in my little
cot, and shouting out triumphantly: "Papa! mamma! I am
four years
old!" and the grave demand of my brother, conscious of
superior age,
at dinner-time: "May not Annie have a knife to-day, as
she is four
years old?"
It was a sore
grievance during that same year, 1851, that I was not
judged old
enough to go to the Great Exhibition, and I have a faint
memory of my
brother consolingly bringing me home one of those folding
pictured strips
that are sold in the streets, on which were imaged
glories that I
longed only the more to see. Far-away, dusky, trivial
memories,
these. What a pity it is that a baby cannot notice, cannot
observe, cannot
remember, and so throw light on the fashion of the
dawning of the
external world on the human consciousness. If only we
could remember
how things looked when they were first imaged on the
retinae; what
we felt when first we became conscious of the outer world;
what the
feeling was as faces of father and mother grew out of the
surrounding
chaos and became familiar things, greeted with a smile,
lost with a
cry; if only memory would not become a mist when in later
years we strive
to throw our glances backward into the darkness of our
infancy, what
lessons we might learn to help our stumbling psychology,
how many questions
might be solved whose answers we are groping for in
the West in
vain.
The next scene
that stands out clearly against the background of the
past is that of
my father's death-bed. The events which led to his
death I know
from my dear mother. He had never lost his fondness for
the profession
for which he had been trained, and having many medical
friends, he
would now and then accompany them on their hospital rounds,
or share with
them the labours of the dissecting-room. It chanced that
during the
dissection of the body of a person who had died of rapid
consumption, my
father cut his finger against the edge of the
breast-bone.
The cut did not heal easily, and the finger became swollen
and inflamed.
"I would have that finger off, Wood, if I were you," said
one of the
surgeons, a day or two afterwards, on seeing the state of
the wound. But
the others laughed at the suggestion, and my father, at
first inclined
to submit to the amputation, was persuaded to "leave
Nature
alone."
About the middle
of August, 1852, he got wet through, riding on the top
of an omnibus,
and the wetting resulted in a severe cold, which
"settled
on his chest." One of the most eminent doctors of the day, as
able as he was
rough in manner, was called to see him. He examined him
carefully,
sounded his lungs, and left the room followed by my mother.
"Well?"
she asked, scarcely anxious as to the answer, save as it might
worry her
husband to be kept idly at home. "You must keep up his
spirits,"
was the thoughtless answer. "He is in a galloping
consumption;
you will not have him with you six weeks longer." The wife
staggered back,
and fell like a stone on the floor. But love triumphed
over agony, and
half an hour later she was again at her husband's side,
never to leave
it again for ten minutes at a time, night or day, till
he was lying
with closed eyes asleep in death.
I was lifted on
to the bed to "say good-bye to dear papa" on the day
before his
death, and I remember being frightened at his eyes which
looked so
large, and his voice which sounded so strange, as he made me
promise always
to be "a very good girl to darling mamma, as papa was
going right
away." I remember insisting that "papa should kiss Cherry,"
a doll given me
on my birthday, three days before, by his direction,
and being
removed, crying and struggling, from the room. He died on the
following day,
October 5th, and I do not think that my elder brother
and I--who were
staying at our maternal grandfather's--went to the
house again
until the day of the funeral. With the death, my mother
broke down, and
when all was over they carried her senseless from the
room. I
remember hearing afterwards how, when she recovered her senses,
she
passionately insisted on being left alone, and locked herself into
her room for
the night; and how on the following morning her mother, at
last persuading
her to open the door, started back at the face she saw
with the cry:
"Good God, Emily! your hair is white!" It was even so;
her hair,
black, glossy and abundant, which, contrasting with her large
grey eyes, had
made her face so strangely attractive, had turned grey
in that night
of agony, and to me my mother's face is ever framed in
exquisite
silver bands of hair as white as the driven unsullied snow.
I have heard
that the love between my father and mother was a very
beautiful
thing, and it most certainly stamped her character for life.
He was keenly
intellectual and splendidly educated; a mathematician and
a good
classical scholar, thoroughly master of French, German, Italian,
Spanish, and
Portuguese, with a smattering of Hebrew and Gaelic, the
treasures of
ancient and of modern literature were his daily household
delight.
Nothing pleased him so well as to sit with his wife, reading
aloud to her
while she worked; now translating from some foreign poet,
now rolling
forth melodiously the exquisite cadences of "Queen Mab."
Student of
philosophy as he was, he was deeply and steadily sceptical;
and a very
religious relative has told me that he often drove her from
the room by his
light, playful mockery of the tenets of the Christian
faith. His
mother and sister were strict Roman Catholics, and near the
end forced a
priest into his room, but the priest was promptly ejected
by the wrath of
the dying man, and by the almost fierce resolve of the
wife that no
messenger of the creed he detested should trouble her
darling at the
last.
Deeply read in
philosophy, he had outgrown the orthodox beliefs of his
day, and his
wife, who loved him too much to criticise, was wont to
reconcile her
own piety and his scepticism by holding that "women ought
to be
religious," while men had a right to read everything and think as
they would,
provided that they were upright and honourable in their
lives. But the
result of his liberal and unorthodox thought was to
insensibly
modify and partially rationalise her own beliefs, and she
put on one side
as errors the doctrines of eternal punishment, the
vicarious
atonement, the infallibility of the Bible, the equality of
the Son with
the Father in the Trinity, and other orthodox beliefs, and
rejoiced in her
later years in the writings of such men as Jowett,
Colenso, and
Stanley. The last named, indeed, was her ideal Christian
gentleman,
suave, polished, broad-minded, devout in a stately way. The
baldness of a
typical Evangelical service outraged her taste as much as
the crudity of
Evangelical dogmas outraged her intellect; she liked to
feel herself a
Christian in a dignified and artistic manner, and to be
surrounded by
solemn music and splendid architecture when she "attended
Divine
service." Familiarity with celestial personages was detestable
to her, and she
did her duty of saluting them in a courtly and reverent
fashion.
Westminster Abbey was her favourite church, with its dim light
and shadowy
distances; there in a carven stall, with choristers
chanting in
solemn rhythm, with the many-coloured glories of the
painted windows
repeating themselves on upspringing arch and clustering
pillars, with
the rich harmonies of the pealing organ throbbing up
against screen
and monument, with the ashes of the mighty dead around,
and all the
stately memories of the past inwrought into the very
masonry, there
Religion appeared to her to be intellectually dignified
and emotionally
satisfactory.
To me, who took
my religion in strenuous fashion, this dainty and
well-bred piety
seemed perilously like Laodicean lukewarmness, while
my headlong
vigour of conviction and practice often jarred on her as
alien from the
delicate balance and absence of extremes that should
characterise
the gentlewoman. She was of the old _régime_; I of the
stuff from
which fanatics are made: and I have often thought, in
looking back,
that she must have had on her lips many a time unspoken
a phrase that
dropped from them when she lay a-dying: "My little one,
you have never
made me sad or sorry except for your own sake; you have
always been too
religious." And then she murmured to herself: "Yes,
it has been
darling Annie's only fault; she has always been too
religious."
Methinks that, as the world judges, the dying voice spake
truly, and the
dying eyes saw with a real insight. For though I was
then kneeling
beside her bed, heretic and outcast, the heart of me was
religious in
its very fervour of repudiation of a religion, and in its
rebellious
uprising against dogmas that crushed the reason and did not
satisfy the
soul. I went out into the darkness alone, not because
religion was
too good for me, but because it was not good enough; it
was too meagre,
too commonplace, too little exacting, too bound up
with earthly
interests, too calculating in its accommodations to
social
conventionalities. The Roman Catholic Church, had it captured
me, as it
nearly did, would have sent me on some mission of danger and
sacrifice and
utilised me as a martyr; the Church established by law
transformed me
into an unbeliever and an antagonist.
For as a child
I was mystical and imaginative religious to the very
finger-tips,
and with a certain faculty for seeing visions and
dreaming
dreams. This faculty is not uncommon with the Keltic races,
and makes them
seem "superstitious" to more solidly-built peoples.
Thus, on the
day of my father's funeral, my mother sat with vacant
eyes and fixed
pallid face--the picture comes back to me yet, it so
impressed my
childish imagination--following the funeral service,
stage after
stage, and suddenly, with the words, "It is all over!"
fell back
fainting. She said afterwards that she had followed the
hearse, had attended
the service, had walked behind the coffin to the
grave. Certain
it is that a few weeks later she determined to go to
the Kensal
Green Cemetery, where the body of her husband had been
laid, and went
thither with a relative; he failed to find the grave,
and while
another of the party went in search of an official to
identify the
spot, my mother said, "If you will take me to the chapel
where the first
part of the service was read, I will find the grave."
The idea seemed
to her friend, of course, to be absurd; but he would
not cross the
newly-made widow, so took her to the chapel. She looked
round, left the
chapel door, and followed the path along which the
corpse had been
borne till she reached the grave, where she was
quietly
standing when the caretaker arrived to point it out. The grave
is at some
distance from the chapel, and is not on one of the main
roads; it had
nothing on it to mark it, save the wooden peg with the
number, and
this would be no help to identification at a distance
since all the
graves are thus marked, and at a little way off these
pegs are not
visible. How she found the grave remained a mystery in
the family, as
no one believed her straightforward story that she had
been present at
the funeral. With my present knowledge the matter is
simple enough,
for I now know that the consciousness can leave the
body, take part
in events going on at a distance, and, returning,
impress on the
physical brain what it has experienced. The very fact
that she asked
to be taken to the chapel is significant, showing that
she was picking
up a memory of a previous going from that spot to the
grave; she
could only find the grave if she started from _the place
from which she
had started before_. Another proof of this
ultra-physical
capacity was given a few months later, when her infant
son, who had
been pining himself ill for "papa," was lying one night
in her arms. On
the next morning she said to her sister: "Alf is going
to die."
The child had no definite disease, but was wasting away, and
it was argued
to her that the returning spring would restore the
health lost
during the winter. "No," was her answer. "He was lying
asleep in my
arms last night, and William" (her husband) "came to me
and said that
he wanted Alf with him, but that I might keep the other
two." In
vain she was assured that she had been dreaming, that it was
quite natural
that she should dream about her husband, and that her
anxiety for the
child had given the dream its shape. Nothing would
persuade her
that she had not seen her husband, or that the
information he
had given her was not true. So it was no matter of
surprise to her
when in the following March her arms were empty, and a
waxen form lay
lifeless in the baby's cot.
My brother and
I were allowed to see him just before he was placed in
his coffin; I
can see him still, so white and beautiful, with a black
spot in the
middle of the fair, waxen forehead, and I remember the
deadly cold
which startled me when I was told to kiss my little
brother. It was
the first time that I had touched Death. That black
spot made a
curious impression on me, and long afterwards, asking what
had caused it,
I was told that at the moment after his death my mother
had
passionately kissed the baby brow. Pathetic thought, that the
mother's kiss
of farewell should have been marked by the first sign of
corruption on
the child's face!
I do not
mention these stories because they are in any fashion
remarkable or
out of the way, but only to show that the sensitiveness
to impressions
other than physical ones, that was a marked feature in
my own
childhood, was present also in the family to which I belonged.
For the
physical nature is inherited from parents, and sensitiveness
to psychic
impressions is a property of the physical body; in our
family, as in
so many Irish ones, belief in "ghosts" of all
descriptions
was general, and my mother has told me of the banshee
that she had
heard wailing when the death-hour of one of the family
was near. To me
in my childhood, elves and fairies of all sorts were
very real
things, and my dolls were as really children as I was myself
a child. Punch
and Judy were living entities, and the tragedy in which
they bore part
cost me many an agony of tears; to this day I can
remember running
away when I heard the squawk of the coming Punch, and
burying my head
in the pillows that I might shut out the sound of the
blows and the
cry of the ill-used baby. All the objects about me were
to me alive,
the flowers that I kissed as much as the kitten I petted,
and I used to
have a splendid time "making believe" and living out all
sorts of lovely
stories among my treasured and so-called inanimate
playthings. But
there was a more serious side to this dreamful fancy
when it joined
hands with religion.
CHAPTER II.
EARLY
CHILDHOOD.
And now began
my mother's time of struggle and of anxiety. Hitherto,
since her
marriage, she had known no money troubles, for her husband
was earning a
good income; he was apparently vigorous and well: no
thought of
anxiety clouded their future. When he died, he believed
that he left
his wife and children safe, at least, from pecuniary
distress. It
was not so. I know nothing of the details, but the
outcome of all
was that nothing was left for the widow and children,
save a trifle
of ready money. The resolve to which my mother came was
characteristic.
Two of her husband's relatives, Western and Sir
William Wood,
offered to educate her son at a good city school, and to
start him in
commercial life, using their great city influence to push
him forward.
But the young lad's father and mother had talked of a
different
future for their eldest boy; he was to go to a public
school, and
then to the University, and was to enter one of the
"learned
professions"--to take orders, the mother wished; to go to the
Bar, the father
hoped. On his death-bed there was nothing more
earnestly urged
by my father than that Harry should receive the best
possible
education, and the widow was resolute to fulfil that last
wish. In her
eyes, a city school was not "the best possible
education,"
and the Irish pride rebelled against the idea of her son
not being
"a University man." Many were the lectures poured out on the
young widow's
head about her "foolish pride," especially by the female
members of the
Wood family; and her persistence in her own way caused
a considerable
alienation between herself and them. But Western and
William, though
half-disapproving, remained her friends, and lent many
a helping hand
to her in her first difficult struggles. After much
cogitation, she
resolved that the boy should be educated at Harrow,
where the fees
are comparatively low to lads living in the town, and
that he should
go thence to Cambridge or to Oxford, as his tastes
should direct.
A bold scheme for a penniless widow, but carried out to
the letter; for
never dwelt in a delicate body a more resolute mind
and will than
that of my dear mother.
In a few
months' time--during which we lived, poorly enough, in
Richmond Terrace,
Clapham, close to her father and mother--to Harrow,
then, she
betook herself, into lodgings over a grocer's shop, and set
herself to look
for a house. This grocer was a very pompous man, fond
of long words,
and patronised the young widow exceedingly, and one day
my mother
related with much amusement how he had told her that she was
sure to get on
if she worked hard. "Look at me!" he said, swelling
visibly with
importance; "I was once a poor boy, without a penny of my
own, and now I
am a comfortable man, and have my submarine villa to go
to every
evening." That "submarine villa" was an object of amusement
when we passed
it in our walks for many a long day.
"There is
Mr. ----'s submarine villa," some one would say, laughing:
and I, too, used
to laugh merrily, because my elders did, though my
understanding
of the difference between suburban and submarine was on
a par with that
of the honest grocer.
My mother had
fortunately found a boy, whose parents were glad to place
him in her
charge, of about the age of her own son, to educate with
him; and by
this means she was able to pay for a tutor, to prepare the
two boys for
school. The tutor had a cork leg, which was a source of
serious trouble
to me, for it stuck out straight behind when we knelt
down to family
prayers--conduct which struck me as irreverent and
unbecoming, but
which I always felt a desire to imitate. After about a
year my mother
found a house which she thought would suit her scheme,
namely, to
obtain permission from Dr. Vaughan, the then head-master of
Harrow, to take
some boys into her house, and so gain means of
education for
her own son. Dr. Vaughan, who must have been won by the
gentle, strong,
little woman, from that time forth became her earnest
friend and helper;
and to the counsel and active assistance both of
himself and of
his wife, was due much of the success that crowned her
toil. He made
only one condition in granting the permission she asked,
and that was,
that she should also have in her house one of the masters
of the school,
so that the boys should not suffer from the want of a
house-tutor.
This condition, of course, she readily accepted, and the
arrangement
lasted for ten years, until after her son had left school
for Cambridge.
The house she
took is now, I am sorry to say, pulled down, and
replaced by a
hideous red-brick structure. It was very old and
rambling,
rose-covered in front, ivy-covered behind; it stood on the
top of Harrow
Hill, between the church and the school, and had once
been the
vicarage of the parish, but the vicar had left it because it
was so far
removed from the part of the village where all his work
lay. The
drawing-room opened by an old-fashioned half-window,
half-door--which
proved a constant source of grief to me, for whenever
I had on a new
frock I always tore it on the bolt as I flew
through--into a
large garden which sloped down one side of the hill,
and was filled
with the most delightful old trees, fir and laurel,
may, mulberry,
hazel, apple, pear, and damson, not to mention currant
and gooseberry
bushes innumerable, and large strawberry beds spreading
down the sunny
slopes. There was not a tree there that I did not
climb, and one,
a widespreading Portugal laurel, was my private
country house.
I had there my bedroom and my sitting-rooms, my study,
and my larder.
The larder was supplied by the fruit-trees, from which
I was free to
pick as I would, and in the study I would sit for hours
with some
favourite book--Milton's "Paradise Lost" the chief favourite
of all. The
birds must often have felt startled, when from the small
swinging form
perching on a branch, came out in childish tones the
"Thrones,
dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers," of Milton's
stately and
sonorous verse. I liked to personify Satan, and to declaim
the grand
speeches of the hero-rebel, and many a happy hour did I pass
in Milton's
heaven and hell, with for companions Satan and "the Son,"
Gabriel and
Abdiel. Then there was a terrace running by the side of
the churchyard,
always dry in the wettest weather, and bordered by an
old wooden
fence, over which clambered roses of every shade; never was
such a garden
for roses as that of the Old Vicarage. At the end of the
terrace was a
little summer-house, and in this a trap-door in the
fence, which
swung open and displayed one of the fairest views in
England. Sheer
from your feet downwards went the hill, and then far
below stretched
the wooded country till your eye reached the towers of
Windsor Castle,
far away on the horizon. It was the view at which
Byron was never
tired of gazing, as he lay on the flat tombstone close
by--Byron's
tomb, as it is still called--of which he wrote:--
"Again I behold where for hours I have
pondered,
As reclining, at eve, on yon tombstone I
lay,
Or round the steep brow of the churchyard I
wandered,
To catch the last gleam of the sun's
setting ray."
Reader mine, if
ever you go to Harrow, ask permission to enter the old
garden, and try
the effect of that sudden burst of beauty, as you
swing back the
small trap-door at the terrace end.
Into this house
we moved on my eighth birthday, and for eleven years it
was
"home" to me, left always with regret, returned to always with joy.
Almost
immediately afterwards I left my mother for the first time; for
one day,
visiting a family who lived close by, I found a stranger
sitting in the
drawing-room, a lame lady with a strong face, which
softened
marvellously as she smiled at the child who came dancing in;
she called me
to her presently, and took me on her lap and talked to
me, and on the
following day our friend came to see my mother, to ask
if she would
let me go away and be educated with this lady's niece,
coming home for
the holidays regularly, but leaving my education in
her hands. At
first my mother would not hear of it, for she and I
scarcely ever
left each other; my love for her was an idolatry, hers
for me a
devotion. (A foolish little story, about which I was
unmercifully
teased for years, marked that absolute idolatry of her,
which has not
yet faded from my heart. In tenderest rallying one day
of the child
who trotted after her everywhere, content to sit, or
stand, or wait,
if only she might touch hand or dress of "mamma," she
said:
"Little one" (the name by which she always called me), "if you
cling to mamma
in this way, I must really get a string and tie you to
my apron, and
how will you like that?" "O mamma, darling," came the
fervent answer,
"do let it be in a knot." And, indeed, the tie of love
between us was
so tightly knotted that nothing ever loosened it till
the sword of
Death cut that which pain and trouble never availed to
slacken in the
slightest degree.) But it was urged upon her that the
advantages of
education offered were such as no money could purchase
for me; that it
would be a disadvantage for me to grow up in a
houseful of
boys--and, in truth, I was as good a cricketer and climber
as the best of
them--that my mother would soon be obliged to send me
to school,
unless she accepted an offer which gave me every advantage
of school
without its disadvantages. At last she yielded, and it was
decided that
Miss Marryat, on returning home, should take me with her.
Miss
Marryat--the favourite sister of Captain Marryat, the famous
novelist--was a
maiden lady of large means. She had nursed her brother
through the
illness that ended in his death, and had been living with
her mother at
Wimbledon Park. On her mother's death she looked round
for work which
would make her useful in the world, and finding that one
of her brothers
had a large family of girls, she offered to take charge
of one of them,
and to educate her thoroughly. Chancing to come to
Harrow, my good
fortune threw me in her way, and she took a fancy to
me and thought
she would like to teach two little girls rather than
one. Hence her
offer to my mother.
Miss Marryat
had a perfect genius for teaching, and took in it the
greatest
delight. From time to time she added another child to our
party,
sometimes a boy, sometimes a girl. At first, with Amy Marryat
and myself,
there was a little boy, Walter Powys, son of a clergyman
with a large
family, and him she trained for some years, and then sent
him on to
school admirably prepared. She chose "her children"--as she
loved to call
us--in very definite fashion. Each must be gently born
and gently
trained, but in such position that the education freely
given should be
a relief and aid to a slender parental purse. It was
her delight to
seek out and aid those on whom poverty presses most
heavily, when
the need for education for the children weighs on the
proud and the
poor. "Auntie" we all called her, for she thought "Miss
Marryat"
seemed too cold and stiff. She taught us everything herself
except music,
and for this she had a master, practising us in
composition, in
recitation, in reading aloud English and French, and
later, German,
devoting herself to training us in the soundest, most
thorough
fashion. No words of mine can tell how much I owe her, not
only of
knowledge, but of that love of knowledge which has remained
with me ever
since as a constant spur to study.
Her method of
teaching may be of interest to some, who desire to train
children with
least pain, and the most enjoyment to the little ones
themselves.
First, we never used a spelling-book--that torment of the
small
child--nor an English grammar. But we wrote letters, telling of
the things we
had seen in our walks, or told again some story we had
read; these
childish compositions she would read over with us,
correcting all
faults of spelling, of grammar, of style, of cadence; a
clumsy sentence
would be read aloud, that we might hear how unmusical
it sounded, an
error in observation or expression pointed out. Then, as
the letters
recorded what we had seen the day before, the faculty of
observation was
drawn out and trained. "Oh, dear! I have nothing to
say!"
would come from a small child, hanging over a slate. "Did you not
go out for a
walk yesterday?" Auntie would question. "Yes," would be
sighed out;
"but there's nothing to say about it." "Nothing to say! And
you walked in
the lanes for an hour and saw nothing, little No-eyes?
You must use
your eyes better to-day." Then there was a very favourite
"lesson,"
which proved an excellent way of teaching spelling. We used
to write out
lists of all the words we could think of which sounded the
same but were
differently spelt. Thus: "key, quay," "knight, night,"
and so on, and
great was the glory of the child who found the largest
number. Our
French lessons--as the German later--included reading from
the very first.
On the day on which we began German we began reading
Schiller's
"Wilhelm Tell," and the verbs given to us to copy out were
those that had
occurred in the reading. We learned much by heart, but
always things
that in themselves were worthy to be learned. We were
never given the
dry questions and answers which lazy teachers so much
affect. We were
taught history by one reading aloud while the others
worked--the
boys as well as the girls learning the use of the needle.
"It's like
a girl to sew," said a little fellow, indignantly, one day.
"It is
like a baby to have to run after a girl if you want a button
sewn on,"
quoth Auntie. Geography was learned by painting skeleton
maps--an exercise
much delighted in by small fingers--and by putting
together puzzle
maps, in which countries in the map of a continent, or
counties in the
map of a country, were always cut out in their proper
shapes. I liked
big empires in those days; there was a solid
satisfaction in
putting down Russia, and seeing what a large part of
the map was
filled up thereby.
The only
grammar that we ever learned as grammar was the Latin, and
that not until
composition had made us familiar with the use of the
rules therein
given. Auntie had a great horror of children learning by
rote things
they did not understand, and then fancying they knew them.
"What do
you mean by that expression, Annie?" she would ask me. After
feeble attempts
to explain, I would answer: "Indeed, Auntie, I know in
my own head,
but I can't explain." "Then, indeed, Annie, you do not
know in your
own head, or you could explain, so that I might know in my
own head."
And so a healthy habit was fostered of clearness of thought
and of
expression. The Latin grammar was used because it was more
perfect than
the modern grammars, and served as a solid foundation for
modern
languages.
Miss Marryat
took a beautiful place, Fern Hill, near Charmouth, in
Dorsetshire, on
the borders of Devon, and there she lived for some five
years, a centre
of beneficence in the district. She started a Sunday
School, and a
Bible Class after awhile for the lads too old for the
school, who
clamoured for admission to her class in it. She visited the
poor, taking
help wherever she went, and sending food from her own
table to the
sick. It was characteristic of her that she would never
give
"scraps" to the poor, but would have a basin brought in at dinner,
and would cut
the best slice to tempt the invalid appetite. Money she
rarely, if
ever, gave, but she would find a day's work, or busy herself
to seek
permanent employment for any one seeking aid. Stern in
rectitude
herself, and iron to the fawning or the dishonest, her
influence,
whether she was feared or loved, was always for good. Of the
strictest sect
of the Evangelicals, she was an Evangelical. On the
Sunday no books
were allowed save the Bible or the "Sunday at Home";
but she would
try to make the day bright by various little devices; by
a walk with her
in the garden; by the singing of hymns, always
attractive to
children; by telling us wonderful missionary stories of
Moffat and
Livingstone, whose adventures with savages and wild beasts
were as
exciting as any tale of Mayne Reid's. We used to learn passages
from the Bible
and hymns for repetition; a favourite amusement was a
"Bible
puzzle," such as a description of some Bible scene, which was to
be recognised
by the description. Then we taught in the Sunday School,
for Auntie
would tell us that it was useless for us to learn if we did
not try to help
those who had no one to teach them. The Sunday-school
lessons had to
be carefully prepared on the Saturday, for we were
always taught
that work given to the poor should be work that cost
something to
the giver. This principle, regarded by her as an
illustration of
the text, "Shall I give unto the Lord my God that which
has cost me
nothing?" ran through all her precept and her practice.
When in some
public distress we children went to her crying, and asking
whether we
could not help the little children who were starving, her
prompt reply
was, "What will you give up for them?" And then she said
that if we
liked to give up the use of sugar, we might thus each save
sixpence a week
to give away. I doubt if a healthier lesson can be
given to
children than that of personal self-denial for the good of
others.
Daily, when our
lessons were over, we had plenty of fun; long walks and
rides, rides on
a lovely pony, who found small children most amusing,
and on which
the coachman taught us to stick firmly, whatever his
eccentricities
of the moment; delightful all-day picnics in the lovely
country round
Charmouth, Auntie our merriest playfellow. Never was a
healthier home,
physically and mentally, made for young things than in
that quiet
village. And then the delight of the holidays! The pride of
my mother at
the good report of her darling's progress, and the renewal
of acquaintance
with every nook and corner in the dear old house and
garden.
The dreamy
tendency in the child, that on its worldly side is fancy,
imagination, on
its religious side is the germ of mysticism, and I
believe it to
be far more common than many people think. But the
remorseless
materialism of the day--not the philosophic materialism of
the few, but
the religious materialism of the many--crushes out all the
delicate
buddings forth of the childish thought, and bandages the eyes
that might
otherwise see. At first the child does not distinguish
between what it
"sees" and what it "fancies"; the one is as real, as
objective, to
it as the other, and it will talk to and play with its
dream-comrades
as merrily as with children like itself. As a child, I
myself very
much preferred the former, and never knew what it was to be
lonely. But
clumsy grown-ups come along and tramp right through the
dream-garden,
and crush the dream-flowers, and push the dream-children
aside, and then
say, in their loud, harsh voices--not soft and singable
like the
dream-voices--"You must not tell such naughty stories, Miss
Annie; you give
me the shivers, and your mamma will be very vexed with
you." But
this tendency in me was too strong to be stifled, and it
found its food
in the fairy tales I loved, and in the religious
allegories that
I found yet more entrancing. How or when I learned to
read, I do not
know, for I cannot remember the time when a book was not
a delight. At
five years of age I must have read easily, for I remember
being often
unswathed from a delightful curtain, in which I used to
roll myself
with a book, and told to "go and play," while I was still a
five-years'-old
dot. And I had a habit of losing myself so completely
in the book
that my name might be called in the room where I was, and I
never hear it,
so that I used to be blamed for wilfully hiding myself,
when I had
simply been away in fairyland, or lying trembling beneath
some friendly
cabbage-leaf as a giant went by.
I was between
seven and eight years of age when I first came across
some children's
allegories of a religious kind, and a very little
later came
"Pilgrim's Progress," and Milton's "Paradise Lost."
Thenceforth my
busy fancies carried me ever into the fascinating world
where
boy-soldiers kept some outpost for their absent Prince, bearing
a shield with
his sign of a red cross on it; where devils shaped as
dragons came
swooping down on the pilgrim, but were driven away
defeated after
hard struggle; where angels came and talked with little
children, and
gave them some talisman which warned them of coming
danger, and
lost its light if they were leaving the right path. What a
dull, tire-some
world it was that I had to live in, I used to think to
myself, when I
was told to be a good child, and not to lose my temper,
and to be tidy,
and not mess my pinafore at dinner. How much easier to
be a Christian
if one could have a red-cross shield and a white
banner, and
have a real devil to fight with, and a beautiful Divine
Prince to smile
at you when the battle was over. How much more
exciting to
struggle with a winged and clawed dragon, that you knew
meant mischief,
than to look after your temper, that you never
remembered you
ought to keep until you had lost it. If I had been Eve
in the garden,
that old serpent would never have got the better of me;
but how was a
little girl to know that she might not pick out the
rosiest,
prettiest apple from a tree that had no serpent to show it
was a forbidden
one? And as I grew older the dreams and fancies grew
less fantastic,
but more tinged with real enthusiasm. I read tales of
the early
Christian martyrs, and passionately regretted I was born so
late when no
suffering for religion was practicable; I would spend
many an hour in
daydreams, in which I stood before Roman judges,
before
Dominican Inquisitors, was flung to lions, tortured on the
rack, burned at
the stake; one day I saw myself preaching some great
new faith to a
vast crowd of people, and they listened and were
converted, and
I became a great religious leader. But always, with a
shock, I was
brought back to earth, where there were no heroic deeds
to do, no lions
to face, no judges to defy, but only some dull duty to
be performed.
And I used to fret that I was born so late, when all the
grand things
had been done, and when there was no chance of preaching
and suffering
for a new religion.
From the age of
eight my education accented the religious side of my
character.
Under Miss Marryat's training my religious feeling received
a strongly
Evangelical bent, but it was a subject of some distress to
me that I could
never look back to an hour of "conversion"; when
others gave
their experiences, and spoke of the sudden change they had
felt, I used to
be sadly conscious that no such change had occurred in
me, and I felt
that my dreamy longings were very poor things compared
with the
vigorous "sense of sin" spoken of by the preachers, and used
dolefully to
wonder if I were "saved." Then I had an uneasy sense that
I was often
praised for my piety when emulation and vanity were more
to the front
than religion; as when I learned by heart the Epistle of
James, far more
to distinguish myself for my good memory than from any
love of the
text itself; the sonorous cadences of many parts of the
Old and New
Testaments pleased my ear, and I took a dreamy pleasure in
repeating them
aloud, just as I would recite for my own amusement
hundreds of
lines of Milton's "Paradise Lost," as I sat swinging on
some branch of
a tree, lying back often on some swaying bough and
gazing into the
unfathomable blue of the sky, till I lost myself in an
ecstasy of
sound and colour, half chanting the melodious sentences and
peopling all
the blue with misty forms. This facility of learning by
heart, and the
habit of dreamy recitation, made me very familiar with
the Bible and
very apt with its phrases. This stood me in good stead
at the
prayer-meetings dear to the Evangelical, in which we all took
part; in turn
we were called on to pray aloud--a terrible ordeal to
me, for I was
painfully shy when attention was called to me; I used to
suffer agonies
while I waited for the dreaded words, "Now, Annie dear,
will you speak
to our Lord." But when my trembling lips had forced
themselves into
speech, all the nervousness used to vanish and I was
swept away by
an enthusiasm that readily clothed itself in balanced
sentences, and
alack! at the end, I too often hoped that God and
Auntie had
noticed that I prayed very nicely--a vanity certainly not
intended to be
fostered by the pious exercise. On the whole, the
somewhat
Calvinistic teaching tended, I think, to make me a little
morbid,
especially as I always fretted silently after my mother. I
remember she
was surprised on one of my home-comings, when Miss
Marryat noted
"cheerfulness" as a want in my character, for at home I
was ever the
blithest of children, despite my love of solitude; but
away, there was
always an aching for home, and the stern religion cast
somewhat of a
shadow over me, though, strangely enough, hell never
came into my
dreamings except in the interesting shape it took in
"Paradise
Lost." After reading that, the devil was to me no horned and
hoofed horror,
but the beautiful shadowed archangel, and I always
hoped that
Jesus, my ideal Prince, would save him in the end. The
things that
really frightened me were vague, misty presences that I
felt were near,
but could not see; they were so real that I knew just
where they were
in the room, and the peculiar terror they excited lay
largely in the
feeling that I was just going to see them. If by chance
I came across a
ghost story it haunted me for months, for I saw
whatever
unpleasant spectre was described; and there was one horrid
old woman in a
tale by Sir Walter Scott, who glided up to the foot of
your bed and
sprang on it in some eerie fashion and glared at you, and
who made my
going to bed a terror to me for many weeks. I can still
recall the
feeling so vividly that it almost frightens me now!
CHAPTER III.
GIRLHOOD.
In the spring
of 1861 Miss Marryat announced her intention of going
abroad, and
asked my dear mother to let me accompany her. A little
nephew whom she
had adopted was suffering from cataract, and she
desired to
place him under the care of the famous Düsseldorf oculist.
Amy Marryat had
been recalled home soon after the death of her mother,
who had died in
giving birth to the child adopted by Miss Marryat, and
named at her
desire after her favourite brother Frederick (Captain
Marryat). Her
place had been taken by a girl a few months older than
myself, Emma Mann,
one of the daughters of a clergyman, who had
married Miss
Stanley, closely related, indeed, if I remember rightly,
a sister of the
Miss Mary Stanley who did such noble work in nursing
in the Crimea.
For some months
we had been diligently studying German, for Miss
Marryat thought
it wise that we should know a language fairly well
before we
visited the country of which it was the native tongue. We
had been
trained also to talk French daily during dinner, so we were
not quite
"helpless foreigners" when we steamed away from St.
Catherine's
Docks, and found ourselves on the following day in
Antwerp, amid
what seemed to us a very Babel of conflicting tongues.
Alas for our
carefully spoken French, articulated laboriously! We were
lost in that
swirl of disputing luggage-porters, and could not
understand a
word! But Miss Marryat was quite equal to the occasion,
being by no
means new to travelling, and her French stood the test
triumphantly,
and steered us safely to a hotel. On the morrow we
started again
through Aix-la-Chapelle to Bonn, the town which lies on
the borders of
the exquisite scenery of which the Siebengebirge and
Rolandseck
serve as the magic portal. Our experiences in Bonn were not
wholly
satisfactory. Dear Auntie was a maiden lady, looking on all
young men as
wolves to be kept far from her growing lambs. Bonn was a
university
town, and there was a mania just then prevailing there for
all things
English. Emma was a plump, rosy, fair-haired typical
English maiden,
full of frolic and harmless fun; I a very slight,
pale,
black-haired girl, alternating between wild fun and extreme
pensiveness. In
the boarding-house to which we went at first--the
"Château
du Rhin," a beautiful place overhanging the broad, blue
Rhine--there
chanced to be staying the two sons of the late Duke of
Hamilton, the
Marquis of Douglas and Lord Charles, with their tutor.
They had the
whole drawing-room floor: we a sitting-room on the ground
floor and
bedrooms above. The lads discovered that Miss Marryat did
not like her
"children" to be on speaking terms with any of the "male
sect."
Here was a fine
source of amusement. They would make their horses
caracole on the
gravel in front of our window; they would be just
starting for
their ride as we went for walk or drive, and would salute
us with doffed
hat and low bow; they would waylay us on our way
downstairs with
demure "Good morning"; they would go to church and
post themselves
so that they could survey our pew, and Lord
Charles--who
possessed the power of moving at will the whole skin of
the
scalp--would wriggle his hair up and down till we were choking
with laughter,
to our own imminent risk. After a month of this Auntie
was literally
driven out of the pretty château, and took refuge in a
girls' school,
much to our disgust; but still she was not allowed to
be at rest.
Mischievous students would pursue us wherever we went;
sentimental
Germans, with gashed cheeks, would whisper complimentary
phrases as we
passed; mere boyish nonsense of most harmless kind, but
the rather
stern English lady thought it "not proper," and after three
months of Bonn
we were sent home for the holidays, somewhat in
disgrace. But
we had some lovely excursions during those months; such
clambering up
mountains, such rows on the swift-flowing Rhine, such
wanderings in
exquisite valleys. I have a long picture-gallery to
retire into
when I want to think of something fair, in recalling the
moon as it
silvered the Rhine at the foot of Drachenfels, or the soft,
mist-veiled
island where dwelt the lady who is consecrated for ever by
Roland's love.
A couple of
months later we rejoined Miss Marryat in Paris, where we
spent seven
happy, workful months. On Wednesdays and Saturdays we were
free from
lessons, and many a long afternoon was passed in the
galleries of
the Louvre, till we became familiar with the masterpieces
of art gathered
there from all lands. I doubt if there was a beautiful
church in Paris
that we did not visit during those weekly wanderings;
that of St.
Germain de l'Auxerrois was my favourite--the church whose
bell gave the
signal for the massacre of St. Bartholomew--for it
contained such
marvellous stained glass, deepest, purest glory of
colour that I
had ever seen. The solemn beauty of Notre Dame, the
somewhat gaudy
magnificence of La Sainte Chapelle, the stateliness of
La Madeleine,
the impressive gloom of St. Roch, were all familiar to
us. Other
delights were found in mingling with the bright crowds which
passed along
the Champs Elysees and sauntered in the Bois de Boulogne,
in strolling in
the garden of the Tuileries, in climbing to the top of
every monument
whence view of Paris could be gained. The Empire was
then in its
heyday of glitter, and we much enjoyed seeing the
brilliant escort
of the imperial carriage, with plumes and gold and
silver dancing
and glistening in the sunlight, while in the carriage
sat the
exquisitely lovely empress, with the little boy beside her,
touching his
cap shyly, but with something of her own grace, in answer
to a
greeting--the boy who was thought to be born to an imperial
crown, but
whose brief career was to find an ending from the spears of
savages in a
quarrel in which he had no concern.
In the spring
of 1862 it chanced that the Bishop of Ohio visited
Paris, and Mr.
Forbes, then English chaplain at the Church of the Rue
d'Aguesseau,
arranged to have a confirmation. As said above, I was
under deep
"religious impressions," and, in fact, with the exception
of that little
aberration in Germany, I was decidedly a pious girl. I
looked on
theatres (never having been to one) as traps set by Satan
for the
destruction of foolish souls; I was quite determined never to
go to a ball,
and was prepared to "suffer for conscience' sake
"--little
prig that I was--if I was desired to go to one. I was
consequently
quite prepared to take upon myself the vows made in my
name at my
baptism, and to renounce the world, the flesh, and the
devil, with a
heartiness and sincerity only equalled by my profound
ignorance of
the things I so readily resigned. That confirmation was
to me a very
solemn matter; the careful preparation, the prolonged
prayers, the
wondering awe as to the "seven-fold gifts of the Spirit,"
which were to
be given by "the laying on of hands," all tended to
excitement. I
could scarcely control myself as I knelt at the altar
rails, and felt
as though the gentle touch of the aged bishop, which
fluttered for
an instant on my bowed head, were the very touch of the
wing of that
"Holy Spirit, heavenly Dove," whose presence had been so
earnestly
invoked. Is there anything easier, I wonder, than to make a
young and
sensitive girl "intensely religious"? This stay in Paris
roused into
activity an aspect of my religious nature that had
hitherto been
latent. I discovered the sensuous enjoyment that lay in
introducing
colour and fragrance and pomp into religious services, so
that the
gratification of the aesthetic emotions became dignified with
the garb of
piety. The picture-galleries of the Louvre, crowded with
Madonnas and
saints, the Roman Catholic churches with their
incense-laden
air and exquisite music, brought a new joy into my life,
a more vivid
colour to my dreams. Insensibly, the colder, cruder
Evangelicalism
that I had never thoroughly assimilated, grew warmer
and more
brilliant, and the ideal Divine Prince of my childhood took
on the more
pathetic lineaments of the Man of Sorrows, the deeper
attractiveness
of the suffering Saviour of Men. Keble's "Christian
Year" took
the place of "Paradise Lost," and as my girlhood began to
bud towards
womanhood, all its deeper currents set in the direction of
religious
devotion. My mother did not allow me to read love stories,
and my
daydreams of the future were scarcely touched by any of the
ordinary hopes
and fears of a girl lifting her eyes towards the world
she is shortly
to enter. They were filled with broodings over the days
when
girl-martyrs were blessed with visions of the King of Martyrs,
when sweet St.
Agnes saw her celestial Bridegroom, and angels stooped
to whisper
melodies in St. Cecilia's raptured ear. "Why then and not
now?" my
heart would question, and I would lose myself in these
fancies, never
happier than when alone.
The summer of
1862 was spent with Miss Marryat at Sidmouth, and, wise
woman that she
was, she now carefully directed our studies with a view
to our coming
enfranchisement from the "schoolroom." More and more
were we trained
to work alone; our leading-strings were slackened, so
that we never
felt them save when we blundered; and I remember that
when I once
complained, in loving fashion, that she was "teaching me
so
little," she told me that I was getting old enough to be trusted to
work by myself,
and that I must not expect to "have Auntie for a
crutch all
through life." And I venture to say that this gentle
withdrawal of
constant supervision and teaching was one of the wisest
and kindest
things that this noble-hearted woman ever did for us. It
is the usual
custom to keep girls in the schoolroom until they "come
out";
then, suddenly, they are left to their own devices, and,
bewildered by
their unaccustomed freedom, they waste time that might
be priceless
for their intellectual growth. Lately, the opening of
universities to
women has removed this danger for the more ambitious;
but at the time
of which I am writing no one dreamed of the changes
soon to be made
in the direction of the "higher education of women."
During the
winter of 1862-63 Miss Marryat was in London, and for a few
months I remained
there with her, attending the admirable French
classes of M.
Roche. In the spring I returned home to Harrow, going up
each week to
the classes; and when these were over, Auntie told me
that she
thought all she could usefully do was done, and that it was
time that I
should try my wings alone. So well, however, had she
succeeded in
her aims, that my emancipation from the schoolroom was
but the
starting-point of more eager study, though now the study
turned into the
lines of thought towards which my personal tendencies
most attracted
me. German I continued to read with a master, and
music, under
the marvellously able teaching of Mr. John Farmer,
musical
director of Harrow School, took up much of my time. My dear
mother had a
passion for music, and Beethoven and Bach were her
favourite
composers. There was scarcely a sonata of Beethoven's that I
did not learn,
scarcely a fugue of Bach's that I did not master.
Mendelssohn's
"Lieder" gave a lighter recreation, and many a happy
evening did we
spend, my mother and I, over the stately strains of the
blind Titan,
and the sweet melodies of the German wordless orator.
Musical
"At Homes," too, were favourite amusements at Harrow, and at
these my facile
fingers made me a welcome guest.
Thus set free
from the schoolroom at 16½, an only daughter, I could do
with my time as
I would, save for the couple of hours a day given to
music, for the
satisfaction of my mother. From then till I became
engaged, just
before I was 19, my life flowed on smoothly, one current
visible to all
and dancing in the sunlight, the other running
underground,
but full and deep and strong. As regards my outer life,
no girl had a
brighter, happier life than mine; studying all the
mornings and
most of the afternoons in my own way, and spending the
latter part of
the day in games and walks and rides--varied with
parties at
which I was one of the merriest of guests. I practised
archery so
zealously that I carried up triumphantly as prize for the
best score the
first ring I ever possessed, while croquet found me a
most eager
devotee. My darling mother certainly "spoiled" me, so far
as were
concerned all the small roughnesses of life. She never allowed
a trouble of
any kind to touch me, and cared only that all worries
should fall on
her, all joys on me. I know now what I never dreamed
then, that her
life was one of serious anxiety. The heavy burden of my
brother's
school and college life pressed on her constantly, and her
need of money
was often serious. A lawyer whom she trusted absolutely
cheated her
systematically, using for his own purposes the remittances
she made for
payment of liabilities, thus keeping upon her a constant
drain. Yet for
me all that was wanted was ever there. Was it a ball to
which we were going?
I need never think of what I would wear till the
time for
dressing arrived, and there laid out ready for me was all I
wanted, every
detail complete from top to toe. No hand but hers must
dress my hair,
which, loosed, fell in dense curly masses nearly to my
knees; no hand
but hers must fasten dress and deck with flowers, and
if I sometimes
would coaxingly ask if I might not help by sewing in
laces, or by
doing some trifle in aid, she would kiss me and bid me
run to my books
or my play, telling me that her only pleasure in life
was caring for
her "treasure." Alas! how lightly we take the
self-denying
labour that makes life so easy, ere yet we have known
what life means
when the protecting motherwing is withdrawn. So
guarded and
shielded had been my childhood and youth from every touch
of pain and
anxiety that love could bear for me, that I never dreamed
that life might
be a heavy burden, save as I saw it in the poor I was
sent to help;
all the joy of those happy years I took, not
ungratefully I
hope, but certainly with as glad unconsciousness of
anything rare
in it as I took the sunlight. Passionate love, indeed, I
gave to my
darling, but I never knew all I owed her till I passed out
of her tender
guardianship, till I left my mother's home. Is such
training wise?
I am not sure. It makes the ordinary roughnesses of
life come with
so stunning a shock, when one goes out into the world,
that one is apt
to question whether some earlier initiation into
life's sterner
mysteries would not be wiser for the young. Yet it is a
fair thing to
have that joyous youth to look back upon, and at least
it is a
treasury of memory that no thief can steal in the struggles of
later life.
"Sunshine" they called me in those bright days of merry
play and earnest
study. But that study showed the bent of my thought
and linked
itself to the hidden life; for the Fathers of the early
Christian
Church now became my chief companions, and I pored over the
Shepherd of
Hernias, the Epistles of Polycarp, Barnabas, Ignatius, and
Clement, the
commentaries of Chrysostom, the confessions of Augustine.
With these I
studied the writings of Pusey, Liddon, and Keble, with
many another
smaller light, joying in the great conception of a
Catholic
Church, lasting through the centuries, built on the
foundations of
apostles and of martyrs, stretching from the days of
Christ Himself
down to our own--"One Lord, one Faith one Baptism," and
I myself a
child of that Holy Church. The hidden life grew stronger,
constantly fed
by these streams of study; weekly communion became the
centre round
which my devotional life revolved, with its ecstatic
meditation, its
growing intensity of conscious contact with the
Divine; I
fasted, according to the ordinances of the Church;
occasionally
flagellated myself to see if I could bear physical pain,
should I be
fortunate enough ever to tread the pathway trodden by the
saints; and
ever the Christ was the figure round which clustered all
my hopes and
longings, till I often felt that the very passion of, my
devotion would
draw Him down from His throne in heaven, present
visibly in form
as I felt Him invisibly in spirit. To serve Him
through His
Church became more and more a definite ideal in my life,
and my thoughts
began to turn towards some kind of "religious life,"
in which I
might prove my love by sacrifice and turn my passionate
gratitude into
active service.
Looking back
to-day over my life, I see that its keynote--through all
the blunders,
and the blind mistakes, and clumsy follies--has been
this longing
for sacrifice to something felt as greater than the self.
It has been so
strong and so persistent that I recognise it now as a
tendency
brought over from a previous life and dominating the present
one; and this
is shown by the fact that to follow it is not the act of
a deliberate
and conscious will, forcing self into submission and
giving up with
pain something the heart desires, but the following it
is a joyous
springing forward along the easiest path, the "sacrifice"
being the
supremely attractive thing, not to make which would be to
deny the
deepest longings of the soul, and to feel oneself polluted
and
dishonoured. And it is here that the misjudgment comes in of many
generous hearts
who have spoken sometimes lately so strongly in my
praise. For the
efforts to serve have not been painful acts of
self-denial,
but the yielding to an overmastering desire. We do not
praise the
mother who, impelled by her protecting love, feeds her
crying infant
and stills its wailings at her breast; rather should we
blame her if
she turned aside from its weeping to play with some toy.
And so with all
those whose ears are opened to the wailings of the
great orphan
Humanity; they are less to be praised for helping than
they would be to
be blamed if they stood aside. I now know that it is
those wailings
that have stirred my heart through life, and that I
brought with me
the ears open to hear them from previous lives of
service paid to
men. It was those lives that drew for the child the
alluring
pictures of martyrdom, breathed into the girl the passion of
devotion, sent
the woman out to face scoff and odium, and drove her
finally into
the Theosophy that rationalises sacrifice, while opening
up
possibilities of service beside which all other hopes grow pale.
The Easter of
1866 was a memorable date in my life. I was introduced
to the
clergyman I married, and I met and conquered my first religious
doubt. A little
mission church had been opened the preceding Christmas
in a very poor
district of Clapham. My grandfather's house was near at
hand, in Albert
Square, and a favourite aunt and myself devoted
ourselves a
good deal to this little church, as enthusiastic girls and
women will. At
Easter we decorated it with spring flowers, with dewy
primroses and
fragrant violets, and with the yellow bells of the wild
daffodil, to
the huge delight of the poor who crowded in, and of the
little London
children who had, many of them, never seen a flower.
Here I met the
Rev. Frank Besant, a young Cambridge man, who had just
taken orders,
and was serving the little mission church as deacon;
strange that at
the same time I should meet the man I was to marry,
and the doubts
which were to break the marriage tie. For in the Holy
Week preceding
that Easter Eve, I had been--as English and Roman
Catholics are
wont to do--trying to throw the mind back to the time
when the
commemorated events occurred, and to follow, step by step,
the last days
of the Son of Man, living, as it were, through those
last hours, so
that I might be ready to kneel before the cross on Good
Friday, to
stand beside the sepulchre on Easter Day. In order to
facilitate the
realisation of those last sacred days of God incarnate
on earth,
working out man's salvation, I resolved to write a brief
history of that
week, compiled from the Four Gospels, meaning them to
try and realise
each day the occurrences that had happened on the
corresponding
date in A.D. 33, and so to follow those "blessed feet"
step by step,
till they were
"...
nailed for our advantage to the bitter cross."
With the
fearlessness which springs from ignorance I sat down to my
task. My method
was as follows:--
MATTHEW. |
MARK. | LUKE.
| JOHN.
| | |
PALM SUNDAY. | PALM SUNDAY. | PALM SUNDAY. | PALM SUNDAY.
| | |
Rode into | Rode into | Rode into | Rode into
Jerusalem. | Jerusalem. | Jerusalem. | Jerusalem.
Purified the | Returned to | Purified the | Spoke in
Temple. Returned | Bethany. | Temple. | the Temple.
to Bethany. | | Note: "Taught |
| | daily in the |
| | temple." |
| | |
MONDAY. |
MONDAY. | MONDAY.
| MONDAY.
| | |
Cursed the | Cursed the | Like Matthew. | ----
fig-tree. | fig-tree. | |
Taught in the | Purified the | |
Temple, and spake | Temple. Went | |
many parables. | out of city. | |
No breaks shown, | | |
but the fig-tree | | |
(xxi.19) did not | | |
wither till | | |
Tuesday (see |
| |
Mark). | | |
| | |
TUESDAY. |
TUESDAY. | TUESDAY.
| TUESDAY.
| | |
All chaps. xxi. | Saw fig-tree | Discourses |
----
20, xxii.-xxv., | withered up. | No date |
spoken on | Then . | shown. |
Tuesday, for xxvi. | discourses | |
2 gives Passover |
| |
as "after two | | |
days." | | |
| | |
WEDNESDAY. |
WEDNESDAY. | WEDNESDAY. | WEDNESDAY.
| | |
Blank. |
---- | ----
| ----
(Possibly remained in Bethany; the alabaster
box of oinment.)
| | |
THURSDAY. |
THURSDAY. | THURSDAY.
| THURSDAY.
| | |
Preparation of | Same as Matt.| Same as Matt. |
Discourses
Passover. Eating | | | with disciples,
of Passover, and | | | but _before_ the
institution of the | | | Passover. Washes
Holy Eucharist. | | | the disciples'
Gethsemane. | | | feet. Nothing
Betrayal by Judas. | | | said of Holy
Led captive to | | | Eucharist, nor
Caiaphas. Denied | | | of agony in
by St. Peter. |
| | Gethsemane.
| | | Malchus' ear.
| | | Led captive to
| | | Annas first.
| | | Then to Caiaphas.
| | | Denied
| | | by St. Peter.
| | |
FRIDAY. |
FRIDAY. | FRIDAY.
| FRIDAY
| | |
Led to Pilate. | As Matthew, | Led to | Taken to
Judas hangs | but hour of | Pilate. Sent | Pilate. Jews
himself. Tried. | crucifixion | to Herod. | would not enter,
Condemned to | given, | Sent back to | that they
death. Scourged | 9 a.m. | Pilate. Rest | might eat
and mocked. Led | | as in | the Passover.
to crucifixion. | | Matthew; but | Scourged by
Darkness from 12 | | _one_ | Pilate before
to 3. Died at 3. | | malefactor | condemnation,
| | repents. |
and mocked. Shown
| | | by Pilate to
| | | Jews at 12.
I became uneasy
as I proceeded with my task, for discrepancies leaped
at me from my
four columns; the uneasiness grew as the contradictions
increased,
until I saw with a shock of horror that my "harmony" was a
discord, and a
doubt of the veracity of the story sprang up like a
serpent hissing
in my face. It was struck down in a moment, for to me
to doubt was
sin, and to have doubted on the very eve of the Passion
was an added
crime. Quickly I assured myself that these apparent
contradictions
were necessary as tests of faith, and I forced myself
to repeat
Tertullian's famous "Credo quia impossible," till, from a
wooden recital,
it became a triumphant affirmation. I reminded myself
that St. Peter
had said of the Pauline Epistles that in them were
"some
things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and
unstable wrest
... unto their own destruction." I shudderingly
recognised that
I must be very unlearned and unstable to find discord
among the Holy
Evangelists, and imposed on myself an extra fast as
penance for my
ignorance and lack of firmness in the faith. For my
mental position
was one to which doubt was one of the worst of sins. I
knew that there
were people like Colenso, who questioned the
infallibility
of the Bible, but I remembered how the Apostle John had
fled from the
Baths when Cerinthus entered them, lest the roof should
fall on the
heretic, and crush any one in his neighbourhood, and I
looked on all
heretics with holy horror. Pusey had indoctrinated me
with his stern
hatred of all heresy, and I was content to rest with
him on that
faith, "which must be old because it is eternal, and must
be unchangeable
because it is true." I would not even read the works
of my mothers
favourite Stanley, because he was "unsound," and because
Pusey had
condemned his "variegated use of words which destroys all
definiteness of
meaning"--a clever and pointed description, be it said
in passing, of
the Dean's exquisite phrases, capable of so many
readings. It
can then be imagined with what a stab of pain this first
doubt struck
me, and with what haste I smothered it up, buried it, and
smoothed the
turf over its grave. _But it had been there_, and it left
its mark.
CHAPTER IV.
MARRIAGE.
The last year
of my girlish freedom was drawing to its close; how shall
I hope to make
commonsense readers understand how I became betrothed
maiden ere yet
nineteen, girl-wife when twenty years had struck?
Looking back
over twenty-five years, I feel a profound pity for the
girl standing
at that critical point of life, so utterly, hopelessly
ignorant of all
that marriage meant, so filled with impossible dreams,
so unfitted for
the _rôle_ of wife. As I have said, my day-dreams held
little place
for love, partly from the absence of love novels from my
reading, partly
from the mystic fancies that twined themselves round
the figure of
the Christ. Catholic books of devotion--English or Roman,
it matters not,
for to a large extent they are translations of the same
hymns and
prayers--are exceedingly glowing in their language, and the
dawning
feelings of womanhood unconsciously lend to them a passionate
fervour. I
longed to spend my time in worshipping Jesus, and was, as
far as my inner
life was concerned, absorbed in that passionate love of
"the
Saviour" which, among emotional Catholics, really is the human
passion of love
transferred to an ideal--for women to Jesus, for men to
the Virgin
Mary. In order to show that I am not here exaggerating, I
subjoin a few
of the prayers in which I found daily delight, and I do
this in order
to show how an emotional girl may be attracted by these
so-called
devotional exercises:--
"O
crucified Love, raise in me fresh ardours of love and consolation,
that it may
henceforth be the greatest torment I can endure ever to
offend Thee;
that it may be my greatest delight to please Thee."
"Let the
remembrance of Thy death, O Lord Jesu, make me to desire and
pant after
Thee, that I may delight in Thy gracious presence."
"O most
sweet Jesu Christ, I, unworthy sinner, yet redeemed by Thy
precious
blood.... Thine I am and will be, in life and in death."
"O Jesu,
beloved, fairer than the sons of men, draw me after Thee with
the cords of
Thy love."
"Blessed
are Thou, O most merciful God, who didst vouchsafe to espouse
me to the
heavenly Bridegroom in the waters of baptism, and hast
imparted Thy
body and blood as a new gift of espousal and the meet
consummation of
Thy love."
"O most
sweet Lord Jesu, transfix the affections of my inmost soul with
that most
joyous and most healthful wound of Thy love, with true,
serene, most
holy, apostolical charity; that my soul may ever languish
and melt with
entire love and longing for Thee. Let it desire Thee and
faint for Thy
courts; long to be dissolved and be with Thee."
"Oh, that
I could embrace Thee with that most burning love of angels."
"Let Him
kiss me with the kisses of His mouth; for Thy love is better
than wine. Draw
me, we will run after Thee. The king hath brought me
into his
chambers.... Let my soul, O Lord, feel the sweetness of Thy
presence. May
it taste how sweet Thou art.... May the sweet and burning
power of Thy
love, I beseech Thee, absorb my soul."
All girls have
in them the germ of passion, and the line of its
development
depends on the character brought into the world, and the
surrounding
influences of education. I had but two ideals in my
childhood and
youth, round whom twined these budding tendrils of
passion; they
were my mother and the Christ. I know this may seem
strange, but I
am trying to state things as they were in this
life-story, and
not give mere conventionalisms, and so it was. I had
men friends,
but no lovers--at least, to my knowledge, for I have since
heard that my
mother received two or three offers of marriage for me,
but declined
them on account of my youth and my childishness--friends
with whom I
liked to talk, because they knew more than I did; but they
had no place in
my day-dreams. These were more and more filled with the
one Ideal Man,
and my hopes turned towards the life of the Sister of
Mercy, who ever
worships the Christ, and devotes her life to the
service of His
poor. I knew my dear mother would set herself against
this idea, but
it nestled warm at my heart, for ever that idea of
escaping from
the humdrum of ordinary life by some complete sacrifice
lured me
onwards with its overmastering fascination.
Now one unlucky
result of this view of religion is the idealisation of
the clergyman,
the special messenger and chosen servant of the Lord.
Far more lofty
than any title bestowed by earthly monarch is that
patent of nobility
straight from the hand of the "King of kings," that
seems to give
to the mortal something of the authority of the immortal,
and to crown
the head of the priest with the diadem that belongs to
those who are
"kings and priests unto God." Viewed in this way, the
position of the
priest's wife seems second only to that of the nun, and
has, therefore,
a wonderful attractiveness, an attractiveness in which
the particular
clergyman affected plays a very subordinate part; it is
the
"sacred office," the nearness to "holy things," the
consecration
which seems to
include the wife--it is these things that shed a glamour
over the
clerical life which attracts most those who are most apt to
self-devotion,
most swayed by imagination. And the saddest pity of all
this is that
the glamour is most over those whose brains are quick,
whose hearts
are pure, who are responsive to all forms of noble
emotions, all
suggestions of personal self-sacrifice; if such in later
life rise to
the higher emotions whose shadows have attracted them, and
to that higher
self-sacrifice whose whispers reached them in their
early youth,
then the false prophet's veil is raised, the poverty of
the conception
seen, and the life is either wrecked, or through
storm-wind and
surge of battling billows, with loss of mast and sail,
is steered by
firm hand into the port of a nobler faith.
That summer of
1866 saw me engaged to the young clergyman I had met at
the mission
church in the spring, our knowledge of each other being an
almost
negligeable quantity. We were thrown together for a week, the
only two young
ones in a small party of holiday-makers, and in our
walks, rides,
and drives we were naturally companions; an hour or two
before he left
he asked me to marry him, taking my consent for granted
as I had
allowed him such full companionship--a perfectly fair
assumption with
girls accustomed to look on all men as possible
husbands, but
wholly mistaken as regarded myself, whose thoughts were
in quite other
directions. Startled, and my sensitive pride touched by
what seemed to
my strict views an assumption that I had been flirting,
I hesitated,
did not follow my first impulse of refusal, but took
refuge in
silence; my suitor had to catch his train, and bound me
over to silence
till he could himself speak to my mother, urging
authoritatively
that it would be dishonourable of me to break his
confidence, and
left me--the most upset and distressed little person
on the Sussex
coast. The fortnight that followed was the first unhappy
one of my life,
for I had a secret from my mother, a secret which I
passionately
longed to tell her, but dared not speak at the risk of
doing a
dishonourable thing. On meeting my suitor on our return to
town I
positively refused to keep silence any longer, and then out
of sheer
weakness and fear of inflicting pain I drifted into an
engagement with
a man I did not pretend to love. "Drifted" is the
right word, for
two or three months passed, on the ground that I was
so much of a
child, before my mother would consent to a definite
engagement; my
dislike of the thought of marriage faded before the
idea of
becoming the wife of a priest, working ever in the Church and
among the poor.
I had no outlet for my growing desire for usefulness
in my happy and
peaceful home-life, where all religious enthusiasm was
regarded as
unbalanced and unbecoming; all that was deepest and truest
in my nature
chafed against my easy, useless days, longed for work,
yearned to
devote itself, as I had read women saints had done, to the
service of the
Church and of the poor, to the battling against sin and
misery--what
empty names sin and misery then were to me! "You will
have more
opportunities for doing good as a clergyman's wife than as
anything
else," was one of the pleas urged on my reluctance.
In the autumn I
was definitely betrothed, and I married fourteen months
later. Once, in
the interval, I tried to break the engagement, but, on
my broaching
the subject to my mother, all her pride rose up in revolt.
Would I, her
daughter, break my word, would I dishonour myself by
jilting a man I
had pledged myself to marry? She could be stern where
honour was
involved, that sweet mother of mine, and I yielded to her
wish as I had
been ever wont to do, for a look or a word from her had
ever been my
law, save where religion was concerned. So I married in
the winter of
1867 with no more idea of the marriage relation than if I
had been four
years old instead of twenty. My dreamy life, into which
no knowledge of
evil had been allowed to penetrate, in which I had been
guarded from
all pain, shielded from all anxiety, kept, innocent on all
questions of
sex, was no preparation for married existence, and left me
defenceless to
face a rude awakening. Looking back on it all, I
deliberately
say that no more fatal blunder can be made than to train a
girl to
womanhood in ignorance of all life's duties and burdens, and
then to let her
face them for the first time away from all the old
associations,
the old helps, the old refuge on the mother's breast.
That
"perfect innocence" may be very beautiful, but it is a perilous
possession, and
Eve should have the knowledge of good and evil ere she
wanders forth
from the paradise of a mother's love. Many an unhappy
marriage dates from
its very beginning, from the terrible shock to a
young girl's
sensitive modesty and pride, her helpless bewilderment and
fear. Men, with
their public school and college education, or the
knowledge that
comes by living in the outside world, may find it hard
to realise the
possibility of such infantile ignorance in many girls.
None the less,
such ignorance is a fact in the case of some girls at
least, and no
mother should let her daughter, blindfold, slip her neck
under the
marriage yoke.
Before leaving
the harbourage of girlhood to set sail on the troublous
sea of life,
there is an occurrence of which I must make mention, as
it marks my
first awakening of interest in the outer world of
political
struggle. In the autumn of 1867 my mother and I were staying
with some dear
friends of ours, the Robertses, at Pendleton, near
Manchester. Mr.
Roberts was "the poor man's lawyer," in the
affectionate
phrase used of him by many a hundred men. He was a close
friend of
Ernest Jones, and was always ready to fight a poor man's
battle without
fee. He worked hard in the agitation which saved women
from working in
the mines, and I have heard him tell how he had seen
them toiling,
naked to the waist, with short petticoats barely
reaching to
their knees, rough, foul-tongued, brutalised out of all
womanly decency
and grace; and how he had seen little children working
there too,
babies of three and four set to watch a door, and falling
asleep at their
work to be roused by curse and kick to the unfair
toil. The old
man's eye would begin to flash and his voice to rise as
he told of
these horrors, and then his face would soften as he added
that, after it
was all over and the slavery was put an end to, as he
went through a
coal district the women standing at their doors would
lift up their
children to see "Lawyer Roberts" go by, and would bid
"God bless
him" for what he had done. This dear old man was my first
tutor in
Radicalism, and I was an apt pupil. I had taken no interest
in politics,
but had unconsciously reflected more or less the decorous
Whiggism which
had always surrounded me. I regarded "the poor" as folk
to be educated,
looked after, charitably dealt with, and always
treated with
most perfect courtesy, the courtesy being due from me, as
a lady, to all
equally, whether they were rich or poor. But to Mr.
Roberts
"the poor" were the working-bees, the wealth producers, with a
right to
self-rule not to looking after, with a right to justice, not
to charity, and
he preached his doctrines to me in season and out of
season. I was a
pet of his, and used often to drive him to his office
in the morning,
glorying much in the fact that my skill was trusted in
guiding a horse
through the crowded Manchester streets. During these
drives, and on
all other available occasions, Mr. Roberts would preach
to me the cause
of the people. "What do you think of John Bright?" he
demanded
suddenly one day, looking at me with fiery eyes from under
heavy brows.
"I have never thought of him at all," was the careless
answer.
"Isn't he a rather rough sort of man, who goes about making
rows?"
"There, I thought so!" he thundered at me fiercely. "That's
just what I
say. I believe some of you fine ladies would not go to
heaven if you
had to rub shoulders with John Bright, the noblest man
God ever gave
to the cause of the poor."
This was the
hot-tempered and lovable "demagogue," as he was called,
with whom we
were staying when Colonel Kelly and Captain Deasy, two
Fenian leaders,
were arrested in Manchester and put on their trial. The
whole Irish
population became seething with excitement, and on
September 18th
the police van carrying them to Salford Gaol was stopped
at the Bellevue
Railway Arch by the sudden fall of one of the horses,
shot from the
side of the road. In a moment the van was surrounded, and
crowbars were
wrenching at the van door. It resisted; a body of police
was rapidly
approaching, and if the rescue was to be effective the door
must be opened.
The rescuers shouted to Brett, the constable inside, to
pass out his
keys; he refused, and some one exclaimed, "Blow off the
lock!" In
a moment the muzzle of a revolver was against the lock, and
it was blown
off; but Brett, stooping down to look through the keyhole,
received the
bullet in his head, and fell dying as the door flew open.
Another moment,
and Allen, a lad of seventeen, had wrenched open the
doors of the
compartments occupied by Kelly and Deasy, dragged them
out, and while
two or three hurried them off to a place of safety, the
others threw
themselves between the fugitives and the police, and with
levelled
revolvers guarded their flight. The Fenian leaders once safe,
they scattered,
and young William Allen, whose one thought had been for
his chiefs,
seeing them safe, fired his revolver in the air, for he
would not shed
blood in his own defence. Disarmed by his own act, he
was set on by
the police, brutally struck down, kicked and stoned, and
was dragged off
to gaol, faint and bleeding, to meet there some of his
comrades in much
the same plight as himself. Then Manchester went mad,
and
race-passions flared up into flame; no Irish workman was safe in a
crowd of
Englishmen, no Englishman safe in the Irish quarter. The
friends of the
prisoners besieged "Lawyer Roberts's" house, praying his
aid, and he
threw his whole fiery soul into their defence. The man who
had fired the
accidentally fatal shot was safely out of the way, and
none of the
others had hurt a human being. A Special Commission was
issued, with
Mr. Justice Blackburn at its head--"the hanging judge,"
groaned Mr.
Roberts--and it was soon in Manchester, for all Mr.
Roberts's
efforts to get the venue of the trial changed were futile,
though of fair
trial then in Manchester there was no chance. On October
25th the
prisoners were actually brought up before the magistrates in
irons, and Mr.
Ernest Jones, their counsel, failing in his protest
against this
outrage, threw down his brief and left the court. So great
was the haste
with which the trial was hurried on that on the 29th
Allen, Larkin,
Gould (O'Brien), Maguire, and Condon were standing in
the dock before
the Commission charged with murder.
My first
experience of an angry crowd was on that day as we drove to
the court; the
streets were barricaded, the soldiers were under arms,
every approach
to the court crowded with surging throngs. At last our
carriage was
stopped as we were passing at a foot's pace through an
Irish section
of the crowd, and various vehement fists came through the
window, with
hearty curses at the "d----d English who were going to see
the boys
murdered." The situation was critical, for we were two women
and three
girls, when I bethought myself that we were unknown, and
gently touched
the nearest fist: "Friends, these are Mr. Roberts' wife
and
daughters." "Roberts! Lawyer Roberts! God bless Roberts! Let his
carriage
through." And all the scowling faces became smile-wreathen,
and curses
changed to cheers, as a road to the court steps was cleared
for us.
Alas! if there
was passion on behalf of the prisoners outside, there
was passion
against them within, and the very opening of the trial
showed the
spirit that animated the prosecution and the bench. Digby
Seymour, Q.C.,
and Ernest Jones, were briefed for the defence, and Mr.
Roberts did not
think that they exercised sufficiently their right of
challenge; he
knew, as we all did, that many on the panel had loudly
proclaimed
their hostility to the Irish, and Mr. Roberts persisted in
challenging
them as his counsel would not. In vain Judge Blackburn
threatened to
commit the rebellious solicitor: "These men's lives are
at stake, my
lord," was his indignant plea. "Remove that man!" cried
the angry
judge, but as the officers of the court came forward very
slowly--for all
poor men loved and honoured the sturdy fighter--he
changed his
mind and let him stay. Despite all his efforts, the jury
contained a man
who had declared that he "didn't care what the evidence
was, he would
hang every d----d Irishman of the lot." And the result
showed that he
was not alone in his view, for evidence of the most
disreputable
kind was admitted; women of the lowest type were put into
the box as
witnesses, and their word taken as unchallengeable; thus was
destroyed an
_alibi_ for Maguire, afterwards accepted by the Crown, a
free pardon
being issued on the strength of it. Nothing could save the
doomed men from
the determined verdict, and I could see from where I
was sitting
into a little room behind the bench, where an official was
quietly preparing
the black caps before the verdict had been delivered.
The foregone
"Guilty" was duly repeated as verdict on each of the five
cases, and the
prisoners asked if they had anything to say why sentence
of death should
not be passed on them. Allen, boy as he was, made a
very brave and
manly speech; he had not fired, save in the air--if he
had done so he
might have escaped; he had helped to free Kelly and
Deasy, and did
not regret it; he was willing to die for Ireland.
Maguire and
Condon (he also was reprieved) declared they were not
present, but,
like Allen, were ready to die for their country. Sentence
of death was
passed, and, as echo to the sardonic "The Lord have mercy
on your
souls," rang back from the dock in five clear voices, with
never a quiver
of fear in them, "God save Ireland!" and the men passed
one by one from
the sight of my tear-dimmed eyes.
It was a
sorrowful time that followed; the despair of the heart-broken
girl who was
Allen's sweetheart, and who cried to us on her knees,
"Save my
William!" was hard to see; nothing we or any one could do
availed to
avert the doom, and on November 23rd Allen, Larkin, and
O'Brien were
hanged outside Salford Gaol. Had they striven for freedom
in Italy
England would have honoured them; here she buried them as
common
murderers in quicklime in the prison yard.
I have found,
with a keen sense of pleasure, that Mr. Bradlaugh and
myself were in
1867 to some extent co-workers, although we knew not of
each other's
existence, and although he was doing much, and I only
giving such
poor sympathy as a young girl might, who was only just
awakening to
the duty of political work. I read in the _National
Reformer_ for
November 24, 1867, that in the preceding week he was
pleading on
Clerkenwell Green for these men's lives:--"According to
the evidence at
the trial, Deasy and Kelly were illegally arrested.
They had been
arrested for vagrancy of which no evidence was given, and
apparently
remanded for felony without a shadow of justification. He
had yet to
learn that in England the same state of things existed as in
Ireland; he had
yet to learn that an illegal arrest was sufficient
ground to
detain any of the citizens of any country in the prisons of
this one. If he
were illegally held, he was justified in using enough
force to
procure his release. Wearing a policeman's coat gave no
authority when
the officer exceeded his jurisdiction. He had argued
this before
Lord Chief Justice Erie in the Court of Common Pleas, and
that learned
judge did not venture to contradict the argument which he
submitted.
There was another reason why they should spare these men,
although he
hardly expected the Government to listen, because the
Government sent
down one of the judges who was predetermined to convict
the prisoners;
it was that the offence was purely a political one. The
death of Brett
was a sad mischance, but no one who read the evidence
could regard
the killing of Brett as an intentional murder. Legally, it
was murder;
morally, it was homicide in the rescue of a political
captive. If it
were a question of the rescue of the political captives
of Varignano,
or of political captives in Bourbon, in Naples, or in
Poland, or in
Paris, even earls might be found so to argue. Wherein is
our sister Ireland
less than these? In executing these men, they would
throw down the
gauntlet for terrible reprisals. It was a grave and
solemn
question. It had been said by a previous speaker that they were
prepared to go
to any lengths to save these Irishmen. They were not. He
wished they
were. If they were, if the men of England, from one end to
the other, were
prepared to say, 'These men shall not be executed,'
they would not
be. He was afraid they had not pluck enough for that.
Their moral
courage was not equal to their physical strength. Therefore
he would not
say that they were prepared to do so. They must plead _ad
misericordiam_.
He appealed to the press, which represented the power
of England; to
that press which in its panic-stricken moments had done
much harm, and
which ought now to save these four doomed men. If the
press demanded
it, no Government would be mad enough to resist. The
memory of the
blood which was shed in 1798 rose up like a bloody ghost
against them
to-day. He only feared that what they said upon the
subject might
do the poor men more harm than good. If it were not so,
he would coin
words that should speak in words of fire. As it was, he
could only say
to the Government: You are strong to-day; you hold these
men's lives in
your hands; but if you want to reconcile their country
to you, if you
want to win back Ireland, if you want to make her
children love
you--then do not embitter their hearts still more by
taking the
lives of these men. Temper your strength with mercy; do not
use the sword
of justice like one of vengeance, for the day may come
when it shall
be broken in your hands, and you yourselves brained by
the hilt of the
weapon you have so wickedly wielded." In October he
had printed a
plea for Ireland, strong and earnest, asking:--
"Where is
our boasted English freedom when you cross to Kingstown pier?
Where has it
been for near two years? The Habeas Corpus Act suspended,
the gaols
crowded, the steamers searched, spies listening at shebeen
shops for
sedition, and the end of it a Fenian panic in England. Oh,
before it be
too late, before more blood stain the pages of our present
history, before
we exasperate and arouse bitter animosities, let us try
and do justice
to our sister land. Abolish once and for all the land
laws, which in
their iniquitous operation have ruined her peasantry.
Sweep away the
leech-like Church which has sucked her vitality, and has
given her back
no word even of comfort in her degradation. Turn her
barracks into
flax mills, encourage a spirit of independence in her
citizens,
restore to her people the protection of the law, so that they
may speak
without fear of arrest, and beg them to plainly and boldly
state their
grievances. Let a commission of the best and wisest amongst
Irishmen, with
some of our highest English judges added, sit solemnly
to hear all
complaints, and then let us honestly legislate, not for the
punishment of
the discontented, but to remove the causes of the
discontent. It
is not the Fenians who have depopulated Ireland's
strength and
increased her misery. It is not the Fenians who have
evicted tenants
by the score. It is not the Fenians who have checked
cultivation.
Those who have caused the wrong at least should frame the
remedy."
In December,
1867, I sailed out of the safe harbour of my happy and
peaceful
girlhood on to the wide sea of life, and the waves broke
roughly as soon
as the bar was crossed. We were an ill-matched pair, my
husband and I,
from the very outset; he, with very high ideas of a
husband's
authority and a wife's submission, holding strongly to the
"master-in-my-own-house
theory," thinking much of the details of home
arrangements,
precise, methodical, easily angered and with difficulty
appeased. I,
accustomed to freedom, indifferent to home details,
impulsive, very
hot-tempered, and proud as Lucifer. I had never had a
harsh word
spoken to me, never been ordered to do anything, had had my
way smoothed
for my feet, and never a worry had touched me. Harshness
roused first
incredulous wonder, then a storm of indignant tears, and
after a time a
proud, defiant resistance, cold and hard as iron. The
easy-going,
sunshiny, enthusiastic girl changed--and changed pretty
rapidly--into a
grave, proud, reticent woman, burying deep in her own
heart all her
hopes, her fears, and her disillusions. I must have been
a very
unsatisfactory wife from the beginning, though I think other
treatment might
gradually have turned me into a fair imitation of the
proper
conventional article. Beginning with the ignorance before
alluded to, and
so scared and outraged at heart from the very first;
knowing nothing
of household management or economical use of money--I
had never had
an allowance or even bought myself a pair of
gloves--though
eager to perform my new duties creditably; unwilling to
potter over
little things, and liking to do swiftly what I had to do,
and then turn
to my beloved books; at heart fretting for my mother but
rarely speaking
of her, as I found my longing for her presence raised
jealous
vexation; with strangers about me with whom I had no sympathy;
visited by
ladies who talked to me only about babies and
servants--troubles
of which I knew nothing and which bored me
unutterably--and
who were as uninterested in all that had filled my
life, in
theology, in politics, in science, as I was uninterested in
the discussions
on the housemaid's young man and on the cook's
extravagance in
using "butter, when dripping would have done perfectly
well, my
dear"; was it wonderful that I became timid, dull, and
depressed?
All my eager,
passionate enthusiasm, so attractive to men in a young
girl, were
doubtless incompatible with "the solid comfort of a wife,"
and I must have
been inexpressibly tiring to the Rev. Frank Besant.
And, in truth,
I ought never to have married, for under the soft,
loving, pliable
girl there lay hidden, as much unknown to herself as to
her
surroundings, a woman of strong dominant will, strength that panted
for expression
and rebelled against restraint, fiery and passionate
emotions that
were seething under compression--a most undesirable
partner to sit
in the lady's arm-chair on the domestic rug before the
fire. [_Que le
diable faisait-elle dans cette galère,_] I have often
thought,
looking back at my past self, and asking, Why did that foolish
girl make her
bed so foolishly? But self-analysis shows the
contradictories
in my nature that led me into so mistaken a course. I
have ever been
the queerest mixture of weakness and strength, and have
paid heavily
for the weakness. As a child I used to suffer tortures of
shyness, and if
my shoe-lace was untied would feel shamefacedly that
every eye was
fixed on the unlucky string; as a girl I would shrink
away from
strangers and think myself unwanted and unliked, so that I
was full of
eager gratitude to any one who noticed me kindly; as the
young mistress
of a house, I was afraid of my servants, and would let
careless work
pass rather than bear the pain of reproving the ill-doer;
when I have
been lecturing and debating with no lack of spirit on the
platform, I
have preferred to go without what I wanted at the hotel
rather than to
ring and make the waiter fetch it; combative on the
platform in
defence of any cause I cared for, I shrink from quarrel or
disapproval in
the home, and am a coward at heart in private while a
good fighter in
public. How often have I passed unhappy quarters of an
hour screwing
up my courage to find fault with some subordinate whom my
duty compelled
me to reprove, and how often have I jeered at myself for
a fraud as the
doughty platform combatant, when shrinking from blaming
some lad or
lass for doing their work badly! An unkind look or word has
availed to make
me shrink into myself as a snail into its shell, while
on the platform
opposition makes me speak my best. So I slid into
marriage
blindly and stupidly, fearing to give pain; fretted my heart
out for a year;
then, roused by harshness and injustice, stiffened and
hardened, and
lived with a wall of ice round me within which I waged
mental
conflicts that nearly killed me; and learned at last how to live
and work in
armour that turned the edge of the weapons that struck it,
and left the
flesh beneath unwounded, armour laid aside, but in the
presence of a
very few.
My first
serious attempts at writing were made in 1868, and I took up
two very
different lines of composition; I wrote some short stories of
a very flimsy
type, and also a work of a much more ambitious character,
"The Lives
of the Black Letter Saints." For the sake of the
unecclesiastically
trained it may be as well to mention that in the
Calendar of the
Church of England there are a number of Saints' Days;
some of these
are printed in red, and are Red Letter Days, for which
services are
appointed by the Church; others are printed in black, and
are Black
Letter Days, and have no special services fixed for them. It
seemed to me
that it would be interesting to take each of these days
and write a
sketch of the life of the saint belonging to it, and
accordingly I
set to work to do so, and gathered various books of
history and
legend where-from to collect my "facts." I do not in the
least know what
became of that valuable book; I tried Macmillans with
it, and it was
sent on by them to some one who was preparing a series
of Church books
for the young; later I had a letter from a Church
brotherhood
offering to publish it, if I would give it as "an act of
piety" to
their order; its ultimate fate is to me unknown.
The short
stories were more fortunate. I sent the first to the _Family
Herald_, and
some weeks afterwards received a letter from which dropped
a cheque as I
opened it. Dear me! I have earned a good deal of money
since by my
pen, but never any that gave me the intense delight of that
first thirty
shillings. It was the first money I had ever earned, and
the pride of
the earning was added to the pride of authorship. In my
childish
delight and practical religion, I went down on my knees and
thanked God for
sending it to me, and I saw myself earning heaps of
golden guineas,
and becoming quite a support of the household. Besides,
it was "my
very own," I thought, and a delightful sense of independence
came over me. I
had not then realised the beauty of the English law,
and the
dignified position in which it placed the married woman; I did
not understand
that all a married woman earned by law belonged to her
owner, and that
she could have nothing that belonged to her of
right.[1] I did
not want the money: I was only so glad to have
something of my
own to give, and it was rather a shock to learn that it
was not really
mine at all.
From time to
time after that I earned a few pounds for stories in the
same journal;
and the _Family Herald_, let me say, has one peculiarity
which should render
it beloved by poor authors; it pays its contributor
when it accepts
the paper, whether it prints it immediately or not;
thus my first
story was not printed for some weeks after I received the
cheque, and it
was the same with all the others accepted by the same
journal.
Encouraged by these small successes, I began writing a novel!
It took a long
time to do, but was at last finished, and sent off to
the _Family
Herald_. The poor thing came back, but with a kind note,
telling me that
it was too political for their pages, but that if I
would write one
of "purely domestic interest," and up to the same
level, it would
probably be accepted. But by that time I was in the
full struggle
of theological doubt, and that novel of "purely domestic
interest"
never got itself written.
I contributed
further to the literature of my country a theological
pamphlet, of
which I forget the exact title, but it dealt with the duty
of fasting
incumbent on all faithful Christians, and was very patristic
in its tone.
In January,
1869, my little son was born, and as I was very ill for
some months
before, and was far too much interested in the tiny
creature
afterwards, to devote myself to pen and paper, my literary
career was
checked for a while. The baby gave a new interest and a new
pleasure to
life, and as we could not afford a nurse I had plenty to do
in looking
after his small majesty. My energy in reading became less
feverish when
it was done by the side of the baby's cradle, and the
little one's
presence almost healed the abiding pain of my mother's
loss.
I may pass very
quickly over the next two years. In August, 1870, a
little sister
was born to my son, and the recovery was slow and
tedious, for my
general health had been failing for some time.
[Illustration:
_From a photograph by Dighton's Art Studio, Cheltenham_.
ANNIE BESANT
1869.]
The boy was a
bright, healthy little fellow, but the girl was delicate
from birth,
suffering from her mother's unhappiness, and born somewhat
prematurely in
consequence of a shock. When, in the spring of 1871, the
two children
caught the whooping cough, my Mabel's delicacy made the
ordeal
well-nigh fatal to her. She was very young for so trying a
disease, and
after a while bronchitis set in and was followed by
congestion of
the lungs. For weeks she lay in hourly peril of death We
arranged a
screen round the fire like a tent, and kept it full of steam
to ease the
panting breath; and there I sat, day and night, all through
those weary
weeks, the tortured baby on my knees. I loved my little
ones
passionately, for their clinging love soothed the aching at my
heart, and
their baby eyes could not critically scan the unhappiness
that grew
deeper month by month; and that steam-filled tent became my
world, and
there, alone, I fought with Death for my child. The doctor
said that
recovery was impossible, and that in one of the paroxysms of
coughing she
must die; the most distressing thing was that, at last,
even a drop or
two of milk would bring on the terrible convulsive
choking, and it
seemed cruel to add to the pain of the apparently dying
child. At
length, one morning the doctor said she could not last
through the
day; I had sent for him hurriedly, for the body had
suddenly
swollen up as a result of the perforation of one of the
pleurae, and
the consequent escape of air into the cavity of the chest.
While he was
there one of the fits of coughing came on, and it seemed
as though it
must be the last. He took a small bottle of chloroform out
of his pocket,
and putting a drop on a handkerchief held it near the
child's face,
till the drug soothed the convulsive struggle. "It can't
do any harm at
this stage," he said, "and it checks the suffering." He
went away,
saying that he feared he would never see the child alive
again. One of
the kindest friends I had in my married life was that
same doctor,
Mr. Lauriston Winterbotham; he was as good as he was
clever, and,
like so many of his noble profession, he had the merits of
discretion and
silence. He never breathed a word as to my unhappiness,
until in 1878
he came up to town to give evidence as to cruelty
which--had the
deed of separation not been held as condonation--would
have secured me
a divorce _a mensa et thoro._
The child,
however, recovered, and her recovery was due, I think, to
that chance
thought of Mr. Winterbotham's about the chloroform, for I
used it
whenever the first sign of a fit of coughing appeared, and so
warded off the
convulsive attack and the profound exhaustion that
followed, in
which a mere flicker of breath at the top of the throat
was the only
sign of life, and sometimes even that disappeared, and I
thought her
gone. For years the child remained ailing and delicate,
requiring the
tenderest care, but those weeks of anguish left a deeper
trace on mother
than on child. Once she was out of danger I collapsed
physically, and
lay in bed for a week unmoving, and then rose to face a
struggle which
lasted for three years and two months, and nearly cost
me my life, the
struggle which transformed me from a Christian into an
Atheist. The
agony of the struggle was in the first nineteen months--a
time to be
looked back upon with shrinking, as it was a hell to live
through at the
time. For no one who has not felt it knows the fearful
anguish
inflicted by doubt on the earnestly religious soul. There is in
life no other
pain so horrible, so keen in its torture, so crushing in
its weight. It
seems to shipwreck everything, to destroy the one steady
gleam of
happiness "on the other side" that no earthly storm could
obscure; to
make all life gloomy with a horror of despair, a darkness
that verily may
be felt. Nothing but an imperious intellectual and
moral necessity
can drive into doubt a religious mind, for it is as
though an
earthquake shook the foundations of the soul, and the very
being quivers
and sways under the shock. No life in the empty sky; no
gleam in the
blackness of the night; no voice to break the deadly
silence; no
hand outstretched to save. Empty-brained triflers who have
never tried to
think, who take their creed as they take their fashions,
speak of
Atheism as the outcome of foul life and vicious desires. In
their shallow
heartlessness and shallower thought they cannot even
dimly imagine
the anguish of entering the mere penumbra of the Eclipse
of Faith, much
less the horror of that great darkness in which the
orphaned soul
cries out into the infinite emptiness: "Is it a Devil
that has made
the world? Is the echo, 'Children, ye have no Father,'
true? Is all
blind chance, is all the clash of unconscious forces, or
are we the
sentient toys of an Almighty Power that sports with our
agony, whose
peals of awful mockery of laughter ring back answer to the
wailings of our
despair?"
How true are
the noble words of Mrs. Hamilton King:--
"For some may follow Truth from dawn to
dark,
As a child follows by his mother's hand,
Knowing no fear, rejoicing all the way;
And unto some her face is as a Star
Set through an avenue of thorns and fires,
And waving branches black without a leaf;
And still It draws them, though the feet must
bleed,
Though garments must be rent, and eyes be
scorched:
And if the valley of the shadow of death
Be passed, and to the level road they come,
Still with their faces to the polar star,
It is not with the same looks, the same
limbs,
But halt, and maimed, and of infirmity.
And for the rest of the way they have to go
It is not day but night, and oftentimes
A night of clouds wherein the stars are
lost."[2]
Aye! but never
lost is the Star of Truth to which the face is set, and
while that
shines all lesser lights may go. It was the long months of
suffering
through which I had been passing, with the seemingly
purposeless
torturing of my little one as a climax, that struck the
first stunning
blow at my belief in God as a merciful Father of men. I
had been
visiting the poor a good deal, and had marked the patient
suffering of
their lives; my idolised mother had been defrauded by a
lawyer she had
trusted, and was plunged into debt by his non-payment of
the sums that
should have passed through his hands to others; my own
bright life had
been enshrouded by pain and rendered to me degraded by
an intolerable
sense of bondage; and here was my helpless, sinless babe
tortured for
weeks and left frail and suffering. The smooth brightness
of my previous
life made all the disillusionment more startling, and
the sudden
plunge into conditions so new and so unfavourable dazed and
stunned me. My
religious past became the worst enemy of the suffering
present. All my
personal belief in Christ, all my intense faith in His
constant
direction of affairs, all my habit of continual prayer and of
realisation of
His Presence--all were against me now. The very height
of my trust was
the measure of the shock when the trust gave way. To me
He was no
abstract idea, but a living reality, and all my heart rose up
against this
Person in whom I believed, and whose individual finger I
saw in my
baby's agony, my own misery, the breaking of my mother's
proud heart
under a load of debt, and all the bitter suffering of the
poor. The
presence of pain and evil in a world made by a good God; the
pain falling on
the innocent, as on my seven months' old babe; the pain
begun here
reaching on into eternity unhealed; a sorrow-laden world; a
lurid, hopeless
hell; all these, while I still believed, drove me
desperate, and
instead of like the devils believing and trembling, I
believed and
hated. All the hitherto dormant and unsuspected strength
of my nature
rose up in rebellion; I did not yet dream of denial, but I
would no longer
kneel.
As the first
stirrings of this hot rebellion moved in my heart I met a
clergyman of a
very noble type, who did much to help me by his ready
and wise
sympathy. Mr. Besant brought him to see me during the crisis
of the child's
illness; he said little, but on the following day I
received from
him the following note:--
"_April_
21, 1871.
"My Dear
Mrs. Besant,--I am painfully conscious that I gave you but
little help in
your trouble yesterday. It is needless to say that it
was not from
want of sympathy. Perhaps it would be nearer the truth to
say that it was
from excess of sympathy. I shrink intensely from
meddling with
the sorrow of any one whom I feel to be of a sensitive
nature. 'The
heart hath its own bitterness, and the stranger meddleth
not therewith.'
It is to me a positively fearful thought that I might
awaken such a
reflection as
"'And common was the commonplace,
And vacant chaff well meant for grain.'
Conventional
consolations, conventional verses out of the Bible, and
conventional
prayers are, it seems to me, an intolerable aggravation of
suffering. And
so I acted on a principle that I mentioned to your
husband that
'there is no power so great as that of one human faith
looking upon
another human faith.' The promises of God, the love of
Christ for
little children, and all that has been given to us of hope
and comfort,
are as deeply planted in your heart as in mine, and I did
not care to
quote them. But when I talk face to face with one who is in
sore need of
them, my faith in them suddenly becomes so vast and
heart-stirring
that I think I must help most by talking naturally, and
letting the
faith find its own way from soul to soul. Indeed, I could
not find words
for it if I tried. And yet I am compelled, as a
messenger of
the glad tidings of God, to solemnly assure you that all
is well. We
have no key to the 'mystery of pain' excepting the Cross of
Christ. But
there is another and a deeper solution in the hands of our
Father; and it
will be ours when we can understand it. There is--in the
place to which
we travelsome blessed explanation of your baby's pain
and your grief,
which will fill with light the darkest heart. Now you
must believe
without having seen; that is true faith. You must
"'Reach a hand through time to catch
The far-off interest of tears.'
That you may
have strength so to do is part of your share in the
prayers of
"Yours
very faithfully,
"W.
D----."
A noble letter,
but the storm was beating too fiercely to be stilled,
and one night
in that summer of 1871 stands out clearly before me. Mr.
Besant was
away, and there had been a fierce quarrel before he left. I
was outraged,
desperate, with no door of escape from a life that,
losing its hope
in God, had not yet learned to live for hope for man.
No door of
escape? The thought came like a flash: "There is one!" And
before me there
swung open, with lure of peace and of safety, the
gateway into
silence and security, the gateway of the tomb. I was
standing by the
drawing-room window, staring hopelessly at the evening
sky; with the
thought came the remembrance that the means was at
hand--the
chloroform that had soothed my baby's pain, and that I had
locked away
upstairs. I ran up to my room, took out the bottle, and
carried it
downstairs, standing again at the window in the summer
twilight, glad
that the struggle was over and peace at hand. I uncorked
the bottle, and
was raising it to my lips, when, as though the words
were spoken
softly and clearly, I heard: "O coward, coward, who used to
dream of
martyrdom, and cannot bear a few short years of pain!" A rush
of shame swept
over me, and I flung the bottle far away among the
shrubs in the
garden at my feet, and for a moment I felt strong as for
a struggle, and
then fell fainting on the floor. Only once again in all
the strifes of
my career did the thought of suicide recur, and then it
was but for a
moment, to be put aside as unworthy a strong soul.
My new friend,
Mr. D----, proved a very real help. The endless torture
of hell, the
vicarious sacrifice of Christ, the trustworthiness of
revelation,
doubts on all these hitherto accepted doctrines grew and
heaped
themselves on my bewildered soul. My questionings were neither
shirked nor
discouraged by Mr. D----; he was not horrified nor was he
sanctimoniously
rebukeful, but met them all with a wide comprehension
inexpressibly
soothing to one writhing in the first agonies of doubt.
He left
Cheltenham in the early autumn of 1871, but the following
extracts from a
letter written in November will show the kind of net in
which I was
struggling (I had been reading M'Leod Campbell's work "On
the Atonement"):--
"You
forget one great principle--that God is impassive, cannot suffer.
Christ, _quâ_
God, did not suffer, but as Son of _Man_ and in His
humanity.
Still, it may be correctly stated that He felt to sin and
sinners 'as God
eternally feels'--_i.e., abhorrence of sin, and love of
the sinner_.
But to infer from that that the Father in His Godhead
feels the
sufferings which Christ experienced solely in humanity, and
because
incarnate is, I think, wrong.
"(2) I
felt strongly inclined to blow you up for the last part of your
letter. You
assume, I think quite gratuitously, that God condemns the
major part of
His children to objectless future suffering. You say that
if He does not,
He places a book in their hands which threatens what He
does not mean
to inflict. But how utterly this seems to me opposed to
the gospel of
Christ! All Christ's references to eternal punishment may
be resolved
into references to the Valley of Hinnom, by way of imagery;
with the
exception of the Dives parable, where is distinctly inferred a
moral amendment
beyond the grave. I speak of the unselfish desire of
Dives to save
his brothers. The more I see of the controversy, the more
baseless does
the eternal punishment theory appear. It seems then, to
me, that
instead of feeling aggrieved and shaken, you ought to feel
encouraged and
thankful that God is so much better than you were taught
to believe Him.
You will have discovered by this time in Maurice's
'What is
Revelation?' (I suppose you have the 'Sequel,' too?), that
God's truth is
our truth, and His love is our love, only more perfect
and full. There
is no position more utterly defeated in modern
philosophy and
theology than Dean Mansel's attempt to show that God's
love, justice,
&c., are different in kind from ours. Mill and Maurice,
from totally
alien points of view, have shown up the preposterous
nature of the
notion.
"(3) A
good deal of what you have thought is, I fancy, based on a
strange
forgetfulness of your former experience. If you have known
Christ--(whom
to know is eternal life)--and that you have known Him I
am certain--can
you really say that a few intellectual difficulties,
nay, a few
moral difficulties if you will, are able at once to
obliterate the
testimony of that higher state of being?
"Why, the
keynote of all my theology is that Christ is lovable because,
and _just_
because, He is the perfection of all that I know to be noble
and generous,
and loving, and tender, and true. If an angel from heaven
brought me a
gospel which contained doctrines that would not stand the
test of such
perfect lovableness--doctrines hard, or cruel, or
unjust--I
should reject him and his trumpery gospel with scorn, knowing
that neither
could be Christ's. Know Christ and judge religions by Him;
don't judge Him
by religions, and then complain because they find
yourself
looking at Him through a blood-coloured glass."
"I am
saturating myself with Maurice, who is the antidote given by God
to this age
against all dreary doublings and temptings of the devil to
despair."
Many a one, in
this age of controversy over all things once held
sacred, has
found peace and new light on this line of thought, and has
succeeded in
thus reconciling theological doctrines with the demands of
the conscience
for love and justice in a world made by a just and
loving God. I
could not do so. The awakening to what the world was, to
the facts of
human misery, to the ruthless tramp of nature and of
events over the
human heart, making no difference between innocent and
guilty--the
shock had been too great for the equilibrium to be restored
by arguments
that appealed to the emotions and left the intellect
unconvinced.
Months of this long-drawn-out mental anguish wrought their
natural effects
on physical health, and at last I broke down
completely, and
lay for weeks helpless and prostrate, in raging and
unceasing
head-pain, unable to sleep, unable to bear the light, lying
like a log on
the bed, not unconscious, but indifferent to everything,
consciousness
centred, as it were, in the ceaseless pain. The doctor
tried every
form of relief, but, entrenched in its citadel, the pain
defied his puny
efforts. He covered my head with ice, he gave me
opium--which
only drove me mad--he did all that skill and kindness
could do, but
all in vain. Finally the pain wore itself out, and the
moment he dared
to do so, he tried mental diversion; he brought me
books on
anatomy, on science, and persuaded me to study them; and out
of his busy
life would steal an hour to explain to me knotty points on
physiology. He
saw that if I were to be brought back to reasonable
life, it could
only be by diverting thought from the channels in which
the current had
been running to a dangerous extent. I have often felt
that I owed
life and sanity to that good man, who felt for the
helpless,
bewildered child-woman, beaten down by the cyclone of doubt
and misery.
So it will
easily be understood that my religious wretchedness only
increased the
unhappiness of homelife, for how absurd it was that any
reasonable
human being should be so tossed with anguish over
intellectual
and moral difficulties on religious matters, and should
make herself
ill over these unsubstantial troubles. Surely it was a
woman's
business to attend to her husband's comforts and to see after
her children,
and not to break her heart over misery here and hell
hereafter, and
distract her brain with questions that had puzzled the
greatest
thinkers and still remained unsolved! And, truly, women or men
who get
themselves concerned about the universe at large, would do well
not to plunge
hastily into marriage, for they do not run smoothly in
the
double-harness of that honourable estate. _Sturm und Drang_ should
be faced alone,
and the soul should go out alone into the wilderness to
be tempted of
the devil, and not bring his majesty and all his imps
into the placid
circle of the home. Unhappy they who go into marriage
with the
glamour of youth upon them and the destiny of conflict
imprinted on
their nature, for they make misery for their partner in
marriage as
well as for themselves. And if that partner, strong in
traditional
authority and conventional habits, seeks to "break in" the
turbulent and
storm-tossed creature--well, it comes to a mere trial of
strength and
endurance, whether that driven creature will fall panting
and crushed, or
whether it will turn in its despair, assert its Divine
right to
intellectual liberty, rend its fetters in pieces, and,
discovering its
own strength in its extremity, speak at all risks its
"No"
when bidden to live a lie.
When that
physical crisis was over I decided on my line of action. I
resolved to
take Christianity as it had been taught in the Churches,
and carefully
and thoroughly examine its dogmas one by one, so that I
should never
again say "I believe" where I had not proved, and that,
however
diminished my area of belief, what was left of it might at
least be firm
under my feet. I found that four chief problems were
pressing for
solution, and to these I addressed myself. How many are
to-day the
souls facing just these problems, and disputing every inch
of their old
ground of faith with the steadily advancing waves of
historical and
scientific criticism! Alas! for the many Canutes, as the
waves wash over
their feet. These problems were:--
(1) The
eternity of punishment after death.
(2) The meaning
of "goodness" and "love," as applied to a God who had
made this
world, with all its sin and misery.
(3) The nature
of the atonement of Christ, and the "justice" of God in
accepting a
vicarious suffering from Christ, and a vicarious
righteousness
from the sinner.
(4) The meaning
of "inspiration" as applied to the Bible, and the
reconciliation
of the perfections of the author with the blunders and
immoralities of
the work.
It will be seen
that the deeper problems of religion--the deity of
Christ, the
existence of God, the immortality of the soul--were not yet
brought into
question, and, looking back, I cannot but see how orderly
was the
progression of thought, how steady the growth, after that first
terrible
earthquake, and the first wild swirl of agony. The points that
I set myself to
study were those which would naturally be first faced
by any one
whose first rebellion against the dogmas of the Churches was
a rebellion of
the moral nature rather than of the intellectual, a
protest of the
conscience rather than of the brain. It was not a desire
for moral
licence which gave me the impulse that finally landed me in
Atheism; it was
the sense of outraged justice and insulted right. I was
a wife and
mother, blameless in moral life, with a deep sense of duty
and a proud
self-respect; it was while I was this that doubt struck me,
and while I was
in the guarded circle of the home, with no dream of
outside work or
outside liberty, that I lost all faith in Christianity.
My education,
my mother's example, my inner timidity and self-distrust,
all fenced me
in from temptations from without. It was the uprising of
an outraged
conscience that made me a rebel against the Churches and
finally an
unbeliever in God. And I place this on record, because the
progress of
Materialism will never be checked by diatribes against
unbelievers, as
though they became unbelievers from desire for vice and
for licence to
do evil. What Religion has to face in the controversies
of to-day is
not the unbelief of the sty, but the unbelief of the
educated
conscience and of the soaring intellect; and unless it can arm
itself with a
loftier ethic and a grander philosophy than its opponent,
it will lose
its hold over the purest and the strongest of the younger
generation.
CHAPTER V.
THE STORM OF
DOUBT.
My reading of
heretical and Broad Church works on one side, and of
orthodox ones
on the other, now occupied a large part of my time, and
our removal to
Sibsey, in Lincolnshire, an agricultural village with a
scattered
population, increased my leisure. I read the works of
Robertson,
Stopford Brooke, Stanley, Greg, Matthew Arnold, Liddon,
Mansel, and
many another, and my scepticism grew deeper and deeper as
I read. The
Broad Church arguments appeared to me to be of the nature
of special
pleading, skilful evasions of difficulties rather than the
real meeting
and solving of them. For the problem was: Given a good
God, how can He
have created mankind, knowing beforehand that the vast
majority of
those whom He created were to be tortured for ever? Given
a just God, how
can He punish people for being sinful, when they have
inherited a
sinful nature without their own choice and of necessity?
Given a
righteous God, how can He allow sin to exist for ever, so that
evil shall be
as eternal as good, and Satan shall reign in hell as
long as Christ
in heaven? Worst of all puzzles, perhaps, was that of
the existence
of evil and of misery, and the racking doubt whether God
_could_ be
good, and yet look on the evil and the misery of the world
unmoved and
untouched. It seemed so impossible to believe that a
Creator could
be either cruel enough to be indifferent to the misery,
or weak enough
to be unable to stop it. The old dilemma faced me
incessantly:
"If He can prevent it and does not, He is not good; if He
wishes to
prevent it and cannot, He is not almighty." I racked my
brains for an
answer. I searched writings of believers for a clue, but
I found no way
of escape. Not yet had any doubt of the existence of
God crossed my
mind.
Mr. D----
continued to write me, striving to guide me along the path
which had led
his own soul to contentment, but I can only find room
here for two
brief extracts, which will show how to himself he solved
the problem. He
thought me mistaken in my view
"Of the
nature of the _sin_ and _error_ which is supposed to grieve
God. I take it
that sin is an absolutely necessary factor in the
production of
the perfect man. It was foreseen and allowed as means to
an end--as, in
fact, an education. The view of all the sin and misery
in the world
cannot grieve God any more than it can grieve you to see
Digby fail in
his first attempt to build a card-castle or a
rabbit-hutch.
All is part of the training. God looks at the ideal man
to which all
tends.... "No, Mrs. Besant; I never feel at all inclined
to give up the
search, or to suppose that the other side may be right.
I claim no merit
for it, but I have an invincible faith in the
morality of God
and the moral order of the world. I have no more doubt
about the
falsehood of the popular theology than I have about the
unreality of
six robbers who attacked me three nights ago in a horrid
dream. I exult
and rejoice in the grandeur and freedom of the little
bit of truth it
has been given me to see. I am told that 'Present-day
Papers,' by
Bishop Ewing (edited), are a wonderful help, many of them,
to puzzled
people; I mean to get them. But I am sure you will find
that the truth
will (even so little as we may be able to find out)
grow on you,
make you free, light your path, and dispel, at no distant
time, your
_painful_ difficulties and doubts. I should say on no
account give up
your reading. I think with you that you could not do
without it. It
will be a wonderful source of help and peace to you.
For there are
struggles far more fearful than those of intellectual
doubt. I am
keenly alive to the gathered-up sadness of which your last
two pages are
an expression. I was sorrier than I can say to read
them. They
reminded me of a long and very dark time in my own life,
when I thought
the light never would come. Thank God it came, or I
think I could
not have held out much longer. But you have evidently
strength to
bear it now. The more dangerous time, I should fancy, has
passed. You
will have to mind that the fermentation leaves clear
spiritual wine,
and not (as too often) vinegar. I wish I could write
something more
helpful to you in this great matter. But as I sit in
front of my
large bay window and see the shadows on the grass and the
sunlight on the
leaves, and the soft glimmer of the rosebuds left by
the storms, I
can but believe that all will be very well. 'Trust in
the Lord, wait
patiently for Him'--they are trite words. But He made
the grass, the
leaves, the rosebuds, and the sunshine, and He is the
Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ. And now the trite words have swelled
into a mighty
argument."
I found more
help in Theistic writers like Grey, and Agnostic like
Arnold, than I
did in the Broad Church teachers, but these, of course,
served to make
return to the old faith more and more impossible. The
Church services
were a weekly torture, but feeling as I did that I was
only a doubter,
I kept my doubts to myself. It was possible, I felt,
that all my
difficulties might be cleared up, and I had no right to
shake the faith
of others while in uncertainty myself. Others had
doubted and had
afterwards recovered their faith; for the doubter
silence was a
duty; the blinded had better keep their misery to
themselves.
During these
weary months of anxiety and torment I found some relief
from the mental
strain in practical parish work, nursing the sick,
trying to
brighten the lot of the poor. I learned then some of the
lessons as to
the agricultural labourer and the land that I was able
in after-years
to teach from the platform. The movement among the
agricultural
labourers, due to the energy and devotion of Joseph Arch,
was beginning
to be discussed in the fens, and my sympathies went
strongly with
the claims of the labourers, for I knew their
life-conditions.
In one cottage I had found four generations sleeping
in one
room--the great-grandfather and his wife, the unmarried
grandmother,
the unmarried mother, the little child; three men lodgers
completed the
tale of eight human beings crowded into that narrow,
ill-ventilated
garret. Other cottages were hovels, through the broken
roofs of which
poured the rain, and wherein rheumatism and ague lived
with the human
dwellers. How could I do aught but sympathise with any
combination
that aimed at the raising of these poor? But the
Agricultural
Labourers' Union was bitterly opposed by the farmers, and
they would give
no work to a "Union man." One example may serve for
all. There was
a young married man with two small children, who was
sinful enough
to go to a Union meeting and sinful enough to talk of it
on his return
home. No farmer would employ him in all the district
round. He
tramped about vainly looking for work, grew reckless, and
took to drink.
Visiting his cottage, consisting of one room and a
"lean-to,"
I found his wife ill with fever, a fever-stricken babe in
her arms, the
second child lying dead on the bed. In answer to my
soft-spoken
questions: Yes, she was pining (starving), there was no
work. Why did
she leave the dead child on the bed? Because she had no
other place for
it till the coffin came. And at night the unhappy,
driven man, the
fever-stricken wife, the fever-stricken child, the
dead child, all
lay in the one bed. The farmers hated the Union
because its
success meant higher wages for the men, and it never
struck them
that they might well pay less rent to the absent landlord
and higher wage
to the men who tilled their fields. They had only
civil words for
the burden that crushed them, hard words for the
mowers of their
harvests and the builders-up of their ricks; they made
common cause
with their enemies instead of with their friends, and
instead of
leaguing themselves together with the labourers as forming
together the
true agricultural interest, they leagued themselves with
the landlords
against the labourers, and so made ruinous fratricidal
strife instead
of easy victory over the common foe. And, seeing all
this, I learned
some useful lessons, and the political education
progressed
while the theological strife went on within.
In the early
autumn a ray of light broke the darkness. I was in London
with my mother,
and wandered one Sunday morning into St. George's
Hall, where the
Rev. Charles Voysey was preaching. There to my delight
I found, on
listening to the sermon and buying some literature on sale
in the
ante-room, that there were people who had passed through my own
difficulties,
and had given up the dogmas that I found so revolting. I
went again on
the following Sunday, and when the service was over I
noticed that
the outgoing stream of people were passing by Mr. and
Mrs. Voysey,
and that many who were evidently strangers spoke a word
of thanks to
him as they went on. Moved by a strong desire, after the
long months of
lonely striving, to speak to one who had struggled out
of Christian
difficulties, I said to Mr. Voysey, as I passed in my
turn, "I
must thank you for very great help in what you said this
morning,"
for in truth, never having yet doubted the existence of God,
the teaching of
Mr. Voysey that He was "loving unto _every_ man, and
His tender
mercy over _all_ His works," came like a gleam of light
across the
stormy sea of doubt and distress on which I had so long
been tossing.
The next Sunday saw me again at the Hall, and Mrs.
Voysey gave me
a cordial invitation to visit them in their Dulwich
home. I found
their Theism was free from the defects that had revolted
me in
Christianity, and they opened up to me new views of religion. I
read Theodore
Parker's "Discourse on Religion," Francis Newman's
works, those of
Miss Frances Power Cobbe, and of others; the anguish
of the tension
relaxed; the nightmare of an Almighty Evil passed away;
my belief in
God, not yet touched, was cleared from all the dark spots
that had
sullied it, and I no longer doubted whether the dogmas that
had shocked my
conscience were true or false. I shook them off, once
for all, with
all their pain and horror and darkness, and felt, with
joy and relief
inexpressible, that they were delusions of the
ignorance of
man, not the revelations of a God.
But there was
one belief that had not been definitely challenged, but
of which the
_rationale_ was gone with the orthodox dogmas now
definitely
renounced--the doctrine of the Deity of Christ. The whole
teaching of the
Broad Church school tends, of course, to emphasise the
humanity of
Christ at the expense of His Deity, and when eternal
punishment and
the substitutionary atonement had gone there seemed no
reason
remaining sufficient to account for so tremendous a miracle as
the incarnation
of the Deity. In the course of my reading I had become
familiar with
the idea of Avatâras in Eastern creeds, and I saw that
the incarnate
God was put forward as a fact by all ancient religions,
and thus the
way was paved for challenging the especially Christian
teaching, when
the doctrines morally repulsive were cleared away. But
I shrank from
the thought of placing in the crucible a doctrine so
dear from all
the associations of the past; there was so much that was
soothing and
ennobling in the idea of a union between Man and God,
between a
perfect man and a Divine life, between a human heart and an
almighty
strength. Jesus as God was interwoven with all art and all
beauty in
religion; to break with the Deity of Jesus was to break with
music, with
painting, with literature; the Divine Babe in His Mother's
arms; the
Divine Man in His Passion and His Triumph; the Friend of Man
encircled with
the majesty of the Godhead. Did inexorable Truth demand
that this ideal
Figure, with all its pathos, its beauty, its human
love, should
pass away into the Pantheon of the dead Gods of the Past?
Nor was this
all. If I gave up belief in Christ as God, I must give up
Christianity as
creed. Once challenge the unique position of the
Christ, and the
name Christian seemed to me to be a hypocrisy, and its
renouncement a
duty binding on the upright mind. I was a clergyman's
wife; what
would be the effect of such a step? Hitherto mental pain
alone had been
the price demanded inexorably from the searcher after
truth; but with
the renouncing of Christ outer warfare would be added
to the inner,
and who might guess the result upon my life? The
struggle was
keen but short; I decided to carefully review the
evidence for
and against the Deity of Christ, with the result that
that belief
followed the others, and I stood, no longer Christian,
face to face
with a dim future in which I sensed the coming conflict.
One effort I
made to escape it; I appealed to Dr. Pusey, thinking that
if he could not
answer my questionings, no answer to them could be
reasonably
hoped for. I had a brief correspondence with him, but was
referred only
to lines of argument familiar to me--as those of Liddon
in his
"Bampton Lectures"--and finally, on his invitation, went down
to Oxford to
see him. I found a short, stout gentleman, dressed in a
cassock,
looking like a comfortable monk; but keen eyes, steadfastly
gazing straight
into mine, told of the force and subtlety enshrined in
the fine,
impressive head. But the learned doctor took the wrong line
of treatment;
he probably saw I was anxious, shy, and nervous, and he
treated me as a
penitent going to confession and seeking the advice of
a director,
instead of as an inquirer struggling after truth, and
resolute to
obtain some firm standing-ground in the sea of doubt. He
would not deal
with the question of the Deity of Jesus as a question
for argument.
"You are speaking of your Judge," he retorted sternly,
when I pressed
a difficulty. The mere suggestion of an imperfection in
the character
of Jesus made him shudder, and he checked me with raised
hand. "You
are blaspheming. The very thought is a terrible sin." Would
he recommend me
any books that might throw light on the subject? "No,
no; you have
read too much already. You must pray; you must pray."
When I urged
that I could not believe without proof, I was told,
"Blessed
are they that have not seen and yet have believed"; and my
further
questioning was checked by the murmur, "O my child, how
undisciplined!
how impatient!" Truly, he must have found in me--hot,
eager,
passionate in my determination to _know_, resolute not to
profess belief
while belief was absent--nothing of the meek,
chastened,
submissive spirit with which he was wont to deal in
penitents
seeking his counsel as their spiritual guide. In vain did he
bid me pray as
though I believed; in vain did he urge the duty of
blind
submission to the authority of the Church, of blind, unreasoning
faith that
questioned not. I had not trodden the thorny path of doubt
to come to the
point from which I had started; I needed, and would
have, solid
grounds ere I believed. He had no conception of the
struggles of a
sceptical spirit; he had evidently never felt the pangs
of doubt; his
own faith was solid as a rock, firm, satisfied,
unshakable; he
would as soon have committed suicide as have doubted of
the infallibility
of the "Universal Church."
"It is not
your duty to ascertain the truth," he told me, sternly. "It
is your duty to
accept and believe the truth as laid down by the
Church. At your
peril you reject it. The responsibility is not yours
so long as you
dutifully accept that which the Church has laid down
for your
acceptance. Did not the Lord promise that the presence of the
Spirit should
be ever with His Church, to guide her into all truth?"
"But the
fact of the promise and its value are just the very points on
which I am
doubtful," I answered.
He shuddered.
"Pray, pray," he said. "Father, forgive her, for she
knows not what
she says."
It was in vain
that I urged on him the sincerity of my seeking,
pointing out
that I had everything to gain by following his
directions,
everything to lose by going my own way, but that it seemed
to me
untruthful to pretend to accept what was not really believed.
"Everything
to lose? Yes, indeed. You will be lost for time and lost
for
eternity."
"Lost or
not," I rejoined, "I must and will try to find out what is
true, and I
will not believe till I am sure."
"You have
no right to make terms with God," he retorted, "as to what
you will
believe or what you will not believe. You are full of
intellectual
pride."
I sighed
hopelessly. Little feeling of pride was there in me just
then, but only
a despairful feeling that in this rigid, unyielding
dogmatism there
was no comprehension of my difficulties, no help for
me in my
strugglings. I rose, and, thanking him for his courtesy, said
that I would
not waste his time further, that I must go home and face
the
difficulties, openly leaving the Church and taking the
consequences.
Then for the first time his serenity was ruffled.
"I forbid
you to speak of your disbelief," he cried. "I forbid you to
lead into your
own lost state the souls for whom Christ died."
[Illustration:
THOMAS SCOTT.]
Slowly and
sadly I took my way back to the station, knowing that my
last chance of
escape had failed me. I recognised in this famous
divine the
spirit of priest-craft, that could be tender and pitiful to
the sinner,
repentant, humble, submissive; but that was iron to the
doubter, the
heretic, and would crush out all questionings of
"revealed
truth," silencing by force, not by argument, all challenge
of the
traditions of the Church. Out of such men were made the
Inquisitors of
the Middle Ages, perfectly conscientious, perfectly
rigid,
perfectly merciless to the heretic. To them heretics are
centres of
infectious disease, and charity to the heretic is "the
worst cruelty
to the souls of men." Certain that they hold, "by no
merit of our
own, but by the mercy of our God, the one truth which He
has
revealed," they can permit no questionings, they can accept nought
but the most
complete submission. But while man aspires after truth,
while his mind
yearns after knowledge, while his intellect soars
upward into the
empyrean of speculation and "beats the air with
tireless
wing," so long shall those who demand faith from him be met
by challenge
for proof, and those who would blind him shall be
defeated by his
resolve to gaze unblenching on the face of Truth, even
though her eyes
should turn him into stone. It was during this same
autumn of 1872
that I first met Mr. and Mrs. Scott, introduced to them
by Mr. Voysey.
At that time Thomas Scott was an old man, with
beautiful white
hair, and eyes like those of a hawk gleaming from
under shaggy
eyebrows. He had been a man of magnificent physique, and,
though his
frame was then enfeebled, the splendid lion-like head kept
its impressive
strength and beauty, and told of a unique personality.
Well born and
wealthy, he had spent his earlier life in adventure in
all parts of
the world, and after his marriage he had settled down at
Ramsgate, and
had made his home a centre of heretical thought. His
wife, "his
right hand," as he justly called her, was young enough to
be his
daughter--a sweet, strong, gentle, noble woman, worthy of her
husband, and
than that no higher praise could be spoken. Mr. Scott for
many years
issued monthly a series of pamphlets, all heretical, though
very varying in
their shades of thought; all were well written,
cultured, and
polished in tone, and to this rule Mr. Scott made no
exception; his
writers might say what they liked, but they must have
something to
say, and must say it in good English. His correspondence
was enormous,
from Prime Ministers downwards. At his house met people
of the most
varied opinions; it was a veritable heretical _salon_.
Colenso of
Natal, Edward Maitland, E. Vansittart Neale, Charles Bray,
Sarah Hennell,
and hundreds more, clerics and laymen, scholars and
thinkers, all
coming to this one house, to which the _entrée_ was
gained only by
love of Truth and desire to spread Freedom among men.
For Thomas
Scott my first Freethought essay was written a few months
after, "On
the Deity of Jesus of Nazareth," by the wife of a benefited
clergyman. My
name was not mine to use, so it was agreed that any
essays from my
pen should be anonymous.
And now came
the return to Sibsey, and with it the need for definite
steps as to the
Church. For now I no longer doubted, I had rejected,
and the time
for silence was past. I was willing to attend the Church
services,
taking no part in any not directed to God Himself, but I
could no longer
attend the Holy Communion, for in that service, full
of recognition
of Jesus as Deity and of His atoning sacrifice, I could
no longer take
part without hypocrisy. This was agreed to, and well do
I remember the
pain and trembling wherewith on the first "Sacrament
Sunday"
after my return I rose and left the church. That the vicar's
wife should
"communicate" was as much a matter of course as that the
vicar should
"administer"; I had never done anything in public that
would draw
attention to me, and a feeling of deadly sickness nearly
overcame me as
I made my exit, conscious that every eye was on me, and
that my
non-participation would be the cause of unending comment. As a
matter of fact,
every one naturally thought I was taken suddenly ill,
and I was
overwhelmed with calls and inquiries. To any direct question
I answered
quietly that I was unable to take part in the profession of
faith required
by an honest communicant, but the statement was rarely
necessary, as
the idea of heresy in a vicar's wife is slow to suggest
itself to the
ordinary bucolic mind, and I proffered no information
where no
question was asked.
It happened
that, shortly after that (to me) memorable Christmas of
1872, a sharp
epidemic of typhoid fever broke out in the village of
Sibsey. The
drainage there was of the most primitive type, and the
contagion
spread rapidly. Naturally fond of nursing, I found in this
epidemic work
just fitted to my hand, and I was fortunate enough to be
able to lend
personal help that made me welcome in the homes of the
stricken poor.
The mothers who slept exhausted while I watched beside
their darlings'
bedsides will never, I like to fancy, think
over-harshly of
the heretic whose hand was as tender and often more
skilful than
their own. I think Mother Nature meant me for a nurse,
for I take a
sheer delight in nursing any one, provided only that
there is peril
in the sickness, so that there is the strange and
solemn feeling
of the struggle between the human skill one wields and
the supreme
enemy, Death. There is a strange fascination in fighting
Death, step by
step, and this is of course felt to the full where one
fights for life
as life, and not for a life one loves. When the
patient is
beloved the struggle is touched with agony, but where one
fights with
Death over the body of a stranger there is a weird
enchantment in
the contest without personal pain, and as one forces
back the hated
foe there is a curious triumph in the feeling which
marks the
death-grip yielding up its prey, as one snatches back to
earth the life
which had well-nigh perished.
The spring of
1873 brought me knowledge of a power that was to mould
much of my
future life. I delivered my first lecture, but delivered it
to rows of
empty pews in Sibsey Church. A queer whim took me that I
would like to
know how "it felt" to preach, and vague fancies stirred
in me that I
could speak if I had the chance. I saw no platform in the
distance, nor
had any idea of possible speaking in the future dawned
upon me. But
the longing to find outlet in words came upon me, and I
felt as though
I had something to say and was able to say it. So
locked alone in
the great, silent church, whither I had gone to
practise some
organ exercises, I ascended the pulpit steps and
delivered my
first lecture on the Inspiration of the Bible. I shall
never forget
the feeling of power and delight--but especially of
power--that
came upon me as I sent my voice ringing down the aisles,
and the passion
in me broke into balanced sentences and never paused
for musical
cadence or for rhythmical expression. All I wanted then
was to see the
church full of upturned faces, alive with throbbing
sympathy,
instead of the dreary emptiness of silent pews. And as
though in a
dream the solitude was peopled, and I saw the listening
faces and the
eager eyes, and as the sentences flowed unbidden from my
lips and my own
tones echoed back to me from the pillars of the
ancient church,
I knew of a verity that the gift of speech was mine,
and that if
ever--and then it seemed so impossible!--if ever the
chance came to
me of public work, this power of melodious utterance
should at least
win hearing for any message I had to bring.
But the
knowledge remained a secret all to my own self for many a long
month, for I
quickly felt ashamed of that foolish speechifying in an
empty church;
but, foolish as it was, I note it here, as it was the
first effort of
that expression in spoken words which later became to
me one of the
deepest delights of life. And, indeed, none can know,
save they who
have felt it, what joy there is in the full rush of
language that
moves and sways; to feel a crowd respond to the lightest
touch; to see
the faces brighten or darken at your bidding; to know
that the
sources of human emotion and human passion gush forth at the
word of the
speaker as the stream from the riven rock; to feel that
the thought
which thrills through a thousand hearers has its impulse
from you, and
throbs back to you the fuller from a thousand
heart-beats. Is
there any emotional joy in life more brilliant than
this, fuller of
passionate triumph, and of the very essence of
intellectual
delight?
In 1873 my
marriage tie was broken. I took no new step, but my absence
from the
Communion led to some gossip, and a relative of Mr. Besant
pressed on him
highly-coloured views of the social and professional
dangers which
would accrue if my heresy became known. My health, never
really restored
since the autumn of 1871, grew worse and worse,
serious heart
trouble having arisen from the constant strain under
which I lived.
At last, in July or August, 1873, the crisis came. I
was told that I
must conform to the outward observances of the Church,
and attend the
Communion; I refused. Then came the distinct
alternative;
conformity or exclusion from home--in other words,
hypocrisy or
expulsion. I chose the latter.
A bitterly sad
time followed. My dear mother was heart-broken. To her,
with her wide
and vague form of Christianity, loosely held, the
intensity of my
feeling that where I did not believe I would not
pretend belief,
was incomprehensible. She recognised far more fully
than I did all
that a separation from my home meant for me, and the
difficulties
that would surround a young woman, not yet twenty-six,
living alone.
She knew how brutally the world judges, and how the mere
fact that a
woman was young and alone justified any coarseness of
slander. Then I
did not guess how cruel men and women could be, how
venomous their
tongues; now, knowing it, having faced slander and
lived it down,
I deliberately say that were the choice again before me
I would choose
as I chose then; I would rather go through it all again
than live
"in Society" under the burden of an acted lie.
The hardest
struggle was against my mother's tears and pleading; to
cause her pain
was tenfold pain to me. Against harshness I had been
rigid as steel,
but it was hard to remain steadfast when my darling
mother, whom I
loved as I loved nothing else on earth, threw herself
on her knees
before me, imploring me to yield. It seemed like a crime
to bring such
anguish on her; and I felt as a murderer as the snowy
head was
pressed against my knees. And yet--to live a lie? Not even
for her was
that shame possible; in that worst crisis of blinding
agony my will
clung fast to Truth. And it is true now as it ever was
that he who
loves father or mother better than Truth is not worthy of
her, and the
flint-strewn path of honesty is the way to Light and
Peace.
Then there were
the children, the two little ones who worshipped me,
who was to them
mother, nurse, and playfellow. Were they, too,
demanded at my
hands? Not wholly--for a time. Facts which I need not
touch on here
enabled my brother to obtain for me a legal separation,
and when
everything was arranged, I found myself guardian of my little
daughter, and
possessor of a small monthly income sufficient for
respectable
starvation. With a great price I had obtained my freedom,
but--I was
free. Home, friends, social position, were the price
demanded and
paid, and, being free, I wondered what to do with my
freedom. I
could have had a home with my brother if I would give up my
heretical
friends and keep quiet, but I had no mind to put my limbs
into fetters
again, and in my youthful inexperience I determined to
find something
to do. The difficulty was the "something," and I spent
various
shillings in agencies, with a quite wonderful unanimity of
failures. I tried
fancy needle-work, offered to "ladies in reduced
circumstances,"
and earned 4s. 6d. by some weeks of stitching. I
experimented
with a Birmingham firm, who generously offered every one
the opportunity
of adding to their incomes, and on sending the small
fee demanded,
received a pencil-case, with an explanation that I was
to sell little
articles of that description, going as far as
cruet-stands,
to my friends. I did not feel equal to springing
pencil-cases
and cruet-stands on my acquaintances, so did not enter on
that line of
business, and similar failures in numerous efforts made
me feel, as so
many others have found, that the world-oyster is hard
to open.
However, I was resolute to build a nest for my wee daughter,
my mother, and
myself, and the first thing to do was to save my
monthly
pittance to buy furniture. I found a tiny house in Colby Road,
Upper Norwood,
near the Scotts, who were more than good to me, and
arranged to
take it in the spring, and then accepted a loving
invitation to
Folkestone, where my grandmother and two aunts were
living, to look
for work there. And found it. The vicar wanted a
governess, and
one of my aunts suggested me as a stop-gap, and thither
I went with my
little Mabel, our board and lodging being payment for
my work. I
became head cook, governess, and nurse, glad enough to have
found
"something to do" that enabled me to save my little income. But
I do not think
I will ever take to cooking for a permanence; broiling
and frying are
all right, and making pie-crust is rather pleasant; but
saucepans and
kettles blister your hands. There is a charm in making a
stew, to the
unaccustomed cook, from the excitement of wondering what
the result will
be, and whether any flavour save that of onions will
survive the
competition in the mixture. On the whole, my cooking
(strictly by
cookery book) was a success, but my sweeping was bad, for
I lacked
muscle. This curious episode came to an abrupt end, for one
of my little
pupils fell ill with diphtheria, and I was transformed
from cook to
nurse. Mabel I despatched to her grandmother, who adored
her with a love
condescendingly returned by the little fairy of three,
and never was
there a prettier picture than the red-gold curls nestled
against the
white, the baby-grace in exquisite contrast with the worn
stateliness of
her tender nurse. Scarcely was my little patient out of
danger when the
youngest boy fell ill of scarlet fever; we decided to
isolate him on
the top floor, and I cleared away carpets and curtains,
hung sheets
over the doorways and kept them wet with chloride of lime,
shut myself up
there with the boy, having my meals left on the
landing; and
when all risk was over, proudly handed back my charge,
the disease
touching no one else in the house.
And now the
spring of 1874 had come, and in a few weeks my mother and
I were to set
up house together. How we had planned all, and had
knitted on the
new life together we anticipated to the old one we
remembered! How
we had discussed Mabel's education, and the share
which should
fall to each! Day-dreams; day-dreams! never to be
realised.
My mother went
up to town, and in a week or two I received a telegram,
saying she was
dangerously ill, and as fast as express train would
take me I was
beside her. Dying, the doctor said; three days she might
live--no more.
I told her the death-sentence, but she said resolutely,
"I do not
feel that I am going to die just yet," and she was right.
There was an
attack of fearful prostration--the valves of the heart
had failed--a
very wrestling with Death, and then the grim shadow drew
backwards. I
nursed her day and night with a very desperation of
tenderness, for
now Fate had touched the thing dearest to me in life.
A second
horrible crisis came, and for the second time her tenacity
and my love
beat back the death-stroke. She did not wish to die, the
love of life
was strong in her; I would not let her die; between us we
kept the foe at
bay. Then dropsy supervened, and the end loomed slowly
sure.
It was then,
after eighteen months' abstention, that I took the
Sacrament for
the last time. My mother had an intense longing to
communicate
before she died, but absolutely refused to do so unless I
took it with
her. "If it be necessary to salvation," she persisted,
doggedly,
"I will not take it if darling Annie is to be shut out. I
would rather be
lost with her than saved without her." I went to a
clergyman I
knew well, and laid the case before him; as I expected, he
refused to
allow me to communicate. I tried a second, with the same
result. At last
a thought struck me. There was Dean Stanley, my
mother's
favourite, a man known to be of the broadest school within
the Church of
England; suppose I asked him? I did not know him, and I
felt the
request would be an impertinence; but there was just the
chance that he
might consent, and what would I not do to make my
darling's
death-bed easier? I said nothing to any one, but set out to
the Deanery,
Westminster, timidly asked for the Dean, and followed the
servant
upstairs with a sinking heart. I was left for a moment alone
in the library,
and then the Dean came in. I don't think I ever in my
life felt more
intensely uncomfortable than I did in that minute's
interval as he
stood waiting for me to speak, his clear, grave,
piercing eyes
gazing questioningly into mine. Very falteringly--it
must have been
very clumsily--I preferred my request, stating boldly,
with abrupt
honesty, that I was not a Christian, that my mother was
dying, that she
was fretting to take the Sacrament, that she would not
take it unless
I took it with her, that two clergymen had refused to
allow me to
take part in the service, that I had come to him in
despair,
feeling how great was the intrusion, but--she was dying.
His face changed
to a great softness. "You were quite right to come to
me," he
answered, in that low, musical voice of his, his keen gaze
having altered
into one no less direct, but marvellously gentle. "Of
course I will
go and see your mother, and I have little doubt that, if
you will not
mind talking over your position with me, we may see our
way clear to
doing as your mother wishes."
I could barely
speak my thanks, so much did the kindly sympathy move
me; the
revulsion from the anxiety and fear of rebuff was strong
enough to be
almost pain. But Dean Stanley did more than I asked. He
suggested that
he should call that afternoon, and have a quiet chat
with my mother,
and then come again on the following day to administer
the Sacrament.
"A
stranger's presence is always trying to a sick person," he said,
with rare
delicacy of thought, "and, joined to the excitement of the
service, it
might be too much for your dear mother. If I spend half an
hour with her
to-day, and administer the Sacrament to-morrow, it will,
I think, be
better for her."
So Dean Stanley
came that afternoon, all the way to Brompton, and
remained
talking with my mother for about half an hour, and then set
himself to
understand my own position. He finally told me that conduct
was far more
important than theory, and that he regarded all as
"Christians"
who recognised and tried to follow the moral law of
Christ. On the
question of the absolute Deity of Jesus he laid but
little stress;
Jesus was "in a special sense the Son of God," but it
was folly to
quarrel over words with only human meanings when dealing
with the
mystery of the Divine existence, and, above all, it was folly
to make such
words into dividing walls between earnest souls. The one
important
matter was the recognition of "duty to God and man," and all
who were one in
that recognition might rightfully join in an act of
worship, the
essence of which was not acceptance of dogma, but love of
God and
self-sacrifice for man. "The Holy Communion," he concluded, in
his soft tones,
"was never meant to divide from each other hearts that
are searching
after the one true God. It was meant by its founder as a
symbol of
unity, not of strife."
On the
following day Dean Stanley celebrated the Holy Communion by the
bedside of my
dear mother, and well was I repaid for the struggle it
had cost me to
ask so great a kindness from a stranger, when I saw the
comfort that
gentle, noble heart had given to her. He soothed away all
her anxiety
about my heresy with tactful wisdom, bidding her have no
fear of
differences of opinion where the heart was set on truth.
"Remember,"
she told me he said to her--"remember that our God is the
God of truth,
and that therefore the honest search for truth can never
be displeasing
in His eyes." Once again after that he came, and after
his visit to my
mother we had another long talk. I ventured to ask
him, the
conversation having turned that way, how, with views so broad
as his, he
found it possible to remain in communion with the Church of
England.
"I think," he answered, gently, "that I am of more service to
true religion
by remaining in the Church and striving to widen its
boundaries from
within, than if I left it and worked from without."
And he went on
to explain how, as Dean of Westminster, he was in a
rarely
independent position, and could make the Abbey of a wider
national
service than would otherwise be possible. In all he said on
this his love
for and his pride in the glorious Abbey were manifest,
and it was easy
to see that old historical associations, love of
music, of
painting, of stately architecture, were the bonds that held
him bound to
the "old historic Church of England." His emotions, not
his intellect,
kept him Churchman, and he shrank, with the
over-sensitiveness
of the cultured scholar, from the idea of allowing
the old
traditions to be handled roughly by inartistic hands.
Naturally of a
refined and delicate nature, he had been rendered yet
more
exquisitely sensitive by the training of the college and the
court; the
polished courtesy of his manners was but the natural
expression of a
noble and lofty mind--a mind whose very gentleness
sometimes
veiled its strength. I have often heard Dean Stanley harshly
spoken of, I
have heard his honesty roughly challenged; but never has
he been
attacked in my presence that I have not uttered my protest
against the
injustice done him, and thus striven to repay some small
fraction of
that great debt of gratitude which I shall ever owe his
memory.
And now the end
came swiftly. I had hurriedly furnished a couple of
rooms in the
little house, now ours, that I might take my mother into
the purer air
of Norwood, and permission was given to drive her down
in an invalid
carriage. The following evening she was suddenly taken
worse; we
lifted her into bed, and telegraphed for the doctor. But he
could do
nothing, and she herself felt that the hand of Death had
gripped her.
Selfless to the last, she thought but for my loneliness.
"I am
leaving you alone," she sighed from time to time; and truly I
felt, with an
anguish I did not dare to realise, that when she died I
should indeed
be alone on earth.
For two days
longer she was with me, my beloved, and I never left her
side for five
minutes. On May 10th the weakness passed into gentle
delirium, but
even then the faithful eyes followed me about the room,
until at length
they closed for ever, and as the sun sank low in the
heavens, the
breath came slower and slower, till the silence of Death
came down upon
us and she was gone.
Stunned and
dazed with the loss, I went mechanically through the next
few days. I
would have none touch my dead save myself and her
favourite
sister, who was with us at the last. Cold and dry-eyed I
remained, even
when they hid her from me with the coffin-lid, even all
the dreary way
to Kensal Green where her husband and her baby-son were
sleeping, and
when we left her alone in the chill earth, damp with the
rains of
spring. I could not believe that our day-dream was dead and
buried, and the
home in ruins ere yet it was fairly built. Truly, my
"house was
left unto me desolate," and the rooms, filled with sunshine
but unlighted
by her presence, seemed to echo from their bare walls,
"You are
all alone."
But my little
daughter was there, and her sweet face and dancing feet
broke the
solitude, while her imperious claims for love and tendance
forced me into
attention to the daily needs of life. And life was hard
in those days
of spring and summer, resources small, and work
difficult to
find. In truth, the two months after my mother's death
were the
dreariest my life has known, and they were months of
tolerably hard
struggle. The little house in Colby Road taxed my
slender
resources heavily, and the search for work was not yet
successful. I
do not know how I should have managed but for the help
ever at hand,
of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Scott. During this time I wrote
for Mr. Scott
pamphlets on Inspiration, Atonement, Mediation and
Salvation,
Eternal Torture, Religious Education of Children, Natural
_v_. Revealed
Religion, and the few guineas thus earned were very
valuable. Their
house, too, was always open to me, and this was no
small help, for
often in those days the little money I had was enough
to buy food for
two but not enough to buy it for three, and I would go
out and study
all day at the British Museum, so as to "have my dinner
in town,"
the said dinner being conspicuous by its absence. If I was
away for two
evenings running from the hospitable house in the
terrace, Mrs.
Scott would come down to see what had happened, and many
a time the
supper there was of real physical value to me. Well might I
write, in 1879,
when Thomas Scott lay dead: "It was Thomas Scott whose
house was open
to me when my need was sorest, and he never knew, this
generous, noble
heart, how sometimes, when I went in, weary and
overdone, from
a long day's study in the British Museum, with scarce
food to
struggle through the day--he never knew how his genial, 'Well,
little lady,'
in welcoming tone, cheered the then utter loneliness of
my life. To no
living man--save one--do I owe the debt of gratitude
that I owe to
Thomas Scott."
The small
amount of jewellery I possessed, and all my superfluous
clothes, were
turned into more necessary articles, and the child, at
least, never
suffered a solitary touch of want. My servant Mary was a
wonderful
contriver, and kept house on the very slenderest funds that
could be put
into a servant's hands, and she also made the little
place so bright
and fresh-looking that it was always a pleasure to go
into it.
Recalling those days of "hard living," I can now look on them
without regret.
More, I am glad to have passed through them, for they
have taught me
how to sympathise with those who are struggling as I
struggled then,
and I never can hear the words fall from pale lips, "I
am
hungry," without remembering how painful a thing hunger is, and
without curing
that pain, at least for the moment.
The presence of
the child was good for me, keeping alive my aching,
lonely heart:
she would play contentedly for hours while I was
working, a word
now and again being enough for happiness; when I had
to go out
without her, she would run to the door with me, and the
"good-bye"
would come from down-curved lips; she was ever watching at
the window for
my return, and the sunny face was always the first to
welcome me
home. Many and many a time have I been coming home, weary,
hungry, and
heart-sick, and the glimpse of the little face watching
has reminded me
that I must not carry in a grave face to sadden my
darling, and
the effort to throw off the depression for her sake threw
it off
altogether, and brought back the sunshine. She was the
sweetness and
joy of my life, my curly-headed darling, with her
red-gold hair
and glorious eyes, and passionate, wilful, loving
nature. The
torn, bruised tendrils of my heart gradually twined round
this little
life; she gave something to love and to tend, and thus
gratified one
of the strongest impulses of my nature.
CHAPTER VI.
CHARLES
BRADLAUGH.
During all
these months the intellectual life had not stood still; I
was slowly,
cautiously feeling my way onward. And in the intellectual
and social side
of my life I found a delight unknown in the old days
of bondage.
First, there was the joy of freedom, the joy of speaking
out frankly and
honestly each thought. Truly, I had a right to say:
"With a
great price obtained I this freedom," and having paid the
price, I
revelled in the liberty I had bought. Mr. Scott's valuable
library was at
my service; his keen brain challenged my opinions,
probed my
assertions, and suggested phases of thought hitherto
untouched. I
studied harder than ever, and the study now was unchecked
by any fear of
possible consequences. I had nothing left of the old
faith save
belief in "a God," and that began slowly to melt away. The
Theistic axiom:
"If there be a God at all He must be at least as good
as His highest
creature," began with an "if," and to that "if" I
turned my
attention. "Of all impossible things," writes Miss Frances
Power Cobbe,
"the most impossible must surely be that a man should
dream something
of the good and the noble, and that it should prove at
last that his
Creator was less good and less noble than he had
dreamed."
But, I questioned, are we sure that there is a Creator?
Granted that,
if there is, He must be above His highest creature,
but--is there
such a being? "The ground," says the Rev. Charles
Voysey,
"on which our belief in God rests is man. Man, parent of
Bibles and
Churches, inspirer of all good thoughts and good deeds.
Man, the
masterpiece of God's thought on earth. Man, the text-book of
all spiritual
knowledge. Neither miraculous nor infallible, man is
nevertheless
the only trustworthy record of the Divine mind in things
pertaining to
God. Man's reason, conscience, and affections are the
only true
revelation of his Maker." But what if God were only man's
own image
reflected in the mirror of man's mind? What if man were the
creator, not
the revelation of his God?
It was
inevitable that such thoughts should arise after the more
palpably
indefensible doctrines of Christianity had been discarded.
Once encourage
the human mind to think, and bounds to the thinking can
never again be
set by authority. Once challenge traditional beliefs,
and the
challenge will ring on every shield which is hanging in the
intellectual
arena. Around me was the atmosphere of conflict, and,
freed from its
long repression, my mind leapt up to share in the
strife with a
joy in the intellectual tumult, the intellectual strain.
I often
attended South Place Chapel, where Moncure D. Conway was then
preaching, and
discussion with him did something towards widening my
views on the
deeper religious problems; I re-read Dean Mansel's
"Bampton
Lectures," and they did much towards turning me in the
direction of
Atheism; I re-read Mill's "Examination of Sir William
Hamilton's
Philosophy," and studied carefully Comte's "Philosophie
Positive."
Gradually I recognised the limitations of human intelligence
and its
incapacity for understanding the nature of God, presented as
infinite and
absolute; I had given up the use of prayer as a
blasphemous
absurdity, since an all-wise God could not need my
suggestions,
nor an all-good God require my promptings. But God fades
out of the
daily life of those who never pray; a personal God who is
not a
Providence is a superfluity; when from the heaven does not smile
a listening
Father, it soon becomes an empty space, whence resounds no
echo of man's
cry. I could then reach no loftier conception of the
Divine than
that offered by the orthodox, and that broke hopelessly
away as I
analysed it.
At last I said
to Mr. Scott, "Mr. Scott, may I write a tract on the
nature and
existence of God?"
He glanced at
me keenly. "Ah, little lady, you are facing, then, that
problem at
last? I thought it must come. Write away."
While this
pamphlet was in MS. an event occurred which coloured all my
succeeding
life. I met Charles Bradlaugh. One day in the late spring,
talking with
Mrs. Conway--one of the sweetest and steadiest natures
whom it has
been my lot to meet, and to whom, as to her husband, I owe
much for
kindness generously shown when I was poor and had but few
friends--she
asked me if I had been to the Hall of Science, Old
Street. I
answered, with the stupid, ignorant reflection of other
people's
prejudices so sadly common, "No, I have never been there. Mr.
Bradlaugh is
rather a rough sort of speaker, is he not?"
"He is the
finest speaker of Saxon-English that I have ever heard,"
she answered,
"except, perhaps, John Bright, and his power over a
crowd is
something marvellous. Whether you agree with him or not, you
should hear
him."
In the
following July I went into the shop of Mr. Edward Truelove,
256, High
Holborn, in search of some Comtist publications, having come
across his name
as a publisher in the course of my study at the
British Museum.
On the counter was a copy of the _National Reformer_,
and, attracted
by the title, I bought it. I read it placidly in the
omnibus on my
way to Victoria Station, and found it excellent, and was
sent into
convulsions of inward merriment when, glancing up, I saw an
old gentleman
gazing at me, with horror speaking from every line of
his
countenance. To see a young woman, respectably dressed in crape,
reading an
Atheistic journal, had evidently upset his peace of mind,
and he looked
so hard at the paper that I was tempted to offer it to
him, but
repressed the mischievous inclination.
This first copy
of the paper with which I was to be so closely
connected bore
date July 19, 1874, and contained two long letters from
a Mr. Arnold of
Northampton, attacking Mr. Bradlaugh, and a brief and
singularly
self-restrained answer from the latter. There was also an
article on the
National Secular Society, which made me aware that
there was an
organisation devoted to the propagandism of Free Thought.
I felt that if
such a society existed, I ought to belong to it, and I
consequently
wrote a short note to the editor of the _National
Reformer_,
asking whether it was necessary for a person to profess
Atheism before
being admitted to the Society. The answer appeared in
the _National
Reformer_:--
"S.E.--To
be a member of the National Secular Society it is only
necessary to be
able honestly to accept the four principles, as given
in the
_National Reformer_ of June 14th. This any person may do
without being
required to avow himself an Atheist. Candidly, we can
see no logical
resting-place between the entire acceptance of
authority, as
in the Roman Catholic Church, and the most extreme
Rationalism.
If, on again looking to the Principles of the Society,
you can accept
them, we repeat to you our invitation."
I sent my name
in as an active member, and find it is recorded in the
_National
Reformer_ of August 9th. Having received an intimation that
Londoners could
receive their certificates at the Hall of Science from
Mr. Bradlaugh
on any Sunday evening, I betook myself thither, and it
was on August
2, 1874, that I first set foot in a Freethought hall.
The Hall was
crowded to suffocation, and, at the very moment announced
for the
lecture, a roar of cheering burst forth, a tall figure passed
swiftly up the
Hall to the platform, and, with a slight bow in answer
to the
voluminous greeting, Charles Bradlaugh took his seat. I looked
at him with
interest, impressed and surprised. The grave, quiet,
stern, strong
face, the massive head, the keen eyes, the magnificent
breadth and
height of forehead--was this the man I had heard described
as a blatant
agitator, an ignorant demagogue?
He began
quietly and simply, tracing out the resemblances between the
Krishna and the
Christ myths, and as he went from point to point his
voice grew in force
and resonance, till it rang round the hall like a
trumpet.
Familiar with the subject, I could test the value of his
treatment of
it, and saw that his knowledge was as sound as his
language was
splendid. Eloquence, fire, sarcasm, pathos, passion, all
in turn were
bent against Christian superstition, till the great
audience,
carried away by the torrent of the orator's force, hung
silent,
breathing soft, as he went on, till the silence that followed
a magnificent
peroration broke the spell, and a hurricane of cheers
relieved the
tension.
He came down
the Hall with some certificates in his hand, glanced
round, and
handed me mine with a questioning "Mrs. Besant?" Then he
said, referring
to my question as to a profession of Atheism, that he
would willingly
talk over the subject of Atheism with me if I would
make an
appointment, and offered me a book he had been using in his
lecture. Long
afterwards I asked him how he knew me, whom he had never
seen, that he
came straight to me in such fashion. He laughed and said
he did not
know, but, glancing over the faces, he felt sure that I was
Annie Besant.
From that first
meeting in the Hall of Science dated a friendship that
lasted unbroken
till Death severed the earthly bond, and that to me
stretches
through Death's gateway and links us together still. As
friends, not as
strangers, we met--swift recognition, as it were,
leaping from
eye to eye; and I know now that the instinctive
friendliness
was in very truth an outgrowth of strong friendship in
other lives,
and that on that August day we took up again an ancient
tie, we did not
begin a new one. And so in lives to come we shall meet
again, and help
each other as we helped each other in this. And let me
here place on
record, as I have done before, some word of what I owe
him for his
true friendship; though, indeed, how great is my debt to
him I can never
tell. Some of his wise phrases have ever remained in
my memory.
"You should never say you have an opinion on a subject
until you have
tried to study the strongest things said against the
view to which
you are inclined." "You must not think you know a
subject until
you are acquainted with all that the best minds have
said about
it." "No steady work can be done in public unless the
worker study at
home far more than he talks outside." "Be your own
harshest judge,
listen to your own speech and criticise it; read abuse
of yourself and
see what grains of truth are in it." "Do not waste
time by reading
opinions that are mere echoes of your own; read
opinions you
disagree with, and you will catch aspects of truth you do
not readily
see." Through our long comradeship he was my sternest as
well as
gentlest critic, pointing out to me that in a party like ours,
where our own
education and knowledge were above those whom we led, it
was very easy
to gain indiscriminate praise and unstinted admiration;
on the other
hand, we received from Christians equally indiscriminate
abuse and
hatred. It was, therefore, needful that we should be our own
harshest
judges, and that we should be sure that we knew thoroughly
every subject
that we taught. He saved me from the superficiality that
my "fatal
facility" of speech might so easily have induced; and when I
began to taste
the intoxication of easily won applause, his criticism
of weak points,
his challenge of weak arguments, his trained judgment,
were of
priceless service to me, and what of value there is in my work
is very largely
due to his influence, which at once stimulated and
restrained.
One very
charming characteristic of his was his extreme courtesy in
private life,
especially to women. This outward polish, which sat so
gracefully on
his massive frame and stately presence, was foreign
rather than
English--for the English, as a rule, save such as go to
Court, are a
singularly unpolished people--and it gave his manner a
peculiar charm.
I asked him once where he had learned his gracious
fashions that
were so un-English--he would stand with uplifted hat as
he asked a
question of a maidservant, or handed a woman into a
carriage--and
he answered, with a half-smile, half-scoff, that it was
only in England
he was an outcast from society. In France, in Spain,
in Italy, he
was always welcomed among men and women of the highest
social rank,
and he supposed that he had unconsciously caught the
foreign tricks
of manner. Moreover, he was absolutely indifferent to
all questions
of social position; peer or artisan, it was to him
exactly the
same; he never seemed conscious of the distinctions of
which men make
so much.
Our first
conversation, after the meeting at the Hall of Science, took
place a day or
two later in his little study in 29, Turner Street,
Commercial
Road, a wee room overflowing with books, in which he looked
singularly out
of place. Later I learned that he had failed in
business in
consequence of Christian persecution, and, resolute to
avoid
bankruptcy, he had sold everything he possessed, save his books,
had sent his
wife and daughters to live in the country with his
father-in-law,
had taken two tiny rooms in Turner Street, where he
could live for
a mere trifle, and had bent himself to the task of
paying off the
liabilities he had incurred--incurred in consequence of
his battling
for political and religious liberty. I took with me my
MS. essay
"On the Nature and Existence of God," and it served as the
basis for our
conversation; we found there was little difference in
our views.
"You have thought yourself into Atheism without knowing
it," he
said, and all that I changed in the essay was the correction
of the vulgar
error that the Atheist says "there is no God," by the
insertion of a
passage disclaiming this position from an essay pointed
out to me by
Mr. Bradlaugh. And at this stage of my life-story, it is
necessary to
put very clearly the position I took up and held so many
years as
Atheist, because otherwise the further evolution into
Theosophist
will be wholly incomprehensible. It will lead me into
metaphysics,
and to some readers these are dry, but if any one would
understand the
evolution of a Soul he must be willing to face the
questions which
the Soul faces in its growth. And the position of the
philosophic
Atheist is so misunderstood that it is the more necessary
to put it
plainly, and Theosophists, at least, in reading it, will see
how Theosophy
stepped in finally as a further evolution towards
knowledge,
rendering rational, and therefore acceptable, the loftiest
spirituality
that the human mind can as yet conceive.
In order that I
may not colour my past thinkings by my present
thought, I take
my statements from pamphlets written when I adopted
the Atheistic
philosophy and while I continued an adherent thereof. No
charge can then
be made that I have softened my old opinions for the
sake of
reconciling them with those now held.
CHAPTER VII.
ATHEISM AS I
KNEW AND TAUGHT IT.
The first step
which leaves behind the idea of a limited and personal
God, an
extra-cosmic Creator, and leads the student to the point
whence Atheism
and Pantheism diverge, is the recognition that a
profound unity
of substance underlies the infinite diversities of
natural
phenomena, the discernment of the One beneath the Many. This
was the step I
had taken ere my first meeting with Charles Bradlaugh,
and I had
written:--
"It is
manifest to all who will take the trouble to think steadily,
that there can
be only one eternal and underived substance, and that
matter and
spirit must, therefore, only be varying manifestations of
this one
substance. The distinction made between matter and spirit is,
then, simply
made for the sake of convenience and clearness, just as
we may
distinguish perception from judgment, both of which, however,
are alike
processes of thought. Matter is, in its constituent elements,
the same as
spirit; existence is _one_, however manifold in its
phenomena; life
is one, however multiform in its evolution. As the
heat of the
coal differs from the coal itself, so do memory,
perception,
judgment, emotion, and will differ from the brain which is
the instrument
of thought. But nevertheless they are all equally
products of the
one sole substance, varying only in their
conditions....
I find myself, then, compelled to believe that one only
substance
exists in all around me; that the universe is eternal, or at
least eternal
so far as our faculties are concerned, since we cannot,
as some one has
quaintly put it, 'get to the outside of everywhere';
that a Deity
cannot be conceived of as apart from the universe; that
the Worker and
the Work are inextricably interwoven, and in some sense
eternally and
indissolubly combined. Having got so far, we will
proceed to
examine into the possibility of proving the existence of
that one
essence popularly called by the name of _God_, under the
conditions
strictly defined by the orthodox. Having demonstrated, as I
hope to do,
that the orthodox idea of God is unreasonable and absurd,
we will
endeavour to ascertain whether _any_ idea of God, worthy to be
called an idea,
is attainable in the present state of our faculties."
"The Deity
must of necessity be that one and only substance out of
which all
things are evolved, under the uncreated conditions and
eternal laws of
the universe; He must be, as Theodore Parker somewhat
oddly puts it,
'the materiality of matter as well as the spirituality
of
spirit'--_i.e._, these must both be products of this one substance;
a truth which
is readily accepted as soon as spirit and matter are
seen to be but
different modes of one essence. Thus we identify
substance with
the all-comprehending and vivifying force of nature,
and in so doing
we simply reduce to a physical impossibility the
existence of
the Being described by the orthodox as a God possessing
the attributes
of personality. The Deity becomes identified with
nature,
co-extensive with the universe, but the _God_ of the orthodox
no longer
exists; we may change the signification of God, and use the
word to express
a different idea, but we can no longer mean by it a
Personal Being
in the orthodox sense, possessing an individuality
which divides
Him from the rest of the universe."[3]
Proceeding to
search whether _any_ idea of God was attainable, I came
to the
conclusion that evidence of the existence of a conscious Power
was lacking,
and that the ordinary proofs offered were inconclusive;
that we could
grasp phenomena and no more. "There appears, also, to
be a
possibility of a mind in nature, though we have seen that
intelligence
is, strictly speaking, impossible. There cannot be
perception,
memory, comparison, or judgment, but may there not be a
perfect mind,
unchanging, calm, and still? Our faculties fail us when
we try to
estimate the Deity, and we are betrayed into contradictions
and
absurdities; but does it therefore follow that He _is_ not? It
seems to me
that to deny His existence is to overstep the boundaries
of our
thought-power almost as much as to try and define it. We
pretend to know
the Unknown if we declare Him to be the Unknowable.
Unknowable to
us at present, yes! Unknowable for ever, in other
possible stages
of existence? We have reached a region into which we
cannot
penetrate; here all human faculties fail us; we bow our heads
on 'the
threshold of the unknown.'
"'And the ear of man cannot hear, and
the eye of man cannot see,
But if we could see and hear, this
vision--were it not He?'
Thus sings
Alfred Tennyson, the poet of metaphysics: '_if_ we could
see and hear.'
Alas! it is always an 'if!'[4]
This refusal to
believe without evidence, and the declaration that
anything
"behind phenomena" is unknowable to man as at present
constituted--these
are the two chief planks of the Atheistic platform,
as Atheism was
held by Charles Bradlaugh and myself. In 1876 this
position was
clearly reaffirmed. "It is necessary to put briefly the
Atheistic
position, for no position is more continuously and more
persistently
misrepresented. Atheism is _without_ God. It does not
assert _no_
God. 'The Atheist does not say "There is no God," but he
says, "I
know not what you mean by God; I am without idea of God; the
word God is to
me a sound conveying no clear or distinct affirmation.
I do not deny
God, because I cannot deny that of which I have no
conception, and
the conception of which, by its affirmer, is so
imperfect that
he is unable to define it to me."' (Charles Bradlaugh,
"Freethinker's
Text-book," p. 118.) The Atheist neither affirms nor
denies the
possibility of phenomena differing from those recognised by
human
experience.... As his knowledge of the universe is extremely
limited and
very imperfect, the Atheist declines either to deny or to
affirm anything
with regard to modes of existence of which he knows
nothing.
Further, he refuses to believe anything concerning that of
which he knows
nothing, and affirms that that which can never be the
subject of
knowledge ought never to be the object of belief. While the
Atheist, then,
neither affirms nor denies the unknown, he _does_ deny
all which
conflicts with the knowledge to which he has already
attained. For
example, he _knows_ that one is one, and that three
times one are
three; he _denies_ that three times one are, or can be,
one. The
position of the Atheist is a clear and a reasonable one: I
know nothing
about 'God,' and therefore I do not believe in Him or in
it; what you
tell me about your God is self-contradictory, and is
therefore
incredible. I do not deny 'God,' which is an unknown tongue
to me; I do
deny your God, who is an impossibility. I am without
God."[5]
Up to 1887 I find myself writing on the same lines: "No man
can rationally
affirm 'There is no God,' until the word 'God' has for
him a definite
meaning, and until everything that exists is known to
him, and known
with what Leibnitz calls 'perfect knowledge.' The
Atheist's denial
of the Gods begins only when these Gods are defined
or described.
Never yet has a God been defined in terms which were not
palpably
self-contradictory and absurd; never yet has a God been
described so
that a concept of Him was made possible to human
thought--Nor is
anything gained by the assertors of Deity when they
allege that He
is incomprehensible. If 'God' exists and is
incomprehensible,
His incomprehensibility is an admirable reason for
being silent
about Him, but can never justify the affirmation of
self-contradictory
propositions, and the threatening of people with
damnation if
they do not accept them."[6] "The belief of the Atheist
stops where his
evidence stops. He believes in the existence of the
universe,
judging the accessible proof thereof to be adequate, and he
finds in this
universe sufficient cause for the happening of all
phenomena. He
finds no intellectual satisfaction in placing a gigantic
conundrum
behind the universe, which only adds its own
unintelligibility
to the already sufficiently difficult problem of
existence. Our
lungs are not fitted to breathe beyond the atmosphere
which surrounds
our globe, and our faculties cannot breathe outside
the atmosphere
of the phenomenal."[7] And I summed up this essay with
the words:
"I do not believe in God. My mind finds no grounds on which
to build up a
reasonable faith. My heart revolts against the spectre
of an Almighty
Indifference to the pain of sentient beings. My
conscience
rebels against the injustice, the cruelty, the inequality,
which surround
me on every side. But I believe in Man. In man's
redeeming
power; in man's remoulding energy; in man's approaching
triumph,
through knowledge, love, and work."[8]
These views of
existence naturally colour all views of life and of the
existence of
the Soul. And here steps in the profound difference
between Atheism
and Pantheism; both posit an Existence at present
inscrutable by
human faculties, of which all phenomena are modes; but
to the Atheist
that Existence manifests as Force-Matter, unconscious,
unintelligent,
while to the Pantheist it manifests as Life-Matter,
conscious,
intelligent. To the one, life and consciousness are
attributes,
properties, dependent upon arrangements of matter; to the
other they are
fundamental, essential, and only limited in their
manifestation
by arrangements of matter. Despite the attraction held
for me in
Spinoza's luminous arguments, the over-mastering sway which
Science was
beginning to exercise over me drove me to seek for the
explanation of
all problems of life and mind at the hands of the
biologist and
the chemist. They had done so much, explained so much,
could they not
explain all? Surely, I thought, the one safe ground is
that of
experiment, and the remembered agony of doubt made me very
slow to believe
where I could not prove. So I was fain to regard life
as an
attribute, and this again strengthened the Atheistic position.
"Scientifically
regarded, life is not an entity but a property; it is
not a mode of
existence, but a characteristic of certain modes. Life
is the result
of an arrangement of matter, and when rearrangement
occurs the
former result can no longer be present; we call the result
of the changed
arrangement death. Life and death are two convenient
words for
expressing the general outcome of two arrangements of
matter, one of
which is always found to precede the other."[9] And
then, having
resorted to chemistry for one illustration, I took
another from
one of those striking and easily grasped analogies,
facility for
seeing and presenting which has ever been one of the
secrets of my
success as a propagandist. Like pictures, they impress
the mind of the
hearer with a vivid sense of reality. "Every one knows
the exquisite
iridiscence of mother-of-pearl, the tender, delicate
hues which melt
into each other, glowing with soft radiance. How
different is
the dull, dead surface of a piece of wax. Yet take that
dull, black wax
and mould it so closely to the surface of the
mother-of-pearl
that it shall take every delicate marking of the
shell, and when
you raise it the seven-hued glory shall smile at you
from the
erstwhile colourless surface. For, though it be to the naked
eye
imperceptible, all the surface of the mother-of-pearl is in
delicate ridges
and furrows, like the surface of a newly-ploughed
field; and when
the waves of light come dashing up against the ridged
surface, they
are broken like the waves on a shingly shore, and are
flung
backwards, so that they cross each other and the oncoming waves;
and, as every
ray of white light is made up of waves of seven colours,
and these waves
differ in length each from the others, the fairy
ridges fling
them backward separately, and each ray reaches the eye by
itself; so that
the colour of the mother-of-pearl is really the spray
of the light
waves, and comes from arrangement of matter once again.
Give the dull,
black wax the same ridges and furrows, and its glory
shall differ in
nothing from that of the shell. To apply our
illustration:
as the colour belongs to one arrangement of matter and
the dead
surface to another, so life belongs to some arrangements of
matter and is
their resultant, while the resultant of other
arrangements is
death."[10]
The same line
of reasoning naturally was applied to the existence of
"spirit"
in man, and it was argued that mental activity, the domain of
the
"spirit," was dependent on bodily organisation. "When the babe
is
born it shows
no sign of mind. For a brief space hunger and repletion,
cold and warmth
are its only sensations. Slowly the specialised senses
begin to
function; still more slowly muscular movements, at first
aimless and
reflex, become co-ordinated and consciously directed.
There is no
sign here of an intelligent spirit controlling a
mechanism;
there is every sign of a learning and developing
intelligence,
developing _pari passu_ with the organism of which it is
a function. As
the body grows, the mind grows with it, and the
childish mind
of the child develops into the hasty, quickly-judging,
half-informed,
unbalanced youthful mind of the youth; with maturity of
years comes
maturity of mind, and body and mind are vigorous and in
their prime. As
old age comes on and the bodily functions decay, the
mind decays
also, until age passes into senility, and body and mind
sink into
second childhood. Has the immortal spirit decayed with the
organisation,
or is it dwelling in sorrow, bound in its 'house of
clay'? If this
be so, the 'spirit' must be unconscious, or else
separate from
the very individual whose essence it is supposed to be,
for the old man
does not suffer when his mind is senile, but is
contented as a
little child. And not only is this constant,
simultaneous
growth and decay of body and mind to be observed, but we
know that mental
functions are disordered and suspended by various
physical
conditions. Alcohol, many drugs, fever, disorder the mind; a
blow on the
cranium suspends its functions, and the 'spirit' returns
with the
surgeon's trepanning. Does the 'spirit' take part in dreams?
Is it absent
from the idiot, from the lunatic? Is it guilty of
manslaughter
when the madman murders, or does it helplessly watch its
own instrument
performing actions at which it shudders? If it can only
work here
through an organism, is its nature changed in its
independent
life, severed from all with which it was identified? Can
it, in its
'disembodied state,' have anything in common with its
past?"[11]
It will be seen
that my unbelief in the existence of the Soul or
Spirit was a
matter of cold, calm reasoning. As I wrote in 1885: "For
many of us
evidence must precede belief. I would gladly believe in a
happy
immortality for all, as I would gladly believe that all misery
and crime and
poverty will disappear in 1885--_if I could_. But I am
unable to
believe an improbable proposition unless convincing evidence
is brought in
support of it. Immortality is most improbable; no
evidence is
brought forward in its favour. I cannot believe only
because I
wish."[12] Such was the philosophy by which I lived from
1874 to 1886,
when first some researches that will be dealt with in
their proper
place, and which led me ultimately to the evidence I had
before vainly
demanded, began to shake my confidence in its adequacy.
Amid outer
storm and turmoil and conflict, I found it satisfy my
intellect,
while lofty ideals of morality fed my emotions. I called
myself Atheist,
and rightly so, for I was without God, and my horizon
was bounded by
life on earth; I gloried in the name then, as it is
dear to my
heart now, for all the associations with which it is
connected.
"Atheist is one of the grandest titles a man can wear; it
is the Order of
Merit of the world's heroes. Most great discoverers,
most
deep-thinking philosophers, most earnest reformers, most toiling
pioneers of
progress, have in their turn had flung at them the name of
Atheist. It was
howled over the grave of Copernicus; it was clamoured
round the
death-pile of Bruno; it was yelled at Vanini, at Spinoza, at
Priestley, at
Voltaire, at Paine; it has become the laurel-bay of the
hero, the halo
of the martyr; in the world's history it has meant the
pioneer of
progress, and where the cry of 'Atheist' is raised there
may we be sure
that another step is being taken towards the redemption
of humanity.
The saviours of the world are too often howled at as
Atheists, and
then worshipped as Deities. The Atheists are the
vanguard of the
army of Freethought, on whom falls the brunt of the
battle, and are
shivered the hardest of the blows; their feet trample
down the thorns
that others may tread unwounded; their bodies fill up
the ditch that,
by the bridge thus made, others may pass to victory.
Honour to the
pioneers of progress, honour to the vanguard of
Liberty's army,
honour to those who to improve earth have forgotten
heaven, and who
in their zeal for man have forgotten God."[13]
This poor
sketch of the conception of the universe, to which I had
conquered my
way at the cost of so much pain, and which was the inner
centre round
which my life revolved for twelve years, may perhaps show
that the
Atheistic Philosophy is misjudged sorely when it is scouted
as vile or
condemned as intellectually degraded. It has outgrown
anthropomorphic
deities, and it leaves us face to face with Nature,
open to all her
purifying, strengthening inspirations. "There is only
one kind of
prayer," it says, "which is reasonable, and that is the
deep, silent
adoration of the greatness and beauty and order around
us, as revealed
in the realms of non-rational life and in Humanity; as
we bow our
heads before the laws of the universe, and mould our lives
into obedience
to their voice, we find a strong, calm peace steal over
our hearts, a
perfect trust in the ultimate triumph of the right, a
quiet
determination to 'make our lives sublime.' Before our own high
ideals, before
those lives which show us 'how high the tides of Divine
life have risen
in the human world,' we stand with hushed voice and
veiled face;
from them we draw strength to emulate, and even dare
struggle to
excel. The contemplation of the ideal is true prayer; it
inspires, it
strengthens, it ennobles. The other part of prayer is
work; from
contemplation to labour, from the forest to the street.
Study nature's
laws, conform to them, work in harmony with them, and
work becomes a
prayer and a thanksgiving, an adoration of the
universal
wisdom, and a true obedience to the universal law."[14]
To a woman of
my temperament, filled with passionate desire for the
bettering of
the world, the elevation of humanity, a lofty system of
ethics was of
even more importance than a logical, intellectual
conception of
the universe; and the total loss of all faith in a
righteous God
only made me more strenuously assertive of the binding
nature of duty and
the overwhelming importance of conduct. In 1874
this conviction
found voice in a pamphlet on the "True Basis of
Morality,"
and in all the years of my propaganda on the platform of
the National
Secular Society no subject was more frequently dealt with
in my lectures
than that of human ethical growth and the duty of man
to man. No
thought was more constantly in my mind than that of the
importance of
morals, and it was voiced at the very outset of my
public career.
Speaking of the danger lest "in these stirring times of
inquiry,"
old sanctions of right conduct should be cast aside ere new
ones were
firmly established, I wrote: "It therefore becomes the duty
of every one
who fights in the ranks of Freethought, and who ventures
to attack the
dogmas of the Churches, and to strike down the
superstitions
which enslave men's intellect, to beware how he uproots
sanctions of
morality which he is too weak to replace, or how, before
he is prepared
with better ones, he removes the barriers which do yet,
however poorly,
to some extent check vice and repress crime.... That
which touches
morality touches the heart of society; a high and pure
morality is the
life-blood of humanity; mistakes in belief are
inevitable, and
are of little moment; mistakes in life destroy
happiness, and
their destructive consequences spread far and wide. It
is, then, a
very important question whether we, who are endeavouring
to take away
from the world the authority on which has hitherto been
based all its
morality, can offer a new and firm ground whereupon may
safely be built
up the fair edifice of a noble life."
I then
proceeded to analyse revelation and intuition as a basis for
morals, and,
discarding both, I asserted: "The true basis of morality
is utility;
that is, the adaptation of our actions to the promotion of
the general
welfare and happiness; the endeavour so to rule our lives
that we may
serve and bless mankind." And I argued for this basis,
showing that
the effort after virtue was implied in the search for
happiness:
"Virtue is an indispensable part of all true and solid
happiness....
But it is, after all, only reasonable that happiness
should be the
ultimate test of right and wrong, if we live, as we do,
in a realm of
law. Obedience to law must necessarily result in
harmony, and
disobedience in discord. But if obedience to law result
in harmony it
must also result in happiness--all through nature
obedience to
law results in happiness, and through obedience each
living thing
fulfils the perfection of its being, and in that
perfection
finds its true happiness." It seemed to me most important
to remove
morality from the controversies about religion, and to give
it a basis of
its own: "As, then, the grave subject of the existence
of Deity is a
matter of dispute, it is evidently of deep importance to
society that
morality should not be dragged into this battlefield, to
stand or totter
with the various theories of the Divine nature which
human thought
creates and destroys. If we can found morality on a
basis apart
from theology, we shall do humanity a service which can
scarcely be
overestimated." A study of the facts of nature, of the
consequences of
man in society, seemed sufficient for such a basis.
"Our
faculties do not suffice to tell us about God; they do suffice to
study
phenomena, and to deduce laws from correlated facts. Surely,
then, we should
do wisely to concentrate our strength and our energies
on the
discovery of the attainable, instead of on the search after the
unknowable. If
we are told that morality consists in obedience to the
supposed will
of a supposed perfectly moral being, because in so doing
we please God,
then we are at once placed in a region where our
faculties are
useless to us, and where our judgment is at fault. But
if we are told
that we are to lead noble lives, because nobility of
life is
desirable for itself alone, because in so doing we are acting
in harmony with
the laws of Nature, because in so doing we spread
happiness
around our pathway and gladden our fellow-men--then, indeed,
motives are
appealed to which spring forward to meet the call, and
chords are
struck in our hearts which respond in music to the touch."
It was to the
establishment of this secure basis that I bent my
energies, this
that was to me of supreme moment. "Amid the fervid
movement of
society, with its wild theories and crude social reforms,
with its
righteous fury against oppression and its unconsidered
notions of
wider freedom and gladder life, it is of vital importance
that morality
should stand on a foundation unshakable; that so through
all political
and religious revolutions human life may grow purer and
nobler, may
rise upwards into settled freedom, and not sink downwards
into anarchy.
Only utility can afford us a sure basis, the
reasonableness
of which will be accepted alike by thoughtful student
and hard-headed
artisan. Utility appeals to all alike, and sets in
action motives
which are found equally in every human heart. Well
shall it be for
humanity that creeds and dogmas pass away, that
superstition
vanishes, and the clear light of freedom and science
dawns on a
regenerated earth--but well only if men draw tighter and
closer the
links of trustworthiness, of honour, and of truth. Equality
before the law
is necessary and just; liberty is the birthright of
every man and
woman; free individual development will elevate and
glorify the
race. But little worth these priceless jewels, little
worth liberty
and equality with all their promise for mankind, little
worth even
wider happiness, if that happiness be selfish, if true
fraternity,
true brotherhood, do not knit man to man, and heart to
heart, in loyal
service to the common need, and generous
self-sacrifice
to the common good."[15]
To the
forwarding of this moral growth of man, two things seemed to me
necessary--an
Ideal which should stir the emotions and impel to
action, and a
clear understanding of the sources of evil and of the
methods by
which they might be drained. Into the drawing of the first
I threw all the
passion of my nature, striving to paint the Ideal in
colours which
should enthral and fascinate, so that love and desire to
realise might
stir man to effort. If "morality touched by emotion" be
religion, then
truly was I the most religious of Atheists, finding in
this dwelling
on and glorifying of the Ideal full satisfaction for the
loftiest
emotions. To meet the fascination exercised over men's hearts
by the Man of
Sorrows, I raised the image of man triumphant, man
perfected.
"Rightly is the ideal Christian type of humanity a Man of
Sorrows. Jesus,
with worn and wasted body; with sad, thin lips, curved
into a mournful
droop of penitence for human sin; with weary eyes
gazing up to
heaven because despairing of earth; bowed down and aged
with grief and
pain, broken-hearted with long anguish, broken-spirited
with unresisted
ill-usage--such is the ideal man of the Christian
creed.
Beautiful with a certain pathetic beauty, telling of the long
travail of
earth, eloquent of the sufferings of humanity, but not the
model type to
which men should conform their lives, if they would make
humanity
glorious. And, therefore, in radiant contrast with this,
stands out in
the sunshine and under the blue summer sky, far from
graveyards and
torture of death agony, the fair ideal Humanity of the
Atheist. In
form strong and fair, perfect in physical development as
the Hercules of
Grecian art, radiant with love, glorious in
self-reliant
power; with lips bent firm to resist oppression, and
melting into soft
curves of passion and of pity; with deep, far-seeing
eyes, gazing
piercingly into the secrets of the unknown, and resting
lovingly on the
beauties around him; with hands strong to work in the
present; with
heart full of hope which the future shall realise;
making earth
glad with his labour and beautiful with his skill--this,
this is the
Ideal Man, enshrined in the Atheist's heart. The ideal
humanity of the
Christian is the humanity of the slave, poor, meek,
broken-spirited,
humble, submissive to authority, however oppressive
and unjust; the
ideal humanity of the Atheist is the humanity of the
free man who
knows no lord, who brooks no tyranny, who relies on his
own strength,
who makes his brother's quarrel his, proud,
true-hearted,
loyal, brave."[16]
A one-sided
view? Yes. But a very natural outcome of a sunny nature,
for years held
down by unhappiness and the harshness of an outgrown
creed. It was
the rebound of such a nature suddenly set free,
rejoicing in
its liberty and self-conscious strength, and it carried
with it a great
power of rousing the sympathetic enthusiasm of men and
women, deeply
conscious of their own restrictions and their own
longings. It
was the cry of the freed soul that had found articulate
expression, and
the many inarticulate and prisoned souls answered to
it tumultously,
with fluttering of caged wings. With hot insistence I
battled for the
inspiration to be drawn from the beauty and grandeur
of which human
life was capable. "Will any one exclaim, 'You are
taking all
beauty out of human life, all hope, all warmth, all
inspiration;
you give us cold duty for filial obedience, and
inexorable law
in the place of God'? All beauty from life? Is there,
then, no beauty
in the idea of forming part of the great life of the
universe, no
beauty in conscious harmony with Nature, no beauty in
faithful
service, no beauty in ideals of every virtue? 'All hope'?
Why, I give you
more than hope, I give you certainty; if I bid you
labour for this
world, it is with the knowledge that this world will
repay you a,
thousand-fold, because society will grow purer, freedom
more settled,
law more honoured, life more full and glad. What is your
heaven? A
heaven in the clouds! I point to a heaven attainable on
earth. 'All
warmth'? What! you serve warmly a God unknown and
invisible, in a
sense the projected shadow of your own imaginings, and
can only serve
coldly your brother whom you see at your side? There is
no warmth in
brightening the lot of the sad, in reforming abuses, in
establishing
equal justice for rich and poor? You find warmth in the
church, but
none in the home? Warmth in imagining the cloud glories of
heaven, but
none in creating substantial glories on earth?' All
inspiration'?
If you want inspiration to feeling, to sentiment,
perhaps you had
better keep to your Bible and your creeds; if you want
inspiration to
work, go and walk through the East of London, or the
back streets of
Manchester. You are inspired to tenderness as you gaze
at the wounds
of Jesus, dead in Judaea long ago, and find no
inspiration in
the wounds of men and women, dying in the England of
to-day? You
'have tears to shed for Him,' but none for the sufferer at
your doors? His
passion arouses your sympathies, but you see no pathos
in the passion
of the poor? Duty is colder than 'filial obedience'?
What do you
mean by filial obedience? Obedience to your ideal of
goodness and
love--is it not so? Then how is duty cold? I offer you
ideals for your
homage: here is Truth for your Mistress, to whose
exaltation you
shall devote your intellect; here is Freedom for your
General, for
whose triumph you shall fight; here is Love for your
Inspirer, who
shall influence your every thought; here is Man for your
Master--not in
heaven, but on earth--to whose service you shall
consecrate
every faculty of your being. 'Inexorable law in the place
of God'? Yes; a
stern certainty that you shall not waste your life,
yet gather a
rich reward at the close; that you shall not sow misery,
yet reap
gladness; that you shall not be selfish, yet be crowned with
love; nor shall
you sin, yet find safety in repentance. True, our
creed _is_ a
stern one, stern with the beautiful sternness of Nature.
But if we be in
the right, look to yourselves; laws do not check their
action for your
ignorance; fire will not cease to scorch, because you
'did not
know.'"[17]
With equal
vigour did I maintain that "virtue was its own reward," and
that payment on
the other side of the grave was unnecessary as an
incentive to
right living. "What shall we say to Miss Cobbe's
contention that
duty will 'grow grey and cold' without God and
immortality?
Yes, for those with whom duty is a matter of selfish
calculation,
and who are virtuous only because they look for a 'golden
crown' in
payment on the other side the grave. Those of us who find
joy in
right-doing, who work because work is useful to our fellows,
who live well
because in such living we pay our contribution to the
world's wealth,
leaving earth richer than we found it--we need no
paltry payment
after death for our life's labour, for in that labour
is its own
'exceeding great reward.'"[18] But did any one yearn for
immortality,
that "not all of me shall die"? "Is it true that Atheism
has no
immortality? What is true immortality? Is Beethoven's true
immortality in
his continued personal consciousness, or in his
glorious music
deathless while the world endures? Is Shelley's true
life in his
existence in some far-off heaven, or in the pulsing
liberty his
lyrics send through men's hearts, when they respond to the
strains of his
lyre? Music does not die, though one instrument be
broken; thought
does not die, though one brain be shivered; love does
not die, though
one heart's strings be rent; and no great thinker dies
so long as his
thought re-echoes through the ages, its melody the
fuller-toned
the more human brains send its music on. Not only to the
hero and the
sage is this immortality given; it belongs to each
according to
the measure of his deeds; world-wide life for world-wide
service;
straitened life for straitened work; each reaps as he sows,
and the harvest
is gathered by each in his rightful order."[19]
This longing to
leave behind a name that will live among men by right
of service done
them, this yearning for human love and approval that
springs
naturally from the practical and intense realisation of human
brotherhood--these
will be found as strong motives in the breasts of
the most
earnest men and women who have in our generation identified
themselves with
the Freethought cause. They shine through the written
and spoken
words of Charles Bradlaugh all through his life, and every
friend of his
knows how often he has expressed the longing that "when
the grass grows
green over my grave, men may love me a little for the
work I tried to
do."
Needless to say
that, in the many controversies in which I took part,
it was often
urged against me that such motives were insufficient,
that they
appealed only to natures already ethically developed, and
left the
average man, and, above all, the man below the average, with
no sufficiently
constraining motive for right conduct. I resolutely
held to my
faith in human nature, and the inherent response of the
human heart
when appealed to from the highest grounds; strange--I
often think
now--this instinctive certainty I had of man's innate
grandeur, that
governed all my thought, inconsistent as that certainty
was with my
belief in his purely animal ancestry. Pressed too hard, I
would take
refuge in a passionate disdain for all who did not hear the
thrilling voice
of Virtue and love her for her own sweet sake. "I have
myself heard
the question asked: 'Why should I seek for truth, and why
should I lead a
good life, if there be no immortality in which to reap
a reward?' To
this question the Freethinker has one clear and short
answer: 'There
is no reason why you should seek Truth, if to you the
search has no
attracting power. There is no reason why you should lead
a noble life,
if you find your happiness in leading a poor and a base
one.' Friends,
no one can enjoy a happiness which is too high for his
capabilities; a
book may be of intensest interest, but a dog will very
much prefer
being given a bone. To him whose highest interest is
centred in his
own miserable self, to him who cares only to gain his
own ends, to
him who seeks only his own individual comfort, to that
man Freethought
can have no attraction. Such a man may indeed be made
religious by a
bribe of heaven; he may be led to seek for truth,
because he
hopes to gain his reward hereafter by the search; but Truth
disdains the
service of the self-seeker; she cannot be grasped by a
hand that
itches for reward. If Truth is not loved for her own pure
sake, if to
lead a noble life, if to make men happier, if to spread
brightness
around us, if to leave the world better than we found
it--if these
aims have no attraction for us, if these thoughts do not
inspire us,
then we are not worthy to be Secularists, we have no right
to the proud
title of Freethinkers. If you want to be paid for your
good lives by
living for ever in a lazy and useless fashion in an idle
heaven; if you
want to be bribed into nobility of life; if, like silly
children, you
learn your lesson not to gain knowledge but to win
sugar-plums,
then you had better go back to your creeds and your
churches; they
are all you are fit for; you are not worthy to be free.
But we--who,
having caught a glimpse of the beauty of Truth, deem the
possession of
her worth more than all the world beside; who have made
up our minds to
do our work ungrudgingly, asking for no reward beyond
the results
which spring up from our labour--we will spread the Gospel
of Freethought
among men, until the sad minor melodies of Christianity
have sobbed out
their last mournful notes on the dying evening breeze,
and on the
fresh morning winds shall ring out the chorus of hope and
joyfulness,
from the glad lips of men whom the Truth has at last set
free."[20]
The
intellectual comprehension of the sources of evil and the method
of its
extinction was the second great plank in my ethical platform.
The study of
Darwin and Herbert Spencer, of Huxley, Büchner and
Haeckel, had
not only convinced me of the truth of evolution, but,
with help from
W.H. Clifford, Lubbock, Buckle, Lecky, and many
another, had
led me to see in the evolution of the social instinct the
explanation of
the growth of conscience and of the strengthening of
man's mental
and moral nature. If man by study of the conditions
surrounding him
and by the application of intelligence to the subdual
of external
nature, had already accomplished so much, why should not
further
persistence along the same road lead to his complete
emancipation?
All the evil, anti-social side of his nature was an
inheritance
from his brute ancestry, and could be gradually
eradicated; he
could not only "let the ape and tiger die," but he
could kill them
out." It may be frankly acknowledged that man inherits
from his brute
progenitors various bestial tendencies which are in
course of
elimination. The wild-beast desire to fight is one of these,
and this has
been encouraged, not checked, by religion.... Another
bestial
tendency is the lust of the male for the female apart from
love, duty, and
loyalty; this again has been encouraged by religion,
as witness the
polygamy and concubinage of the Hebrews--as in Abraham,
David, and
Solomon, not to mention the precepts of the Mosaic
laws--the bands
of male and female prostitutes in connection with
Pagan temples,
and the curious outbursts of sexual passion in
connection with
religious revivals and missions. Another bestial
tendency is
greed, the strongest grabbing all he can and trampling
down the weak,
in the mad struggle for wealth; how and when has
religion modified
this tendency, sanctified as it is in our present
civilisation?
All these bestial tendencies will be eradicated only by
the recognition
of human duty, of the social bond. Religion has not
eradicated
them, but science, by tracing them to their source in our
brute ancestry,
has explained them and has shown them in their true
light. As each
recognises that the anti-social tendencies are the
bestial
tendencies in man, and that man in evolving further must
evolve out of
these, each also feels it part of his personal duty to
curb these in
himself, and so to rise further from the brute. This
rational
'co-operation with Nature' distinguishes the scientific from
the religious
person, and this constraining sense of obligation is
becoming
stronger and stronger in all those who, in losing faith in
God, have
gained hope for man."[21]
For this
rational setting of oneself on the side of the forces working
for evolution
implied active co-operation by personal purity and
nobility."
To the Atheist it seems that the knowledge that the
perfecting of
the race is only possible by the improvement of the
individual,
supplies the most constraining motive which can be
imagined for
efforts after personal perfection. The Theist may desire
personal
perfection, but his desire is self-centred; each righteous
individual is
righteous, as it were, alone, and his righteousness does
not benefit his
fellows save as it may make him helpful and loving in
his dealings
with them. The Atheist desires personal perfection not
only for his
joy in it as beautiful in itself, but because science has
taught him the
unity of the race, and he knows that each fresh
conquest of his
over the baser parts of his nature, and each
strengthening
of the higher, is a gain for all, and not for himself
alone."[22]
Besides all
this, the struggle against evil, regarded as transitory
and as a
necessary concomitant of evolution, loses its bitterness. "In
dealing with
evil, Atheism is full of hope instead of despair. To the
Christian, evil
is as everlasting as good; it exists by the permission
of God, and,
therefore, by the will of God. Our nature is corrupt,
inclined to
evil; the devil is ever near us, working all sin and all
misery. What
hope has the Christian face to face with a world's
wickedness?
what answer to the question, Whence comes sin? To the
Atheist the
terrible problem has in it no figure of despair. Evil
comes from
ignorance, we say; ignorance of physical and of moral
facts.
Primarily, from ignorance of physical order; parents who dwell
in filthy,
unventilated, unweathertight houses, who live on
insufficient,
innutritious, unwholesome food, will necessarily be
unhealthy, will
lack vitality, will probably have disease lurking in
their veins;
such parents will bring into the world ill-nurtured
children, in
whom the brain will generally be the least developed part
of the body;
such children, by their very formation, will incline to
the animal
rather than to the human, and by leading an animal, or
natural, life
will be deficient in those qualities which are necessary
in social life.
Their surroundings as they grow up, the home, the
food, the
associates, all are bad. They are trained into vice,
educated into
criminality; so surely as from the sown corn rises the
wheat-ear, so
from the sowing of misery, filth, and starvation shall
arise crime.
And the root of all is poverty and ignorance. Educate the
children, and
give them fair wage for fair work in their maturity, and
crime will
gradually diminish and ultimately disappear. Man is
God-made, says
Theism; man is circumstance-made, says Atheism. Man is
the resultant
of what his parents were, of what his surroundings have
been and are,
and of what they have made him; himself the result of
the past he
modifies the actual, and so the action and reaction go on,
he himself the
effect of what is past, and one of the causes of what
is to come.
Make the circumstances good and the results will be good,
for healthy
bodies and healthy brains may be built up, and from a
State composed
of such the disease of crime will have disappeared.
Thus is our
work full of hope; no terrible will of God have we to
struggle
against; no despairful future to look forward to, of a world
growing more
and more evil, until it is, at last, to burned up; but a
glad, fair
future of an ever-rising race, where more equal laws, more
general
education, more just division, shall eradicate pauperism,
destroy
ignorance, nourish independence, a future to be made the
grander by our
struggles, a future to be made the nearer by our
toil."[23]
This joyous,
self-reliant facing of the world with the resolute
determination
to improve it is characteristic of the noblest Atheism
of our day. And
it is thus a distintly elevating factor in the midst
of the
selfishness, luxury, and greed of modern civilisation. It is a
virile virtue
in the midst of the calculating and slothful spirit
which too ofter
veils itself under the pretence or religion. It will
have no putting
off of justice to a far-off day of reckoning, and it
is ever spurred
on by the feeling, "The night cometh, when no man can
work."
Bereft of all hope of a personal future, it binds up its hopes
with that of
the race; unbelieving in any aid from Deity, it struggles
the more
strenuously to work out man's salvation by his own strength.
"To us
there is but small comfort in Miss Cobbe's assurance that
'earth's wrongs
and agonies' 'will be righted hereafter.' Granting for
a moment that
man survives death what certainty have we that 'the next
world' will be
any improvement on this? Miss Cobbe assures us that
this is 'God's
world'; whose world will the next be, if not also His?
Will He be
stronger there or better, that He should set right in that
world the
wrongs He has permitted here? Will He have changed His mind,
or have become
weary of the contemplation of suffering? To me the
thought that
the world was in the hands of a God who permitted all the
present wrongs
and pains to exist would be intolerable, maddening in
its
hopelessness. There is every hope of righting earth's wrongs and
of curing
earth's pains if the reason and skill of man which have
already done so
much are free to do the rest; but if they are to
strive against
omnipotence, hopeless indeed is the future of the
world. It is in
this sense that the Atheist looks on good as 'the
final goal of
ill,' and believing that that goal will be reached the
sooner the more
strenuous the efforts of each individual, he works in
the glad
certainty that he is aiding the world's progress thitherward.
Not dreaming of
a personal reward hereafter, not craving a personal
payment from
heavenly treasury, he works and loves, content that he is
building a
future fairer than his present, joyous that he is creating
a new earth for
a happier race."[24]
Such was the
creed and such the morality which governed my life and
thoughts from
1874 to 1886, and with some misgivings to 1889, and from
which I drew
strength and happiness amid all outer struggles and
distress. And I
shall ever remain grateful for the intellectual and
moral training
it gave me, for the self-reliance it nurtured, for the
altruism it
inculcated, for the deep feeling of the unity of man that
it fostered,
for the inspiration to work that it lent. And perhaps the
chief debt of
gratitude I owe to Freethought is that it left the mind
ever open to
new truth, encouraged the most unshrinking questioning of
Nature, and
shrank from no new conclusions, however adverse to the
old, that were
based on solid evidence. I admit sorrowfully that all
Freethinkers do
not learn this lesson, but I worked side by side with
Charles
Bradlaugh, and the Freethought we strove to spread was
strong-headed
and broad-hearted.
The antagonism
which, as we shall see in a few moments, blazed out
against me from
the commencement of my platform work, was based partly
on ignorance,
was partly aroused by my direct attacks on Christianity,
and by the
combative spirit I myself showed in those attacks, and very
largely by my
extreme Radicalism in politics. I had against me all the
conventional
beliefs and traditions of society in general, and I
attacked them,
not with bated breath and abundant apologies, but
joyously and
defiantly, with sheer delight in the intellectual strife.
I was fired,
too, with passionate sympathy for the sufferings of the
poor, for the
overburdened, overdriven masses of the people, not only
here but in
every land, and wherever a blow was struck at Liberty or
Justice my pen
or tongue brake silence. It was a perpetual carrying of
the fiery
cross, and the comfortable did not thank me for shaking them
out of their
soft repose.
The antagonism
that grew out of ignorance regarded Atheism as implying
degraded
morality and bestial life, and they assailed my conduct not
on evidence
that it was evil, but on the presumption that an Atheist
must be
immoral. Thus a Christian opponent at Leicester assailed me as
a teacher of
free love, fathering on me views which were maintained in
a book that I
had not read, but which, before I had ever seen the
_National
Reformer_, had been reviewed in its columns--as it was
reviewed in
other London papers--and had been commended for its clear
statement of
the Malthusian position, but not for its contention as to
free love, a
theory to which Mr. Bradlaugh was very strongly opposed.
Nor were the
attacks confined to the ascription to me of theories
which I did not
hold, but agents of the Christian Evidence Society, in
their street
preaching, made the foulest accusations against me of
personal immorality.
Remonstrances addressed to the Rev. Mr. Engström,
the secretary
of the society, brought voluble protestations of
disavowal and
disapproval; but as the peccant agents were continued in
their
employment, the apologies were of small value. No accusation was
too coarse, no
slander too baseless, for circulation by these men; and
for a long time
these indignities caused me bitter suffering,
outraging my
pride, and soiling my good name. The time was to come
when I should
throw that good name to the winds for the sake of the
miserable, but
in those early days I had done nothing to merit, even
ostensibly,
such attacks. Even by educated writers, who should have
known better,
the most wanton accusations of violence and would-be
destructiveness
were brought against Atheists; thus Miss Frances Power
Cobbe wrote in
the _Contemporary Review_ that loss of faith in God
would bring
about the secularisation _or destruction_ of all
cathedrals,
churches, and chapels. "Why," I wrote in answer, "should
cathedrals,
churches, and chapels be destroyed? Atheism will utilise,
not destroy,
the beautiful edifices which, once wasted on God, shall
hereafter be
consecrated for man. Destroy Westminster Abbey, with its
exquisite
arches, its glorious tones of soft, rich colour, its
stonework light
as if of cloud, its dreamy, subdued twilight, soothing
as the 'shadow
of a great rock in a weary land'? Nay, but reconsecrate
it to humanity.
The fat cherubs who tumble over guns and banners on
soldiers'
graves will fitly be removed to some spot where their clumsy
forms will no
longer mar the upward-springing grace of lines of pillar
and of arch;
but the glorious building wherein now barbaric psalms are
chanted and
droning canons preach of Eastern follies, shall hereafter
echo the
majestic music of Wagner and Beethoven, and the teachers of
the future
shall there unveil to thronging multitudes the beauties and
the wonders of
the world. The 'towers and spires' will not be effaced,
but they will
no longer be symbols of a religion which sacrifices
earth to heaven
and Man to God."[25] Between the cultured and the
uncultured
burlesques of Atheism we came off pretty badly, being for
the most part
regarded, as the late Cardinal Manning termed us, as
mere
"cattle."
The moral
purity and elevation of Atheistic teaching were overlooked
by many who
heard only of my bitter attacks on Christian theology.
Against the
teachings of eternal torture, of the vicarious atonement,
of the
infallibility of the Bible, I levelled all the strength of my
brain and
tongue, and I exposed the history of the Christian Church
with unsparing
hand, its persecutions, its religious wars, its
cruelties, its
oppressions. Smarting under the suffering inflicted on
myself, and
wroth with the cruel pressure continually put on
Freethinkers by
Christian employers, speaking under constant threats
of prosecution,
identifying Christianity with the political and social
tyrannies of
Christendom, I used every weapon that history, science,
criticism, scholarship
could give me against the Churches; eloquence,
sarcasm,
mockery, all were called on to make breaches in the wall of
traditional
belief and crass superstition.
To argument and
reason I was ever ready to listen, but I turned a
front of stubborn
defiance to all attempts to compel assent to
Christianity by
appeals to force. "The threat and the enforcement of
legal and
social penalties against unbelief can never compel belief.
Belief must be
gained by demonstration; it can never be forced by
punishment.
Persecution makes the stronger among us bitter; the weaker
among us
hypocrites; it never has made and never can make an honest
convert."[26]
That men and
women are now able to speak and think as openly as they
do, that a
broader spirit is visible in the Churches, that heresy is
no longer
regarded as morally disgraceful--these things are very
largely due to
the active and militant propaganda carried on under the
leadership of
Charles Bradlaugh, whose nearest and most trusted friend
I was. That my
tongue was in the early days bitterer than it should
have been, I
frankly acknowledge; that I ignored the services done by
Christianity
and threw light only on its crimes, thus committing
injustice, I am
ready to admit. But these faults were conquered long
ere I left the
Atheistic camp, and they were the faults of my
personality,
not of the Atheistic philosophy. And my main contentions
were true, and
needed to be made; from many a Christian pulpit to-day
may be heard
the echo of the Freethought teachings; men's minds have
been awakened,
their knowledge enlarged; and while I condemn the
unnecessary
harshness of some of my language, I rejoice that I played
my part in that
educating of England which has made impossible for
evermore the
crude superstitions of the past, and the repetition of
the cruelties
and injustices under which preceding heretics suffered.
But my extreme
political views had also much to do with the general
feeling of
hatred with which I was regarded. Politics, as such, I
cared not for
at all, for the necessary compromises of political life
were
intolerable to me; but wherever they touched on the life of the
people they
became to me of burning interest. The land question, the
incidence of
taxation, the cost of Royalty, the obstructive power of
the House of
Lords--these were the matters to which I put my hand; I
was a Home
Ruler, too, of course, and a passionate opponent of all
injustice to
nations weaker than ourselves, so that I found myself
always in
opposition to the Government of the day. Against our
aggressive and
oppressive policy in Ireland, in the Transvaal, in
India, in
Afghanistan, in Burmah, in Egypt, I lifted up my voice in
all our great
towns, trying to touch the consciences of the people,
and to make
them feel the immorality of a land-stealing, piratical
policy. Against
war, against capital punishment, against flogging,
demanding
national education instead of big guns, public libraries
instead of
warships--no wonder I was denounced as an agitator, a
firebrand, and
that all orthodox society turned up at me its most
respectable
nose.
CHAPTER VIII.
AT WORK.
From this
sketch of the inner sources of action let me turn to the
actions
themselves, and see how the outer life was led which fed
itself at these
springs.
I have said
that the friendship between Mr. Bradlaugh and myself dated
from our first
meeting, and a few days after our talk in Turner Street
he came down to
see me at Norwood. It was characteristic of the man
that he refused
my first invitation, and bade me to think well ere I
asked him to my
house. He told me that he was so hated by English
society that
any friend of his would be certain to suffer, and that I
should pay
heavily for any friendship extended to him. When, however,
I wrote to him,
repeating my invitation, and telling him that I had
counted the
cost, he came to see me. His words came true; my
friendship for
him alienated from me even many professed Freethinkers,
but the
strength and the happiness of it outweighed a thousand times
the loss it
brought, and never has a shadow of regret touched me that
I clasped hands
with him in 1874, and won the noblest friend that
woman ever had.
He never spoke to me a harsh word; where we differed,
he never tried
to override my judgment, nor force on me his views; we
discussed all
points of difference as equal friends; he guarded me
from all
suffering as far as friend might, and shared with me all the
pain he could
not turn aside; all the brightness of my stormy life
came to me
through him, from his tender thoughtfulness, his ever-ready
sympathy, his
generous love. He was the most unselfish man I ever
knew, and as
patient as he was strong. My quick, impulsive nature
found in him
the restful strength it needed, and learned from him the
self-control it
lacked.
He was the
merriest of companions in our rare hours of relaxation; for
many years he
was wont to come to my house in the morning, after the
hours always
set aside by him for receiving poor men who wanted advice
on legal and
other matters--for he was a veritable poor man's lawyer,
always ready to
help and counsel--and, bringing his books and papers,
he would sit
writing, hour after hour, I equally busy with my own
work, now and
then, perhaps, exchanging a word, breaking off just for
lunch and
dinner, and working on again in the evening till about ten
o'clock--he
always went early to bed when at home--he would take
himself off
again to his lodgings, about three-quarters of a mile
away. Sometimes
he would play cards for an hour, euchre being our
favourite game.
But while we were mostly busy and grave, we would make
holiday
sometimes, and then he was like a boy, brimming over with
mirth, full of
quaint turns of thought and speech; all the country
round London
has for me bright memories of our wanderings--Richmond,
where we
tramped across the park, and sat under its mighty trees;
Windsor, with
its groves of bracken; Kew, where we had tea in a funny
little room,
with watercress _ad libitum_; Hampton Court, with its
dishevelled
beauties; Maidenhead and Taplow, where the river was the
attraction;
and, above all, Broxbourne, where he delighted to spend
the day with
his fishing-rod, wandering along the river, of which he
knew every
eddy. For he was a great fisherman, and he taught me all
the mysteries
of the craft, mirthfully disdainful of my dislike of the
fish when I had
caught them. And in those days he would talk of all
his hopes of
the future, of his work, of his duty to the thousands who
looked to him
for guidance, of the time when he would sit in
Parliament as
member for Northampton, and help to pass into laws the
projects of
reform for which he was battling with pen and tongue. How
often he would
voice his love of England, his admiration of her
Parliament, his
pride in her history. Keenly alive to the blots upon
it in her
sinful wars of conquest, in the cruel wrongs inflicted upon
subject
peoples, he was yet an Englishman to the heart's core, but
feeling above
all the Englishman's duty, as one of a race that had
gripped power
and held it, to understand the needs of those he ruled,
and to do
justice willingly, since compulsion to justice there was
none. His
service to India in the latest years of his life was no
suddenly accepted
task. He had spoken for her, pleaded for her, for
many a long
year, through press and on platform, and his spurs as
member for
India were won long ere he was member of Parliament.
A place on the
staff of the _National Reformer_ was offered me by Mr.
Bradlaugh a few
days after our first meeting, and the small weekly
salary thus
earned--it was only a guinea, for national reformers are
always
poor--was a very welcome addition to my resources. My first
contribution
appeared in the number for August 30, 1874, over the
signature of
"Ajax," and I wrote in it regularly until Mr. Bradlaugh
died; from 1877
until his death I sub-edited it, so as to free him
from all the
technical trouble and the weary reading of copy, and for
part of this
period was also co-editor. I wrote at first under a _nom
de guerre_,
because the work I was doing for Mr. Scott would have been
prejudiced had
my name appeared in the columns of the terrible
_National
Reformer_, and until this work--commenced and paid for--was
concluded I did
not feel at liberty to use my own name. Afterwards, I
signed my
_National Reformer_ articles, and the tracts written for Mr.
Scott appeared
anonymously.
The name was suggested by the famous statue
of
"Ajax Crying for Light," a cast of
which may be seen
in the centre walk by any visitor to the
Crystal Palace,
Sydenham. The cry through the darkness for
light,
even though light should bring destruction,
was one
that awoke the keenest sympathy of response
from my
heart:
"If our fate be death
Give light, and let us die!"
To see, to
know, to understand, even though the seeing blind, though
the knowledge
sadden, though the understanding shatter the dearest
hopes--such has
ever been the craving of the upward-striving mind in
man. Some
regard it as a weakness, as a folly, but I am sure that it
exists most
strongly in some of the noblest of our race; that from the
lips of those
who have done most in lifting the burden of ignorance
from the
overstrained and bowed shoulders of a stumbling world has
gone out most
often into the empty darkness the pleading, impassioned
cry:
"Give
light!"
The light may
come with a blinding flash, but it is light none the
less, and we
can see.
And now the
time had come when I was to use that gift of speech which
I had
discovered in Sibsey Church that I possessed, and to use it to
move hearts and
brains all over the English land. In 1874, tentatively, and in 1875 definitely,
I took up this keen weapon, and have used it ever
since. My first
attempt was at a garden party, in a brief informal
debate, and I
found that words came readily and smoothly: the second
in a discussion
at the Liberal Social Union on the opening of museums
and art
galleries on Sunday. My first lecture was given at the
Co-operative
Institute, 55, Castle Street, Oxford Street, on August
25, 1874. Mr.
Greening--then, I think, the secretary--had invited me
to read a paper
before the society, and had left me the choice of the
subject. I
resolved that my first public lecture should be on behalf
of my own sex,
so I selected for my theme, "The Political Status of
Women,"
and wrote thereon a paper. But it was a very nervous person
who presented
herself at the Co-operative Institute on that August
evening. When a
visit to the dentist is made, and one stands on the
steps outside,
desiring to run away ere the neat little boy in buttons
opens the door
and beams on one with a smile of compassionate
superiority and
implike triumph, then the world seems dark and life is
as a huge
blunder. But all such feelings are poor and weak as compared
with the
sinking of the heart and the trembling of the knees which
seize upon the
unhappy lecturer as he advances towards his first
audience, and
as before his eyes rises a ghastly vision of a
tongue-tied
would-be lecturer, facing rows of listening faces,
listening
to--silence. But to my surprise all this miserable feeling
vanished the
moment I was on my feet and was looking at the faces
before me. I
felt no tremor of nervousness from the first word to the
last, and as I
heard my own voice ring out over the attentive
listeners I was
conscious of power and of pleasure, not of fear. And
from that day
to this my experience has been the same; before a
lecture I am
horribly nervous, wishing myself at the ends of the
earth, heart
beating violently, and sometimes overcome by deadly
sickness. Once
on my feet, I feel perfectly at my ease, ruler of the
crowd, master
of myself. I often jeer at myself mentally as I feel
myself
throbbing and fearful, knowing that when I stand up I shall be
all right, and
yet I cannot conquer the physical terror and trembling,
illusory as I
know them to be. People often say to me, "You look too
ill to go on
the platform." And I smile feebly and say I am all right,
and I often
fancy that the more miserably nervous I am in the
ante-room, the
better I speak when once on the platform. My second
lecture was
delivered on September 27th, at Mr. Moncure D. Conway's
Chapel, in St.
Paul's Road, Camden Town, and redelivered a few weeks
later at a
Unitarian Chapel, where the Rev. Peter Dean was minister.
This was on the
"True Basis of Morality," and was later printed as a
pamphlet, which
attained a wide circulation. This was all I did in the
way of speaking
in 1874, but I took silent part in an electioneering
struggle at
Northampton, where a seat for the House of Commons had
fallen vacant
by the death of Mr. Charles Gilpin. Mr. Bradlaugh had
contested the
borough as a Radical in 1868, obtaining 1,086 votes, and
again in
February, 1874, when he received 1,653; of these no less than
1,060 were
plumpers, while his four opponents had only 113, 64, 21 and
12 plumpers
respectively; this band formed the compact and personally
loyal following
which was to win the seat for its chief in 1880, after
twelve years of
steady struggle, and to return him over and over again
to Parliament
during the long contest which followed his election, and
which ended in
his final triumph. They never wavered in their
allegiance to
"our Charlie," but stood by him through evil report and
good report,
when he was outcast as when he was triumphant, loving him
with a deep,
passionate devotion, as honourable to them as it was
precious to
him. I have seen him cry like a child at evidences of
their love for
him, he whose courage no danger could daunt, and who
was never seen
to blench before hatred nor change his stern immobility
in the face of
his foes. Iron to enmity, he was soft as a woman to
kindness;
unbending as steel to pressure, he was ductile as wax to
love. John
Stuart Mill had the insight in 1868 to see his value, and
the courage to
recognise it. He strongly supported his candidature,
and sent a
donation to his election expenses. In his "Autobiography"
he wrote (pp.
311, 312):--
"He had
the support of the working classes; having heard him speak I
knew him to be
a man of ability, and he had proved that he was the
reverse of a
demagogue by placing himself in strong opposition to the
prevailing
opinion of the Democratic party on two such important
subjects as
Malthusianism and Proportional Representation. Men of this
sort, who,
while sharing the democratic feeling of the working
classes, judge
political questions for themselves, and have the
courage to assert
their individual convictions against popular
opposition,
were needed, as it seemed to me, in Parliament; and I did
not think that
Mr. Bradlaugh's anti-religious opinions (even though he
had been
intemperate in the expression of them) ought to exclude him."
It has been
said that Mr. Mill's support of Mr. Bradlaugh's
candidature at
Northampton cost him his own seat at Westminster, and
so bitter was
bigotry at that time that the statement is very likely
to be true. On
this, Mr. Mill himself said: "It was the right thing to
do, and if the
election were yet to take place, I would do it again."
At this
election of September, 1874--the second in the year, for the
general
election had taken place in the February, and Mr. Bradlaugh
had been put up
and defeated during his absence in America--I went
down to
Northampton to report electioneering incidents for the
_National
Reformer_, and spent some days there in the whirl of the
struggle. The
Whig party was more bitter against Mr. Bradlaugh than
was the Tory.
Strenuous efforts were made to procure a Liberal
candidate, who
would be able at least to prevent Mr. Bradlaugh's
return, and, by
dividing the Liberal and Radical party, should let in
a Tory rather
than the detested Radical. Messrs. Bell and James and
Dr. Pearce came
on the scene only to disappear. Mr. Jacob Bright and
Mr. Arnold
Morley were vainly suggested. Mr. Ayrton's name was
whispered.
Major Lumley was recommended by Mr. Bernal Osborne. Dr.
Kenealy
proclaimed himself ready to come to the rescue of the Whigs.
Mr. Tillett, of
Norwich, Mr. Cox, of Belper, were invited, but neither
would consent
to oppose a good Radical who had fought two elections at
Northampton and
had been the chosen of the Radical workers for six
years. At last Mr.
William Fowler, a banker, accepted the task of
handing over
the representation of a Liberal and Radical borough to a
Tory, and duly
succeeded in giving the seat to Mr. Mereweather, a very
reputable Tory
lawyer. Mr. Bradlaugh polled 1,766, thus adding another
133 voters to
those who had polled for him in the previous February.
That election
gave me my first experience of anything in the nature of
rioting. The
violent abuse levelled against Mr. Bradlaugh by the
Whigs, and the
foul and wicked slanders circulated against him,
assailing his
private life and family relations, had angered almost to
madness those
who knew and loved him; and when it was found that the
unscrupulous
Whig devices had triumphed, had turned the election
against him,
and given over the borough to a Tory, the fury broke out
into open
violence. One illustration may be given as a type of these
cruel slanders.
It was known that Mr. Bradlaugh was separated from his
wife, and it
was alleged that being an Atheist, and, (therefore!) an
opponent of
marriage, he had deserted his wife and children, and left
them to the
workhouse. The cause of the separation was known to very
few, for Mr.
Bradlaugh was chivalrously honourable to women, and he
would not
shield his own good name at the cost of that of the wife of
his youth and
the mother of his children. But since his death his only
remaining child
has, in devotion to her father's memory, stated the
melancholy
truth: that Mrs. Bradlaugh gave way to drink; that for long
years he bore
with her and did all that man could do to save her; that
finally,
hopeless of cure, he broke up his home, and placed his wife
in the care of
her parents in the country, leaving her daughters with
her, while he
worked for their support. No man could have acted more
generously and
wisely under these cruel circumstances than he did, but
it was,
perhaps, going to an extreme of Quixotism, that he concealed
the real state
of the case, and let the public blame him as it would.
His Northampton
followers did not know the facts, but they knew him as
an upright,
noble man, and these brutal attacks on his personal
character drove
them wild. Stray fights had taken place during the
election over
these slanders, and, defeated by such foul weapons, the
people lost
control of their passions. As Mr. Bradlaugh was sitting
well-nigh
exhausted in the hotel, after the declaration of the poll,
the landlord
rushed in, crying to him to go out and try to stop the
people, or
there would be murder done at the "Palmerston," Mr.
Fowler's
headquarters; the crowd was charging the door, and the
windows were
being broken with showers of stones. Weary as he was, Mr.
Bradlaugh
sprang to his feet, and swiftly made his way to the rescue
of those who
had maligned and defeated him. Flinging himself before
the doorway,
from which the door had just been battered down, he
knocked down
one or two of the most violent, drove the crowd back,
argued and
scolded them into quietness, and finally dispersed them.
But at nine
o'clock he had to leave Northampton to catch the mail
steamer for
America at Queenstown, and after he had left, word went
round that he
had gone, and the riot he had quelled broke out afresh.
The Riot Act
was at last read, the soldiers were called out, stones
flew freely,
heads and windows were broken, but no very serious harm
was done. The
"Palmerston" and the printing-office of the _Mercury_,
the Whig organ,
were the principal sufferers; doors and windows
disappearing
somewhat completely. The day after the election I
returned home,
and soon after fell ill with a severe attack of
congestion of
the lungs. Soon after my recovery I left Norwood and
settled in a
house in Westbourne Terrace, Bayswater, where I remained
till 1876.
In the
following January (1875), after much thought and self-analysis,
I resolved to
give myself wholly to propagandist work, as a
Freethinker and
a Social Reformer, and to use my tongue as well as my
pen in the
struggle. I counted the cost ere I determined on this step,
for I knew that
it would not only outrage the feelings of such new
friends as I
had already made, but would be likely to imperil my
custody of my
little girl. I knew that an Atheist was outside the law,
obnoxious to
its penalties, but deprived of its protection, and that
the step I
contemplated might carry me into conflicts in which
everything
might be lost and nothing could be gained. But the desire
to spread
liberty and truer thought among men, to war against bigotry
and
superstition, to make the world freer and better than I found
it--all this
impelled me with a force that would not be denied. I
seemed to hear
the voice of Truth ringing over the battlefield: "Who
will go? Who
will speak for me?" And I sprang forward with passionate
enthusiasm,
with resolute cry: "Here am I, send me!" Nor have I ever
regretted for
one hour that resolution, come to in solitude, carried
out amid the
surging life of men, to devote to that sacred cause every
power of brain
and tongue that I possessed. Very solemn to me is the
responsibility
of the public teacher, standing forth in Press and on
platform to
partly mould the thought of his time, swaying thousands of
readers and
hearers year after year. No weighter responsibility can
any take, no
more sacred charge. The written and the spoken word start
forces none may
measure, set working brain after brain, influence
numbers unknown
to the forthgiver of the word, work for good or for
evil all down
the stream of time. Feeling the greatness of the career,
the solemnity of
the duty, I pledged my word then to the cause I loved
that no effort
on my part should be wanted to render myself worthy of
the privilege
of service that I took; that I would read and study, and
would train
every faculty that I had; that I would polish my language,
discipline my
thought, widen my knowledge; and this, at least, I may
say, that if I
have written and spoken much, I have studied and
thought more,
and that I have not given to my mistress Truth that
"which
hath cost me nothing."
This same year
(1875) that saw me launched on the world as a public
advocate of
Freethought, saw also the founding of the Theosophical
Society to
which my Freethought was to lead me. I have often since
thought with
pleasure that at the very time I began lecturing in
England, H.P.
Blavatsky was at work in the United States, preparing