Annie Besant

Autobiography

 

Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales

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206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK. CF24 -1DL

 

 

Annie Besant

Autobiography

 

 

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ANNIE BESANT

 

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY

 

LONDON

 

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.

 

I.    "OUT OF THE EVERYWHERE INTO THE HERE"

 

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 October 1, 1847, I am credibly informed, my baby eyes opened to the

light(?) of a London afternoon at 5.39.

 

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

London, "within the sound of Bow Bells," when three-quarters of my

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 Devonshire Woods on his father's. The Woods were yeomen of 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 London town, fought Queen Caroline's battles against her most

religious and gracious royal husband, aided the Duke of Kent with no

niggard hand, and received a baronetcy for his services from the Duke

of Kent's royal daughter. Since then they have given England a Lord

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 Ireland is it that if you stop to ask

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 Ireland,

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 Ireland, will you be bumping along the

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 Island of Saints, and shall once again be the Island of Sages, when

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 France"--the "Milesian kings"--and the tree grew up a

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 France, doubtless for cause

shown, they had come over the sea to Ireland, and there continued their

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 France." And Emily,

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 Norwood, worn

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, St. John's Wood. I can remember my mother hovering round the

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 the 1st of October, 1851, jumping up

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 16˝, 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 galčre,_] 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

the foundation on which in November, 1875, the Theosophical Society

was to be raised. And with deeper pleasure yet have I found her

writing of what she called the noble work against superstition done by

Charles Bradlaugh and myself, rendering the propaganda of Theosophy

far more practicable and safer than it would otherwise have been. The

fight soon began, and with some queer little skirmishes. I was a

member of the "Liberal Social Union," and one night a discussion arose

as to the admissibility of Atheists to the Society. Dr. Zerffi

declared that he would not remain a member if avowed Atheists were

admitted. I promptly declared that I was an Atheist, and that the

basis of the union was liberty of opinion. The result was that I found

myself cold-shouldered, and those that had been warmly cordial to me

merely as a non-Christian looked askance at me when I had avowed that

my scepticism had advanced beyond their "limits of religious thought."

The Liberal Social Union soon knew me no more, but in the wider field

of work open before me, the narrow-mindedness of this petty clique

troubled me not at all.

 

I started my definite lecturing work at South Place Chapel in January,

1875, Mr. Moncure D. Conway presiding for me, and I find in the

_National Reformer_ for January 17th, the announcement that "Mrs.

Annie Besant ('Ajax') will lecture at South Place Chapel, Finsbury, on

'Civil and Religious Liberty.'" Thus I threw off my pseudonym, and

rode into the field of battle with uplifted visor. The identification

led to an odd little exhibition of bigotry. I had been invited by the

Dialectical Society to read a paper, and had selected for subject,

"The Existence of God." (It may be noted, in passing, that young

students and speakers always select the most tremendous subjects for

their discourses. One advances in modesty as one advances in

knowledge, and after eighteen years of platform work, I am far more

dubious than I was at their beginning as to my power of dealing in any

sense adequately with the problems of life.) The Dialectical Society

had for some years held their meetings in a room in Adam Street,

rented from the Social Science Association. When the members gathered

as usual on February 17th, the door was found to be locked, and they

had to gather on the stairs; they found that "Ajax's" as yet

undelivered paper was too much for Social Science nerves, and that

entrance to their ordinary meeting-room was then and thenceforth

denied them. So they, with "Ajax," found refuge at the Charing Cross

Hotel, and speculated merrily on the eccentricities of religious

bigotry.

 

On February 12th I started on my first provincial lecturing tour, and

after speaking at Birkenhead that evening went on by the night mail to

Glasgow. Some races--dog races--I think, had been going on, and very

unpleasant were many of the passengers waiting on the platform. Some

Birkenhead friends had secured me a compartment, and watched over me

till the train began to move. Then, after we had fairly started, the

door was flung open by a porter, and a man was thrust in who half

tumbled on to the seat. As he slowly recovered he stood up, and as his

money rolled out of his hand on to the floor, and he gazed vaguely at

it, I saw to my horror that he was drunk. The position was not

pleasant, for the train was an express, and was not timed to stop for

a considerable time. My odious fellow-passenger spent some time on the

floor, hunting after his scattered coins; then he slowly gathered

himself up and presently became conscious of my presence. He studied

me for some time, and then proposed to shut the window. I assented

quietly, not wanting to discuss a trifle and feeling in deadly

terror--alone at night in an express with a man not drunk enough to be

helpless, but too drunk to be controlled. Never before nor since have

I felt so thoroughly frightened. I can see him still, swaying as he

stood, with eyes bleared and pendulous lips--but I sat there quiet and

outwardly unmoved, as is always my impulse in danger till I see some

way of escape, only grasping a penknife in my pocket, with a desperate

resolve to use my feeble weapon as soon as the need arose. The man

came towards me with a fatuous leer, when a jarring noise was heard

and the train began to slacken.

 

"What is that?" stammered my drunken companion.

 

"They are putting on the brakes to stop the train," I answered very

slowly and distinctly, though a very passion of relief made it hard to

say quietly the measured words.

 

The man sat down stupidly, staring at me, and in a minute or two the

train pulled up at a station--it had been stopped by signal. My

immobility was gone. In a moment I was at the window, called the

guard, and explained rapidly that I was a woman travelling alone, and

that a half-drunken man was in the carriage. With the usual kindness

of a railway official, he at once moved me and my baggage into another

compartment, into which he locked me, and he kept a friendly watch

over me at every station at which we stopped until he landed me safely

at Glasgow.

 

At Glasgow a room had been taken for me at a temperance hotel, and it

seemed to me so new and lonely a thing to be "all on my own account"

in a strange hotel in a strange city, that I wanted to sit down and

cry. This feeling, to which I was too proud to yield, was probably

partly due to the extreme greyness and grubbiness of my surroundings.

Things are better now, but in those days temperance hotels were for

the most part lacking in cleanliness. Abstinence from alcohol and a

superfluity of "matter in the wrong place" do not seem necessary

correlatives, yet I rarely went to a temperance hotel in which water

was liberally used for other purposes than that of drinking. From

Glasgow I went north to Aberdeen, where I found a very stern and

critical audience. Not a sound broke the stillness as I walked up the

hall; not a sound as I ascended the platform and faced the people; the

canny Scot was not going to applaud a stranger at sight; he was going

to see what she was like first. In grim silence they listened; I could

not move them; they were granite like their own granite city, and I

felt I would like to take off my head and throw it at them, if only to

break that hard wall. After about twenty minutes, a fortunate phrase

drew a hiss from some child of the Covenanters. I made a quick retort,

there was a burst of cheering, and the granite vanished. Never after

that did I have to complain of the coldness of an Aberdeen audience.

Back to London from Aberdeen, and a long, weary journey it was, in a

third-class carriage in the cold month of February; but the labour had

in it a joy that outpaid all physical discomfort, and the feeling that

I had found my work in the world gave a new happiness to life.

 

On February 28th I stood for the first time on the platform of the

Hall of Science, Old Street, St. Luke's, London, and was received with

that warmth of greeting which Secularists are always so ready to

extend to any who sacrifice aught to join their ranks. That hall is

identified in my mind with many a bitter struggle, with both victory

and defeat, but whether in victory or in defeat I found there always

welcome; and the love and the courage wherewith Secularists stood by

me have overpaid a thousandfold any poor services I was fortunate

enough to render, while in their ranks, to the cause of Liberty, and

wholly prevent any bitterness arising in my mind for any

unfriendliness shown me by some, who have perhaps overstepped kindness

and justice in their sorrowful wrath at my renunciation of Materialism

and Atheism. So far as health was concerned, the lecturing acted as a

tonic. My chest had always been a little delicate, and when I

consulted a doctor on the possibility of my standing platform work, he

answered, "It will either kill you or cure you." It entirely cured the

lung weakness, and I grew strong and vigorous instead of being frail

and delicate, as of old.

 

It would be wearisome to go step by step over eighteen years of

platform work, so I will only select here and there incidents

illustrative of the whole. And here let me say that the frequent

attacks made on myself and others, that we were attracted to

Free-thought propaganda by the gains it offered, formed a somewhat

grotesque contrast to the facts. On one occasion I spent eight days in

Northumberland and Durham, gave twelve lectures, and made a deficit of

eleven shillings on the whole. Of course such a thing could not happen

in later years, when I had made my name by sheer hard work, but I

fancy that every Secularist lecturer could tell of similar experiences

in the early days of "winning his way." The fact is that from Mr.

Bradlaugh downwards every one of us could have earned a competence

with comparative ease in any other line of work, and could have earned

it with public approval instead of amid popular reproach. Much of my

early lecturing was done in Northumberland and Durham; the miners

there are, as a rule, shrewd and hard-headed men, and very cordial is

the greeting given by them to those they have reason to trust. At

Seghill and at Bedlington I have slept in their cottages and have been

welcomed to their tables, and I have a vivid memory of one evening at

Seghill, after a lecture, when my host, himself a miner, invited about

a dozen of his comrades to supper to meet me; the talk ran on

politics, and I soon found that my companions knew more of English

politics, had a far shrewder notion of political methods, and were,

therefore, much better worth talking to, than most of the ordinary men

met at dinner parties "in society." They were of the "uneducated"

class despised by "gentlemen," and had not then the franchise, but

politically they were far better educated than their social superiors,

and were far better fitted to discharge the duties of citizenship. How

well, too, do I remember a ten-mile drive in a butcher's cart, to give

a lecture in an out-of-the-way spot, unapproached by railway. Such was

the jolting as we rattled over rough roads and stony places, that I

felt as though all my bones were broken, and as though I should

collapse on the platform like a bag half-filled with stones. How kind

they were to me, those genial, cordial miners, how careful for my

comfort, and how motherly were the women! Ah! if opponents of my views

who did not know me were often cruel and malignant, there was

compensation in the love and honour in which good men and women all

the country over held me, and their devotion outweighed the hatred,

and many a time and often soothed a weary and aching heart.

 

Lecturing in June, 1875, at Leicester, I came for the first time

across a falsehood that brought sore trouble and cost me more pain

than I care to tell. An irate Christian opponent, in the discussion

that followed the lecture, declared that I was responsible for a book

entitled, "The Elements of Social Science," which was, he averred,

"The Bible of Secularists." I had never heard of the book, but as he

stated that it was in favour of the abolition of marriage, and that

Mr. Bradlaugh agreed with it, I promptly contradicted him; for while I

knew nothing about the book, I knew a great deal about Mr. Bradlaugh,

and I knew that on the marriage question he was conservative rather

than revolutionary. He detested "Free Love" doctrines, and had thrown

himself strongly on the side of the agitation led so heroically for

many years by Mrs. Josephine Butler. On my return to London after the

lecture I naturally made inquiry as to the volume and its contents,

and I found that it had been written by a Doctor of Medicine some

years before, and sent to the _National Reformer_ for review, as to

other journals, in ordinary course of business. It consisted of three

parts--the first advocated, from the standpoint of medical science,

what is roughly known as "Free Love"; the second was entirely medical;

the third consisted of a clear and able exposition of the law of

population as laid down by the Rev. Mr. Malthus, and--following the

lines of John Stuart Mill--insisted that it was the duty of married

persons to voluntarily limit their families within their means of

subsistence. Mr. Bradlaugh, in reviewing the book, said that it was

written "with honest and pure intent and purpose," and recommended to

working men the exposition of the law of population. His enemies took

hold of this recommendation, declared that he shared the author's

views on the impermanence of the marriage tie, and, despite his

reiterated contradictions, they used extracts against marriage from

the book as containing his views. Anything more meanly vile it would

be difficult to conceive, but such were the weapons used against him

all his life, and used often by men whose own lives contrasted most

unfavourably with his own. Unable to find anything in his own writings

to serve their purpose, they used this book to damage him with those

who knew nothing at first-hand of his views. What his enemies feared

were not his views on marriage--which, as I have said, was

conservative--but his Radicalism and his Atheism. To discredit him as

politician they maligned him socially, and the idea that a man desires

"to abolish marriage and the home," is a most convenient poniard, and

the one most certain to wound. This was the origin of his worst

difficulties, to be intensified, ere long, by his defence of

Malthusianism. On me also fell the same lash, and I found myself held

up to hatred as upholder of views that I abhorred.

 

I may add that far warmer praise than that bestowed on this book by

Mr. Bradlaugh was given by other writers, who were never attacked in

the same way.

 

In the _Reasoner_, edited by Mr. George Jacob Holyoake, I find warmer

praise of it than in the _National Reformer_; in the review the

following passage appears:--

 

"In some respects all books of this class are evils: but it would be

weakness and criminal prudery--a prudery as criminal as vice

itself--not to say that such a book as the one in question is not only

a far lesser evil than the one that it combats, but in one sense a

book which it is a mercy to issue and courage to publish."

 

The _Examiner_, reviewing the same book, declared it to be--

 

"A very valuable, though rather heterogeneous book.... This is, we

believe, the only book that has fully, honestly, and in a scientific

spirit recognised all the elements in the problem--How are mankind to

triumph over poverty, with its train of attendant evils?--and

fearlessly endeavoured to find a practical solution."

 

The _British Journal of Homoeopathy_ wrote:--

 

"Though quite out of the province of our journal, we cannot refrain

from stating that this work is unquestionably the most remarkable one,

in many respects, we have ever met with. Though we differ _toto coelo_

from the author in his views of religion and morality, and hold some

of his remedies to tend rather to a dissolution than a reconstruction

of society, yet we are bound to admit the benevolence and philanthropy

of his motives. The scope of the work is nothing less than the whole

field of political economy."

 

Ernest Jones and others wrote yet more strongly, but out of all these

Charles Bradlaugh alone has been selected for reproach, and has had

the peculiar views of the anonymous author fathered on himself.

 

Some of the lecture work in those days was pretty rough. In Darwen,

Lancashire, in June, 1875, stone-throwing was regarded as a fair

argument addressed to the Atheist lecturer. At Swansea, in March,

1876, the fear of violence was so great that a guarantee against

damage to the hall was exacted by the proprietor, and no local friend

had the courage to take the chair for me. In September, 1876, at

Hoyland, thanks to the exertions of Mr. Hebblethwaite, a Primitive

Methodist, and two Protestant missionaries, I found the hall packed

with a crowd that yelled at me with great vigour, stood on forms,

shook fists at me, and otherwise showed feelings more warm than

friendly. Taking advantage of a lull in the noise, I began to speak,

and the tumult sank into quietness; but as I was leaving the hall it

broke out afresh, and I walked slowly through a crowd that yelled and

swore and struck at me, but somehow those nearest always shrank back

and let me pass. In the dark, outside the hall, they took to kicking,

but only one kick reached me, and the attempts to overturn the cab

were foiled by the driver, who put his horse at a gallop. Later in the

same month Mr. Bradlaugh and I visited Congleton together, having been

invited there by Mr. and Mrs. Wolstenholme Elmy. Mr. Bradlaugh

lectured on the first evening to an accompaniment of broken windows,

and I, sitting with Mrs. Elmy facing the platform, received a rather

heavy blow on the back of the head from a stone thrown by some one in

the room. We had a mile and a half to walk from the hall to the house,

and were accompanied all the way by a stone-throwing crowd, who sang

hymns at the tops of their voices, with interludes of curses and foul

words. On the following evening I lectured, and our stone-throwing

admirers escorted us to the hall; in the middle of the lecture a man

shouted, "Put her out!" and a well-known wrestler of the

neighbourhood, named Burbery, who had come to the hall with some

friends to break up the meeting, stood up as at a signal in front of

the platform and loudly interrupted. Mr. Bradlaugh, who was in the

chair, told him to sit down, and, as he persisted in interrupting,

informed him that he must either be quiet or go out. "Put me out!"

shouted Mr. Burbery, striking an attitude. Mr. Bradlaugh left the

platform and walked up to the noisy swashbuckler, who at once grappled

with him and tried to throw him. But Mr. Burbery had not reckoned on

the massive strength of his opponent, and when the "throw" was

complete Mr. Burbery was underneath. Amid much excitement Mr. Burbery

was propelled towards the door, being gently used on the way as a

battering-ram against his friends who rushed to the rescue, and at the

door was handed over to the police. The chairman then resumed his

normal duties, with a brief "Go on" to me, and I promptly went on,

finishing the lecture in peace. But outside the hall there was plenty

of stone-throwing, and Mrs. Elmy received a cut on the temple from a

flint. This stormy work gradually lessened, and my experience of it

was a mere trifle compared to that which my predecessors had faced.

Mr. Bradlaugh's early experiences involved much serious rioting, and

Mrs. Harriet Law, a woman of much courage and of strong natural

ability, had many a rough meeting in her lecturing days.

 

In September, 1875, Mr. Bradlaugh again sailed for America, still to

earn money there to pay his debts. Unhappily he was struck down by

typhoid fever, and all his hopes of freeing himself thus were

destroyed. His life was well-nigh despaired of, but the admirable

skill of physician and nurse pulled him through. Said the _Baltimore

Advertiser_:--

 

"This long and severe illness has disappointed the hopes and retarded

the object for which he came to this country; but he is gentleness and

patience itself in his sickness in this strange land, and has endeared

himself greatly to his physicians and attendants by his gratitude and

appreciation of the slightest attention."

 

His fortitude in face of death was also much commented on, lying there

as he did far from home and from all he loved best. Never a quiver of

fear touched him as he walked down into the valley of the shadow of

death; the Rev. Mr. Frothingham bore public and admiring testimony in

his own church to Mr. Bradlaugh's noble serenity, at once fearless and

unpretending, and, himself a Theist, gave willing witness to the

Atheist's calm strength. He came back to us at the end of September,

worn to a shadow, weak as a child, and for many a long month he bore

the traces of his wrestle with death.

 

One part of my autumn's work during his absence was the delivery and

subsequent publication of six lectures on the French Revolution. That

stormy time had for me an intense fascination. I brooded over it,

dreamed over it, and longed to tell the story from the people's point

of view. I consequently read a large amount of the current literature

of the time, as well as Louis Blanc's monumental work and the

histories of Michelet, Lamartine, and others. Fortunately for me, Mr.

Bradlaugh had a splendid collection of books on the subject, and ere

we left England he brought me two cabs-full of volumes, aristocratic,

ecclesiastical, democratic, and I studied all these diligently, and

lived in them, till the French Revolution became to me as a drama in

which I had myself taken part, and the actors were to me as personal

friends and foes. In this, again, as in so much of my public work, I

have to thank Mr. Bradlaugh for the influence which led me to read

fully all sides of a question, and to read most carefully those from

which I differed most, ere I considered myself competent to write or

to speak thereon. From 1875 onwards I held office as one of the

vice-presidents of the National Secular Society--a society founded on

a broad basis of liberty, with the inspiring motto, "We Search for

Truth." Mr. Bradlaugh was president, and I held office under him till

he resigned his post in February, 1890, nine months after I had joined

the Theosophical Society. The N.S.S., under his judicious and

far-sighted leadership, became a real force in the country,

theologically and politically, embracing large numbers of men and

women who were Freethinkers as well as Radicals, and forming a nucleus

of earnest workers, able to gather round them still larger numbers of

others, and thus to powerfully affect public opinion. Once a year the

society met in conference, and many a strong and lasting friendship

between men living far apart dated from these yearly gatherings, so

that all over the country spread a net-work of comradeship between the

staunch followers of "our Charlie." These were the men and women who

paid his election expenses over and over again, supported him in his

Parliamentary struggle, came up to London to swell the demonstrations

in his favour. And round them grew up a huge party--"the largest

personal following of any public man since Mr. Gladstone," it was once

said by an eminent man--who differed from him in theology, but

passionately supported him in politics; miners, cutlers, weavers,

spinners, shoemakers, operatives of every trade, strong, sturdy,

self-reliant men who loved him to the last.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER IX.

 

THE KNOWLTON PAMPHLET.

 

 

The year 1877 dawned, and in its early days began a struggle which,

ending in victory all along the line, brought with it pain and anguish

that I scarcely care to recall. An American physician, Dr. Charles

Knowlton, convinced of the truth of the teaching of the Rev. Mr.

Malthus, and seeing that that teaching had either no practical value

or tended to the great increase of prostitution, unless married

people were taught to limit their families within their means of

livelihood--wrote a pamphlet on the voluntary limitation of the

family. It was published somewhere in the Thirties--about 1835, I

think--and was sold unchallenged in England as well as in America for

some forty years. Philosophers of the Bentham school, like John Stuart

Mill, endorsed its teachings, and the bearing of population on poverty

was an axiom in economic literature. Dr. Knowlton's work was a

physiological treatise, advocating conjugal prudence and parental

responsibility; it argued in favour of early marriage, with a view to

the purity of social life; but as early marriage between persons of

small means generally implies a large family, leading either to

pauperism or to lack of necessary food, clothing, education, and fair

start in life for the children, Dr. Knowlton advocated the restriction

of the number of the family within the means of subsistence, and

stated the methods by which this restriction could be carried out. The

book was never challenged till a disreputable Bristol bookseller put

some copies on sale to which he added some improper pictures, and he

was prosecuted and convicted. The publisher of the _National Reformer_

and of Mr. Bradlaugh's and my books and pamphlets had taken over a

stock of Knowlton's pamphlets among other literature he bought, and he

was prosecuted and, to our great dismay, pleaded guilty. We at once

removed our publishing from his hands, and after careful deliberation

we decided to publish the incriminated pamphlet in order to test the

right of discussion on the population question, when, with the advice

to limit the family, information was given as to how that advice could

be followed. We took a little shop, printed the pamphlet, and sent

notice to the police that we would commence the sale at a certain day

and hour, and ourselves sell the pamphlet, so that no one else might

be endangered by our action. We resigned our offices in the National

Secular Society that we might not injure the society, but the

executive first, and then the Annual Conference, refused to accept the

resignations. Our position as regarded the pamphlet was simple and

definite; had it been brought to us for publication, we stated, we

should not have published it, for it was not a treatise of high merit;

but, prosecuted as immoral because it advised the limitation of the

family, it at once embodied the right of publication. In a preface to

the republished edition, we wrote:--

 

"We republish this pamphlet, honestly believing that on all questions

affecting the happiness of the people, whether they be theological,

political, or social, fullest right of free discussion ought to be

maintained at all hazards. We do not personally endorse all that Dr.

Knowlton says: his 'Philosophical Proem' seems to us full of

philosophical mistakes, and--as we are neither of us doctors--we are

not prepared to endorse his medical views; but since progress can only

be made through discussion, and no discussion is possible where

differing opinions are suppressed, we claim the right to publish all

opinions, so that the public, enabled to see all sides of a question,

may have the materials for forming a sound judgment."

 

We were not blind to the danger to which this defiance of the

authorities exposed us, but it was not the danger of failure, with the

prison as penalty, that gave us pause. It was the horrible

misconceptions that we saw might arise; the odious imputations on

honour and purity that would follow. Could we, the teachers of a lofty

morality, venture to face a prosecution for publishing what would be

technically described as an obscene book, and risk the ruin of our

future, dependent as that was on our fair fame? To Mr. Bradlaugh it

meant, as he felt, the almost certain destruction of his Parliamentary

position, the forging by his own hands of a weapon that in the hands

of his foes would be well-nigh fatal. To me it meant the loss of the

pure reputation I prized, the good name I had guarded--scandal the

most terrible a woman could face. But I had seen the misery of the

poor, of my sister-women with children crying for bread; the wages of

the workmen were often sufficient for four, but eight or ten they

could not maintain. Should I set my own safety, my own good name,

against the helping of these? Did it matter that my reputation should

be ruined, if its ruin helped to bring remedy to this otherwise

hopeless wretchedness of thousands? What was worth all my talk about

self-sacrifice and self-surrender, if, brought to the test, I failed?

So, with heart aching but steady, I came to my resolution; and though

I know now that I was wrong intellectually, and blundered in the

remedy, I was right morally in the will to sacrifice all to help the

poor, and I can rejoice that I faced a storm of obloquy fiercer and

harder to bear than any other which can ever touch me again. I learned

a lesson of stern indifference to all judgments from without that were

not endorsed by condemnation from within. The long suffering that

followed was a splendid school for the teaching of endurance.

 

The day before the pamphlet was put on sale we ourselves delivered

copies to the Chief Clerk of the Magistrates at Guildhall, to the

officer in charge at the City Police Office in Old Jewry, and to the

Solicitor for the City of London. With each pamphlet was a notice that

we would attend and sell the book from 4 to 5 p.m. on the following

day, Saturday, March 24th. This we accordingly did, and in order to

save trouble we offered to attend daily at the shop from 10 to 11 a.m.

to facilitate our arrest, should the authorities determine to

prosecute. The offer was readily accepted, and after some little

delay--during which a deputation from the Christian Evidence Society

waited upon Mr. Cross to urge the Tory Government to prosecute

us--warrants were issued against us and we were arrested on April 6th.

Letters of approval and encouragement came from the most diverse

quarters, including among their writers General Garibaldi, the

well-known economist, Yves Guyot, the great French constitutional

lawyer, Emile Acollas, together with letters literally by the hundred

from poor men and women thanking and blessing us for the stand taken.

Noticeable were the numbers of letters from clergymen's wives, and

wives of ministers of all denominations.

 

After our arrest we were taken to the police-station in Bridewell

Place, and thence to the Guildhall, where Alderman Figgins was

sitting, before whom we duly appeared, while in the back of the court

waited what an official described as "a regular waggon-load of bail."

We were quickly released, the preliminary investigation being fixed

for ten days later--April 17th. At the close of the day the magistrate

released us on our own recognisances, without bail; and it was so

fully seen on all sides that we were fighting for a principle that no

bail was asked for during the various stages of the trial. Two days

later we were committed for trial at the Central Criminal Court, but

Mr. Bradlaugh moved for a writ of _certiorari_ to remove the trial to

the Court of Queen's Bench; Lord Chief Justice Cockburn said he would

grant the writ if "upon looking at it (the book), we think its object

is the legitimate one of promoting knowledge on a matter of human

interest," but not if the science were only a cover for impurity, and

he directed that copies of the book should be handed in for perusal by

himself and Mr. Justice Mellor. Having read the book they granted the

writ.

 

The trial commenced on June 18th before the Lord Chief Justice of

England and a special jury, Sir Hardinge Giffard, the

Solicitor-General of the Tory Government, leading against us, and we

defending ourselves. The Lord Chief Justice "summed up strongly for an

acquittal," as a morning paper said; he declared that "a more

ill-advised and more injudicious proceeding in the way of a

prosecution was probably never brought into a court of justice," and

described us as "two enthusiasts who have been actuated by a desire to

do good in a particular department of society." He then went on to a

splendid statement of the law of population, and ended by praising our

straightforwardness and asserting Knowlton's honesty of intention.

Every one in court thought that we had won our case, but they had not

taken into account the religious and political hatred against us and

the presence on the jury of such men as Mr. Walter, of the _Times_.

After an hour and thirty-five minutes of delay the verdict was a

compromise: "We are unanimously of opinion that the book in question

is calculated to deprave public morals, but at the same time we

entirely exonerate the defendants from any corrupt motive in

publishing it." The Lord Chief Justice looked troubled, and said that

he should have to translate the verdict into one of guilty, and on

that some of the jury turned to leave the box, it having been

agreed--we heard later from one of them--that if the verdict were not

accepted in that form they should retire again, as six of the jury

were against convicting us; but the foreman, who was bitterly hostile,

jumped at the chance of snatching a conviction, and none of those in

our favour had the courage to contradict him on the spur of the

moment, so the foreman's "Guilty" passed, and the judge set us free,

on Mr. Bradlaugh's recognisances to come up for judgment that day

week.

 

On that day we moved to quash the indictment and for a new trial,

partly on a technical ground and partly on the ground that the

verdict, having acquitted us of wrong motive, was in our favour, not

against us. On this the Court did not agree with us, holding that the

part of the indictment alleging corrupt motive was superfluous. Then

came the question of sentence, and on this the Lord Chief Justice did

his best to save us; we were acquitted of any intent to violate the

law; would we submit to the verdict of the jury and promise not to

sell the book? No, we would not; we claimed the right to sell, and

meant to vindicate it. The judge pleaded, argued, finally got angry

with us, and, at last, compelled to pass sentence, he stated that if

we would have yielded he would have let us go free without penalty,

but that as we would set ourselves against the law, break it and defy

it--a sore offence from the judge's point of view--he could only pass

a heavy sentence on each of six months' imprisonment, a fine of Ł200,

and recognisances of Ł500 for two years, and this, as he again

repeated, upon the assumption "that they do intend to set the law at

defiance." Even despite this he made us first-class misdemeanants.

Then, as Mr. Bradlaugh stated that we should move for a writ of error,

he liberated us on Mr. Bradlaugh's recognisance for Ł100, the queerest

comment on his view of the case and of our characters, since we were

liable jointly to Ł1,400 under the sentence, to say nothing of the

imprisonment. But prison and money penalties vanished into thin air,

for the writ of error was granted, proved successful, and the verdict

was quashed.

 

Then ensued a somewhat anxious time. We were resolute to continue

selling; were our opponents equally resolved to prosecute us? We could

not tell. I wrote a pamphlet entitled "The Law of Population," giving

the arguments which had convinced me of its truth, the terrible

distress and degradation entailed on families by overcrowding and the

lack of the necessaries of life, pleading for early marriages that

prostitution might be destroyed, and limitation of the family that

pauperism might be avoided; finally, giving the information which

rendered early marriage without these evils possible. This pamphlet

was put in circulation as representing our view of the subject, and we

again took up the sale of Knowlton's. Mr. Bradlaugh carried the war

into the enemy's country, and commenced an action against the police

for the recovery of some pamphlets they had seized; he carried the

action to a successful issue, recovered the pamphlets, bore them off

in triumph, and we sold them all with an inscription across them,

"Recovered from the police." We continued the sale of Knowlton's tract

for some time, until we received an intimation that no further

prosecution would be attempted, and on this we at once dropped its

publication, substituting for it my "Law of Population."

 

[Illustration: CHARLES BRADLAUGH M.P.]

 

But the worst part of the fight, for me, was to come. Prosecution of

the "Law of Population" was threatened, but never commenced; a worse

weapon against me was in store. An attempt had been made in August,

1875, to deprive me of the custody of my little girl by hiding her

away when she went on her annual visit of one month to her father, but

I had promptly recovered her by threatening to issue a writ of _habeas

corpus._ Now it was felt that the Knowlton trial might be added to the

charges of blasphemy that could be urged against me, and that this

double-barrelled gun might be discharged with effect. I received

notice in January, 1878, that an application was to be made to the

High Court of Chancery to deprive me of the child, but the petition

was not filed till the following April. Mabel was dangerously ill with

scarlet fever at the time, and though this fact was communicated to

her father I received a copy of the petition while sitting at her

bedside. The petition alleged that, "The said Annie Besant is, by

addresses, lectures, and writings, endeavouring to propagate the

principles of Atheism, and has published a book entitled 'The Gospel

of Atheism.' She has also associated herself with an infidel lecturer

and author named Charles Bradlaugh in giving lectures and in

publishing books and pamphlets, whereby the truth of the Christian

religion is impeached, and disbelief in all religion inculcated."

 

It further alleged against me the publication of the Knowlton

pamphlet, and the writing of the "Law of Population." Unhappily, the

petition came for hearing before the then Master of the Rolls, Sir

George Jessel, a man animated by the old spirit of Hebrew bigotry, to

which he had added the time-serving morality of a "man of the world,"

sceptical as to all sincerity, and contemptuous of all devotion to an

unpopular cause. The treatment I received at his hands on my first

appearance in court told me what I had to expect. I had already had

some experience of English judges, the stately kindness and gentleness

of the Lord Chief Justice, the perfect impartiality and dignified

courtesy of the Lords Justices of Appeal. My astonishment, then, can

be imagined when, in answer to a statement by Mr. Ince, Q.C., that I

appeared in person, I heard a harsh, loud voice exclaim:

 

"Appear in person? A lady appear in person? Never heard of such a

thing! Does the lady really appear in person?"

 

As the London papers had been full of my appearing in person in the

other courts and had contained the high compliments of the Lord Chief

Justice on my conduct of my own case, Sir George Jessel's pretended

astonishment seemed a little overdone. After a variety of similar

remarks delivered in the most grating tones and in the roughest

manner, Sir George Jessel tried to obtain his object by browbeating me

directly. "Is this the lady?"

 

"I am the respondent, my lord, Mrs. Besant."

 

"Then I advise you, Mrs. Besant, to employ counsel to represent you,

if you can afford it; and I suppose you can."

 

"With all submission to your lordship, I am afraid I must claim my

right of arguing my case in person."

 

"You will do so if you please, of course, but I think you had much

better appear by counsel. I give you notice that, if you do not, you

must not expect to be shown any consideration. You will not be heard

by me at any greater length than the case requires, nor allowed to go

into irrelevant matter, as persons who argue their own cases usually

do."

 

"I trust I shall not do so, my lord; but in any case I shall be

arguing under your lordship's complete control."

 

This encouraging beginning may be taken as a sample of the case--it

was one long fight against clever counsel, aided by a counsel instead

of a judge on the bench. Only once did judge and counsel fall out. Mr.

Ince and Mr. Bardswell had been arguing that my Atheism and

Malthusianism made me an unfit guardian for my child; Mr. Ince

declared that Mabel, educated by me, would "be helpless for good in

this world," and "hopeless for good hereafter, outcast in this life

and damned in the next." Mr. Bardswell implored the judge to consider

that my custody of her "would be detrimental to the future prospects

of the child in society, to say nothing of her eternal prospects." Had

not the matter been to me of such heart-breaking importance, I could

have laughed at the mixture of Mrs. Grundy, marriage establishment,

and hell, presented as an argument for robbing a mother of her child.

But Mr. Bardswell carelessly forgot that Sir George Jessel was a Jew,

and lifting eyes to heaven in horrified appeal, he gasped out:

 

"Your lordship, I think, will scarcely credit it, but Mrs. Besant

says, in a later affidavit, that she took away the Testament from the

child because it contained coarse passages unfit for a child to read."

 

The opportunity was too tempting for a Jew to refrain from striking at

a book written by apostate Jews, and Sir George Jessel answered

sharply:

 

"It is not true to say there are no passages unfit for a child's

reading, because I think there are a great many."

 

"I do not know of any passages that could fairly be called coarse."

 

"I cannot quite assent to that."

 

Barring this little episode judge and counsel showed a charming

unanimity. I distinctly said I was an Atheist, that I had withdrawn

the child from religious instruction at the day-school she attended,

that I had written various anti-Christian books, and so on; but I

claimed the child's custody on the ground that the deed of separation

distinctly gave it to me, and had been executed by her father after I

had left the Christian Church, and that my opinions were not

sufficient to invalidate it. It was admitted on the other side that

the child was admirably cared for, and there was no attempt at

attacking my personal character. The judge stated that I had taken the

greatest possible care of the child, but decided that the mere fact of

my refusing to give the child religious instruction was sufficient

ground for depriving me of her custody. Secular education he regarded

as "not only reprehensible, but detestable, and likely to work utter

ruin to the child, and I certainly should upon this ground alone

decide that this child ought not to remain another day under the care

of her mother."

 

Sir George Jessel denounced also my Malthusian views in a fashion at

once so brutal and so untruthful as to facts, that some years later

another judge, the senior puisne judge of the Supreme Court of New

South Wales, declared in a judgment delivered in his own court that

there was "no language used by Lord Cockburn which justified the

Master of the Rolls in assuming that Lord Cockburn regarded the book

as obscene," and that "little weight is to be attached to his opinion

on a point not submitted for his decision"; he went on to administer a

sharp rebuke for the way in which Sir George Jessel travelled outside

the case, and remarked that "abuse, however, of an unpopular opinion,

whether indulged in by judges or other people, is not argument, nor

can the vituperation of opponents in opinion prove them to be

immoral." However, Sir George Jessel was all-powerful in his own

court, and he deprived me of my child, refusing to stay the order even

until the hearing of my appeal against his decision. A messenger from

the father came to my house, and the little child was carried away by

main force, shrieking and struggling, still weak from the fever, and

nearly frantic with fear and passionate resistance. No access to her

was given me, and I gave notice that if access were denied me, I would

sue for a restitution of conjugal rights, merely that I might see my

children. But the strain had been too great, and I nearly went mad,

spending hours pacing up and down the empty rooms, striving to weary

myself to exhaustion that I might forget. The loneliness and silence

of the house, of which my darling had always been the sunshine and the

music, weighed on me like an evil dream; I listened for the patter of

the dancing feet, and merry, thrilling laughter that rang through the

garden, the sweet music of the childish voice; during my sleepless

nights I missed in the darkness the soft breathing of the little

child; each morning I longed in vain for the clinging arms and soft,

sweet kisses. At last health broke down, and fever struck me, and

mercifully gave me the rest of pain and delirium instead of the agony

of conscious loss. Through that terrible illness, day after day, Mr.

Bradlaugh came to me, and sat writing beside me, feeding me with ice

and milk, refused from all others, and behaving more like a tender

mother than a man friend; he saved my life, though it seemed to me for

awhile of little value, till the first months of lonely pain were

over. When recovered, I took steps to set aside an order obtained by

Mr. Besant during my illness, forbidding me to bring any suit against

him, and even the Master of the Rolls, on hearing that all access had

been denied to me, and the money due to me stopped, uttered words of

strong condemnation of the way in which I had been treated. Finally

the deed of separation executed in 1873 was held to be good as

protecting Mr. Besant from any suit brought by me, whether for divorce

or for restitution of conjugal rights, while the clauses giving me the

custody of the child were set aside. The Court of Appeal in April,

1879, upheld the decision, the absolute right of the father as against

a married mother being upheld. This ignoring of all right to her

children on the part of the married mother is a scandal and a wrong

that has since been redressed by Parliament, and the husband has no

longer in his grasp this instrument of torture, whose power to agonise

depends on the tenderness and strength of the motherliness of the

wife. In the days when the law took my child from me, it virtually

said to all women: "Choose which of these two positions, as wife and

mother, you will occupy. If you are legally your husband's wife, you

can have no legal claim to your children; if legally you are your

husband's mistress, your rights as mother are secure." That stigma on

marriage is now removed.

 

One thing I gained in the Court of Appeal. The Court expressed a

strong view as to my right of access, and directed me to apply to Sir

George Jessel for it, adding that it could not doubt he would grant

it. Under cover of this I applied to the Master of the Rolls, and

obtained liberal access to the children; but I found that my visits

kept Mabel in a continual state of longing and fretting for me, while

the ingenious forms of petty insult that were devised against me and

used in the children's presence would soon become palpable to them and

cause continual pain. So, after a painful struggle with myself, I

resolved to give up the right of seeing them, feeling that thus only

could I save them from constantly recurring conflict, destructive of

all happiness and of all respect for one or the other parent.

Resolutely I turned my back on them that I might spare them trouble,

and determined that, robbed of my own, I would be a mother to all

helpless children I could aid, and cure the pain at my own heart by

soothing the pain of others.

 

As far as regards this whole struggle over the Knowlton pamphlet,

victory was finally won all along the line. Not only did we, as

related, recover all our seized pamphlets, and continue the sale till

all prosecution and threat of prosecution were definitely surrendered;

but my own tract had an enormous sale, so that when I withdrew it from

sale in June, 1891, I was offered a large sum for the copyright, an

offer which I, of course, refused. Since that time not a copy has been

sold with my knowledge or permission, but long ere that the pamphlet

had received a very complete legal vindication. For while it

circulated untouched in England, a prosecution was attempted against

it in New South Wales, but was put an end to by an eloquent and

luminous judgment by the senior puisne judge of the Supreme Court, Mr.

Justice Windmeyer, in December, 1888. This judge, the most respected

in the great Australian colony, spoke out plainly and strongly on the

morality of such teaching. "Take the case," he said, "of a woman

married to a drunken husband, steadily ruining his constitution and

hastening to the drunkard's doom, loss of employment for himself,

semi-starvation for his family, and finally death, without a shilling

to leave those whom he has brought into the world, but armed with the

authority of the law to treat his wife as his slave, ever brutally

insisting on the indulgence of his marital rights. Where is the

immorality, if, already broken in health from unresting maternity,

having already a larger family than she can support when the miserable

breadwinner has drunk himself to death, the woman avails herself of

the information given in this book, and so averts the consequences of

yielding to her husband's brutal insistence on his marital rights?

Already weighted with a family that she is unable to decently bring

up, the immorality, it seems to me, would be in the reckless and

criminal disregard of precautions which would prevent her bringing

into the world daughters whose future outlook as a career would be

prostitution, or sons whose inherited taint of alcoholism would soon

drag them down with their sisters to herd with the seething mass of

degenerate and criminal humanity that constitutes the dangerous

classes of great cities. In all these cases the appeal is from

thoughtless, unreasoning prejudice to conscience, and, if listened to,

its voice will be heard unmistakably indicating where the path of duty

lies."

 

The judge forcibly refused to be any party to the prohibition of such

a pamphlet, regarding it as of high service to the community. He said:

"So strong is the dread of the world's censure upon this topic that

few have the courage openly to express their views upon it; and its

nature is such that it is only amongst thinkers who discuss all

subjects, or amongst intimate acquaintances, that community of thought

upon the question is discovered. But let any one inquire amongst those

who have sufficient education and ability to think for themselves, and

who do not idly float, slaves to the current of conventional opinion,

and he will discover that numbers of men and women of purest lives, of

noblest aspirations, pious, cultivated, and refined, see no wrong in

teaching the ignorant that it is wrong to bring into the world

children to whom they cannot do justice, and who think it folly to

stop short in telling them simply and plainly how to prevent it. A

more robust view of morals teaches that it is puerile to ignore human

passions and human physiology. A clearer perception of truth and the

safety of trusting to it teaches that in law, as in religion, it is

useless trying to limit the knowledge of mankind by any inquisitorial

attempts to place upon a judicial Index Expurgatorius works written

with an earnest purpose, and commending themselves to thinkers of

well-balanced minds. I will be no party to any such attempt. I do not

believe that it was ever meant that the Obscene Publication Act should

apply to cases of this kind, but only to the publication of such

matter as all good men would regard as lewd and filthy, to lewd and

bawdy novels, pictures and exhibitions, evidently published and given

for lucre's sake. It could never have been intended to stifle the

expression of thought by the earnest-minded on a subject of

transcendent national importance like the present, and I will not

strain it for that purpose. As pointed out by Lord Cockburn in the

case of the Queen v. Bradlaugh and Besant, all prosecutions of this

kind should be regarded as mischievous, even by those who disapprove

the opinions sought to be stifled, inasmuch as they only tend more

widely to diffuse the teaching objected to. To those, on the other

hand, who desire its promulgation, it must be a matter of

congratulation that this, like all attempted persecutions of thinkers,

will defeat its own object, and that truth, like a torch, 'the more

it's shook it shines.'"

 

The argument of Mr. Justice Windmeyer for the Neo-Malthusian position

was (as any one may see who reads the full text of the judgment) one

of the most luminous and cogent I have ever read. The judgment was

spoken of at the time in the English press as a "brilliant triumph for

Mrs. Besant," and so I suppose it was; but no legal judgment could

undo the harm wrought on the public mind in England by malignant and

persistent misrepresentation. What that trial and its results cost me

in pain no one but myself will ever know; on the other hand, there was

the passionate gratitude evidenced by letters from thousands of poor

married women--many from the wives of country clergymen and

curates--thanking and blessing me for showing them how to escape from

the veritable hell in which they lived. The "upper classes" of society

know nothing about the way in which the poor live; how their

overcrowding destroys all sense of personal dignity, of modesty, of

outward decency, till human life, as Bishop Fraser justly said, is

"degraded below the level of the swine." To such, and among such I

went, and I could not grudge the price that then seemed to me as the

ransom for their redemption. To me, indeed, it meant the losing of all

that made life dear, but for them it seemed to be the gaining of all

that gave hope of a better future. So how could I hesitate--I whose

heart had been fired by devotion to an ideal Humanity, inspired by

that Materialism that is of love and not of hate?

 

And now, in August, 1893, we find the _Christian World,_ the

representative organ of orthodox Christian Protestantism, proclaiming

the right and the duty of voluntary limitation of the family. In a

leading article, after a number of letters had been inserted, it

said:--

 

"The conditions are assuredly wrong which bring one member of the

married partnership into a bondage so cruel. It is no less evident

that the cause of the bondage in such cases lies in the too rapid

multiplication of the family. There was a time when any idea of

voluntary limitation was regarded by pious people as interfering with

Providence. We are beyond that now, and have become capable of

recognising that Providence works through the common sense of

individual brains. We limit population just as much by deferring

marriage from prudential motives as by any action that may be taken

after it.... Apart from certain methods of limitation, the morality of

which is gravely questioned by many, there are certain

easily-understood physiological laws of the subject, the failure to

know and to observe which is inexcusable on the part either of men or

women in these circumstances. It is worth noting in this connection

that Dr. Billings, in his article in this month's _Forum_, on the

diminishing birth-rate of the United States, gives as one of the

reasons the greater diffusion of intelligence, by means of popular and

school treatises on physiology, than formerly prevailed."

 

Thus has opinion changed in sixteen years, and all the obloquy poured

on us is seen to have been the outcome of ignorance and bigotry.

 

As for the children, what was gained by their separation from me? The

moment they were old enough to free themselves, they came back to me,

my little girl's too brief stay with me being ended by her happy

marriage, and I fancy the fears expressed for her eternal future will

prove as groundless as the fears for her temporal ruin have proved to

be! Not only so, but both are treading in my steps as regards their

views of the nature and destiny of man, and have joined in their

bright youth the Theosophical Society to which, after so many

struggles, I won my way.

 

The struggle on the right to discuss the prudential restraint of

population did not, however, conclude without a martyr. Mr. Edward

Truelove, alluded to above, was prosecuted for selling a treatise by

Robert Dale Owen on "Moral Physiology," and a pamphlet entitled,

"Individual, Family, and National Poverty." He was tried on February

1, 1878, before the Lord Chief Justice in the Court of Queen's Bench,

and was most ably defended by Professor W.A. Hunter. The jury spent

two hours in considering their verdict, and returned into court and

stated that they were unable to agree. The majority of the jury were

ready to convict, if they felt sure that Mr. Truelove would not be

punished, but one of them boldly declared in court: "As to the book,

it is written in plain language for plain people, and I think that

many more persons ought to know what the contents of the book are."

The jury was discharged, in consequence of this one man's courage, but

Mr. Truelove's persecutors--the Vice Society--were determined not to

let their victim free. They proceeded to trial a second time, and

wisely endeavoured to secure a special jury, feeling that as

prudential restraint would raise wages by limiting the supply of

labour, they would be more likely to obtain a verdict from a jury of

"gentlemen" than from one composed of workers. This attempt was

circumvented by Mr. Truelove's legal advisers, who let a _procedendo_

go which sent back the trial to the Old Bailey. The second trial was

held on May 16th at the Central Criminal Court before Baron Pollock

and a common jury, Professor Hunter and Mr. J.M. Davidson appearing

for the defence. The jury convicted, and the brave old man,

sixty-eight years of age, was condemned to four months' imprisonment

and Ł50 fine for selling a pamphlet which had been sold unchallenged,

during a period of forty-five years, by James Watson, George Jacob

Holyoake, Austin Holyoake, and Charles Watts. Mr. Grain, the counsel

employed by the Vice Society, most unfairly used against Mr. Truelove

my "Law of Population," a pamphlet which contained, Baron Pollock

said, "the head and front of the offence in the other [the Knowlton]

case." I find an indignant protest against this odious unfairness in

the _National Reformer_ for May 19th: "My 'Law of Population' was used

against Mr. Truelove as an aggravation of his offence, passing over

the utter meanness--worthy only of Collette--of using against a

prisoner a book whose author has never been attacked for writing

it--does Mr. Collette, or do the authorities, imagine that the

severity shown to Mr. Truelove will in any fashion deter me from

continuing the Malthusian propaganda? Let me here assure them, one and

all, that it will do nothing of the kind; I shall continue to sell the

'Law of Population' and to advocate scientific checks to population,

just as though Mr. Collette and his Vice Society were all dead and

buried. In commonest justice they are bound to prosecute me, and if

they get, and keep, a verdict against me, and succeed in sending me to

prison, they will only make people more anxious to read my book, and

make me more personally powerful as a teacher of the views which they

attack."

 

A persistent attempt was made to obtain a writ of error in Mr.

Truelove's case, but the Tory Attorney-General, Sir John Holker,

refused it, although the ground on which it was asked was one of the

grounds on which a similar writ had been granted to Mr. Bradlaugh and

myself. Mr. Truelove was therefore compelled to suffer his sentence,

but memorials, signed by 11,000 persons, asking for his release, were

sent to the Home Secretary from every part of the country, and a

crowded meeting in St. James's Hall, London, demanded his liberation

with only six dissentients. The whole agitation did not shorten Mr.

Truelove's sentence by a single day, and he was not released from

Coldbath Fields Prison until September 5th. On the 12th of the same

month the Hall of Science was crowded with enthusiastic friends, who

assembled to do him honour, and he was presented with a

beautifully-illuminated address and a purse containing Ł177

(subsequent subscriptions raised the amount to Ł197 16s. 6d.).

 

It is scarcely necessary to say that one of the results of the

prosecution was a great agitation throughout the country, and a wide

popularisation of Malthusian views. Some huge demonstrations were held

in favour of free discussion; on one occasion the Free Trade Hall,

Manchester, was crowded to the doors; on another the Star Music Hall,

Bradford, was crammed in every corner; on another the Town Hall,

Birmingham, had not a seat or a bit of standing-room unoccupied.

Wherever we went, separately or together, it was the same story, and

not only were Malthusian lectures eagerly attended, and Malthusian

literature eagerly bought, but curiosity brought many to listen to our

Radical and Freethought lectures, and thousands heard for the first

time what Secularism really meant. The Press, both London and

provincial, agreed in branding the prosecution as foolish, and it was

generally remarked that it resulted only in the wider circulation of

the indicted book, and the increased popularity of those who had stood

for the right of publication. The furious attacks since made upon us

have been made chiefly by those who differ from us in theological

creed, and who have found a misrepresentation of our prosecution

served them as a convenient weapon of attack. During the last few

years public opinion has been gradually coming round to our side, in

consequence of the pressure of poverty resulting from widespread

depression of trade, and during the sensation caused in 1884 by "The

Bitter Cry of Outcast London," many writers in the _Daily

News_--notably Mr. G.R. Sims--boldly alleged that the distress was to

a great extent due to the large families of the poor, and mentioned

that we had been prosecuted for giving the very knowledge which would

bring salvation to the sufferers in our great cities.

 

Among the useful results of the prosecution was the establishment of

the Malthusian League, "to agitate for the abolition of all penalties

on the public discussion of the population question," and "to spread

among the people, by all practicable means, a knowledge of the law of

population, of its consequences, and of its bearing upon human conduct

and morals." The first general meeting of the League was held at the

Hall of Science on July 26, 1877, and a council of twenty persons was

elected, and this council on August 2nd elected Dr. C.R. Drysdale,

M.D., President; Mr. Swaagman, Treasurer; Mrs. Besant, Secretary; Mr.

Shearer, Assistant-Secretary; and Mr. Hember, Financial Secretary.

Since 1877 the League, under the same indefatigable president, has

worked hard to carry out its objects; it has issued a large number of

leaflets and tracts; it supports a monthly journal, the _Malthusian;_

numerous lectures have been delivered under its auspices in all parts

of the country; and it has now a medical branch, into which none but

duly qualified medical men and women are admitted, with members in all

European countries.

 

Another result of the prosecution was the accession of "D." to the

staff of the _National Reformer_. This able and thoughtful writer came

forward and joined our ranks as soon as he heard of the attack on us,

and he further volunteered to conduct the journal during our expected

imprisonment. From that time to this--a period of fifteen

years--articles from his pen appeared in its columns week by week, and

during all that time not one solitary difficulty arose between editors

and contributor. In public a trustworthy colleague, in private a warm

and sincere friend, "D." proved an unmixed benefit bestowed upon us by

the prosecution.

 

Nor was "D." the only friend brought to us by our foes. I cannot ever

think of that time without remembering that the prosecution brought me

first into close intimacy with Mrs. Annie Parris--the wife of Mr.

Touzeau Parris, the Secretary of the Defence Committee throughout all

the fight--a lady who, during that long struggle, and during the, for

me, far worse struggle that succeeded it, over the custody of my

daughter, proved to me the most loving and sisterly of friends. One or

two other friendships which will, I hope, last my life, date from that

same time of strife and anxiety.

 

The amount of money subscribed by the public during the Knowlton and

succeeding prosecutions gives some idea of the interest felt in the

struggle. The Defence Fund Committee in March, 1878, presented a

balance-sheet, showing subscriptions amounting to Ł1,292 5s. 4d., and

total expenditure in the Queen v. Bradlaugh and Besant, the Queen v.

Truelove, and the appeal against Mr. Vaughan's order (the last two up

to date) of Ł1,274 10s. This account was then closed and the balance

of Ł17 15s. 4d. passed on to a new fund for the defence of Mr.

Truelove, the carrying on of the appeal against the destruction of the

Knowlton pamphlet, and the bearing of the costs incident on the

petition lodged against myself. In July this new fund had reached Ł196

16s. 7d., and after paying the remainder of the costs in Mr.

Truelove's case, a balance of Ł26 15s. 2d. was carried on. This again

rose to Ł247 15s. 2-1/2d., and the fund bore the expenses of Mr.

Bradlaugh's successful appeal on the Knowlton pamphlet, the petition

and subsequent proceedings in which I was concerned in the Court of

Chancery, and an appeal on Mr. Truelove's behalf, unfortunately

unsuccessful, against an order for the destruction of the Dale Owen

pamphlet. This last decision was given on February 21, 1880, and on

this the Defence Fund was closed. On Mr. Truelove's release, as

mentioned above, a testimonial to the amount of Ł197 16s. 6d. was

presented to him, and after the close of the struggle some anonymous

friend sent to me personally Ł200 as "thanks for the courage and

ability shown." In addition to all this, the Malthusian League

received no less than Ł455 11s. 9d. during the first year of its life,

and started on its second year with a balance in hand of Ł77 5s. 8d.

 

A somewhat similar prosecution in America, in which the bookseller,

Mr. D.M. Bennett, sold a book with which he did not agree, and was

imprisoned, led to our giving him a warm welcome when, after his

release, he visited England. We entertained him at the Hall of Science

at a crowded gathering, and I was deputed as spokesman to present him

with a testimonial. This I did in the following speech, quoted here in

order to show the spirit then animating me:--

 

"Friends, Mr. Bradlaugh has spoken of the duty that calls us here

to-night. It is pleasant to think that in our work that duty is one to

which we are not unaccustomed. In our army there are more true

soldiers than traitors, more that are faithful to the trust of keeping

the truth than those who shrink when the hour of danger comes. And I

would ask Mr. Bennett to-night not to measure English feeling towards

him by the mere number of those present. They that are here are

representatives of many thousands of our fellow-countrymen. Glance

down this middle table, and you will see that it is not without some

right that we claim to welcome you in the name of multitudes of the

citizens of England. There are those who taunt us with want of

loyalty, and with the name of infidels. In what church will they find

men and women more loyal to truth and conscience? The name infidel is

not for us so long as we are faithful to the truth we know. If I

speak, as I have done, of national representation in this hall this

evening, tell me, you who know those who sit here, who have watched

some of them for years, others of them but for a brief time, do I not

speak truth? Take them one by one. Your President but a little while

ago in circumstances similar to those wherein our guest himself was

placed, with the true lover's keenness that recognises the mistress

under all disguise, beholding his mistress Liberty in danger, under

circumstances that would have blinded less sure eyes, leapt to her

rescue. He risked the ambition of his life rather than be disloyal to

liberty. And next is seated a woman, who, student of a noble

profession, thought that liberty had greater claim upon her than even

her work. When we stood in worse peril than even loss of liberty, she

risked her own good name for the truth's sake. One also is here who,

eminent in his own profession, came with the weight of his position

and his right to speak, and gave a kindred testimony. One step

further, and you see one who, soldier to liberty, throughout a long

and spotless life, when the task was far harder than it is to-day,

when there were no greetings, no welcomes, when to serve was to peril

name as well as liberty, never flinched from the first until now. He

is crowned with the glory of the jail, that was his for no crime but

for claiming the right to publish that wherein the noblest thought is

uttered in the bravest words. And next to him is another who speaks

for liberty, who has brought culture, university degree, position in

men's sight, and many friends, and cast them all at her beloved feet.

Sir, not alone the past and the present greet you to-night. The future

also greets you with us. We have here also those who are training

themselves to walk in the footsteps of the one most dear to them, who

shall carry on, when we have passed away, the work which we shall have

dropped from our hands. But he whom we delight to honour at this hour

in truth honours us, in that he allows us to offer him the welcome

that it is our glory and our pleasure to give. He has fought bravely.

The Christian creed had in its beginning more traitors and less true

hearts than the creed of to-day. We are happy to-day not only in the

thought of what manner of men we have for leaders, but in the thought

of what manner of men we have as soldiers in our army. Jesus had

twelve apostles. One betrayed Him for thirty pieces of silver; a

second denied Him. They all forsook Him and fled. We can scarcely

point to one who has thus deserted our sacred cause. The traditions of

our party tell us of many who went to jail because they claimed for

all that right of free speech which is the heritage of all. One of the

most famous members of our body in England, Richard Carlile, turned

bookseller to sell books that were prosecuted. This man became

Free-thinker, driven thereto by the bigotry and wickedness of the

Churches. He sold the books of Hone not because he agreed with them,

but because Hone was prosecuted. He saw that the book in whose

prosecution freedom was attacked was the book for the freeman to sell;

and the story of our guest shows that in all this England and America

are one. Those who gave Milton to the world can yet bring forth men of

the same stamp in continents leagues asunder. Because our friend was

loyal and true, prison had to him no dread. It was far, far less of

dishonour to wear the garb of the convict than to wear that of the

hypocrite. The society we represent, like his society in America,

pleads for free thought, speaks for free speech, claims for every one,

however antagonistic, the right to speak the thought he feels. It is

better that this should be, even though the thought be wrong, for thus

the sooner will its error be discovered--better if the thought be

right, for then the sooner does the gladness of a new truth find place

in the heart of man. As the mouthpiece, Sir, of our National Secular

Society, and of its thousands of members, I speak to you now:--

 

"'ADDRESS.

 

"'_We seek for Truth_.'

 

"'To D.M. Bennett.

 

"'In asking you to accept at the hands of the National Secular Society

of England this symbol of cordial sympathy and brotherly welcome, we

are but putting into act the motto of our Society. "We seek for Truth"

is our badge, and it is as Truthseeker that we do you homage to-night.

Without free speech no search for Truth is possible; without free

speech no discovery of Truth is useful; without free speech progress

is checked, and the nations no longer march forward towards the nobler

life which the future holds for man. Better a thousandfold abuse of

free speech than denial of free speech. The abuse dies in a day; the

denial slays the life of the people and entombs the hope of the race.

 

"'In your own country you have pleaded for free speech, and when,

under a wicked and an odious law, one of your fellow-citizens was

imprisoned for the publication of his opinions, you, not sharing the

opinions but faithful to liberty, sprang forward to defend in him the

principle of free speech which you claimed for yourself, and sold his

book while he lay in prison. For this act you were in turn arrested

and sent to jail, and the country which won its freedom by the aid of

Paine in the eighteenth century disgraced itself in the nineteenth by

the imprisonment of a heretic. The Republic of the United States

dishonoured herself, and not you, in Albany penitentiary. Two hundred

thousand of your countrymen pleaded for your release, but bigotry was

too strong. We sent you greeting in your captivity; we rejoiced when

the time came for your release. We offer you to-night our thanks and

our hope--thanks for the heroism which never flinched in the hour of

battle, hope for a more peaceful future, in which the memory of a past

pain may be a sacred heritage and not a regret.

 

"'Charles Bradlaugh, _President_.'

 

"Soldier of liberty, we give you this. Do in the future the same good

service that you have done in the past, and your reward shall be in

the love that true men shall bear to you."

 

That, however, which no force could compel me to do, which I refused

to threats of fine and prison, to separation from my children, to

social ostracism, and to insults and ignominy worse to bear than

death, I surrendered freely when all the struggle was over, and a

great part of society and of public opinion had adopted the view that

cost Mr. Bradlaugh and myself so dear. I may as well complete the

story here, so as not to have to refer to it again. I gave up

Neo-Malthusianism in April, 1891, its renunciation being part of the

outcome of two years' instruction from Mdme. H.P. Blavatsky, who

showed me that however justifiable Neo-Malthusianism might be while

man was regarded only as the most perfect outcome of physical

evolution, it was wholly incompatible with the view of man as a

spiritual being, whose material form and environment were the results

of his own mental activity. Why and how I embraced Theosophy, and

accepted H.P. Blavatsky as teacher, will soon be told in its proper

place. Here I am concerned only with the why and how of my

renunciation of the Neo-Malthusian teaching, for which I had fought so

hard and suffered so much.

 

When I built my life on the basis of Materialism I judged all actions

by their effect on human happiness in this world now and in future

generations, regarding man as an organism that lived on earth and

there perished, with activities confined to earth and limited by

physical laws. The object of life was the ultimate building-up of a

physically, mentally, morally perfect man by the cumulative effects of

heredity--mental and moral tendencies being regarded as the outcome of

material conditions, to be slowly but surely evolved by rational

selection and the transmission to offspring of qualities carefully

acquired by, and developed in, parents. The most characteristic note

of this serious and lofty Materialism had been struck by Professor W.

K. Clifford in his noble article on the "Ethics of Belief."

 

Taking this view of human duty in regard to the rational co-operation

with nature in the evolution of the human race, it became of the first

importance to rescue the control of the generation of offspring from

mere blind brute passion, and to transfer it to the reason and to the

intelligence; to impress on parents the sacredness of the parental

office, the tremendous responsibility of the exercise of the creative

function. And since, further, one of the most pressing problems for

solution in the older countries is that of poverty, the horrible slums

and dens into which are crowded and in which are festering families of

eight and ten children, whose parents are earning an uncertain 10s.,

12s., 15s., and 20s. a week; since an immediate palliative is wanted,

if popular risings impelled by starvation are to be avoided; since the

lives of men and women of the poorer classes, and of the worst paid

professional classes, are one long, heart-breaking struggle "to make

both ends meet and keep respectable"; since in the middle class

marriage is often avoided, or delayed till late in life, from the

dread of the large family, and late marriage is followed by its

shadow, the prevalence of vice and the moral and social ruin of

thousands of women; for these, and many other reasons, the teaching of

the duty of limiting the family within the means of subsistence is the

logical outcome of Materialism linked with the scientific view of

evolution, and with a knowledge of the physical law, by which

evolution is accelerated or retarded. Seeking to improve the physical

type, scientific Materialism, it seemed to me, must forbid parentage

to any but healthy married couples; it must restrict childbearing

within the limits consistent with the thorough health and physical

well-being of the mother; it must impose it as a duty never to bring

children into the world unless the conditions for their fair nurture

and development are present. Regarding it as hopeless, as well as

mischievous, to preach asceticism, and looking on the conjunction of

nominal celibacy with widespread prostitution as inevitable, from the

constitution of human nature, scientific Materialism--quite rationally

and logically--advises deliberate restriction of the production of

offspring, while sanctioning the exercise of the sexual instinct

within the limits imposed by temperance, the highest physical and

mental efficiency, the good order and dignity of society, and the

self-respect of the individual.

 

In all this there is nothing which for one moment implies approval of

licentiousness, profligacy, unbridled self-indulgence. On the

contrary, it is a well-considered and intellectually-defensible scheme

of human evolution, regarding all natural instincts as matters for

regulation, not for destruction, and seeking to develop the perfectly

healthy and well-balanced physical body as the necessary basis for the

healthy and well-balanced mind. If the premises of Materialism be

true, there is no answer to the Neo-Malthusian conclusions; for even

those Socialists who have bitterly opposed the promulgation of

Neo-Malthusianism--regarding it as a "red herring intended to draw the

attention of the proletariat away from the real cause of poverty, the

monopoly of land and capital by a class"--admit that when society is

built on the foundation of common property in all that is necessary

for the production of wealth, the time will come for the consideration

of the population question. Nor do I now see, any more than I saw

then, how any Materialist can rationally avoid the Neo-Malthusian

position. For if man be the outcome of purely physical causes, it is

with these that we must deal in guiding his future evolution. If he be

related but to terrestrial existence, he is but the loftiest organism

of earth; and, failing to see his past and his future, how should my

eyes not have been then blinded to the deep-lying causes of his

present woe? I brought a material cure to a disease which appeared to

me to be of material origin; but how when the evil came from a subtler

source, and its causes lay not on the material plane? How if the

remedy only set up new causes for a future evil, and, while

immediately a palliative, strengthened the disease itself, and ensured

its reappearance in the future? This was the view of the problem set

before me by H.P. Blavatsky when she unrolled the story of man, told

of his origin and his destiny, showed me the forces that went to the

making of man, and the true relation between his past, his present,

and his future.

 

For what is man in the light of Theosophy? He is a spiritual

intelligence, eternal and uncreate, treading a vast cycle of human

experience, born and reborn on earth millennium after millennium,

evolving slowly into the ideal man. He is not the product of matter,

but is encased in matter, and the forms of matter with which he

clothes himself are of his own making. For the intelligence and will

of man are creative forces--not creative _ex nihilo_, but creative as

is the brain of the painter--and these forces are exercised by man in

every act of thought. Thus he is ever creating round him

thought-forms, moulding subtlest matter into shape by these energies,

forms which persist as tangible realities when the body of the thinker

has long gone back to earth and air and water. When the time for

rebirth into this earth-life comes for the soul these thought-forms,

its own progeny, help to form the tenuous model into which the

molecules of physical matter are builded for the making of the body,

and matter is thus moulded for the new body in which the soul is to

dwell, on the lines laid down by the intelligent and volitional life

of the previous, or of many previous, incarnations. So does each man

create for himself in verity the form wherein he functions, and what

he is in his present is the inevitable outcome of his own creative

energies in his past. Applying this to the Neo-Malthusian theory, we

see in sexual love not only a passion which man has in common with the

brute, and which forms, at the present stage of evolution, a necessary

part of human nature, but an animal passion that may be trained and

purified into a human emotion, which may be used as one of the levers

in human progress, one of the factors in human growth. But, instead of

this, man in the past has made his intellect the servant of his

passions; the abnormal development of the sexual instinct in man--in

whom it is far greater and more continuous than in any brute--is due

to the mingling with it of the intellectual element, all sexual

thoughts, desires, and imaginations having created thought-forms,

which have been wrought into the human race, giving rise to a

continual demand, far beyond nature, and in marked contrast with the

temperance of normal animal life. Hence it has become one of the most

fruitful sources of human misery and human degradation, and the

satisfaction of its imperious cravings in civilised countries lies at

the root of our worst social evils. This excessive development has to

be fought against, and the instinct reduced within natural limits, and

this will certainly never be done by easy-going self-indulgence within

the marital relation any more than by self-indulgence outside it. By

none other road than that of self-control and self-denial can men and

women now set going the causes which will build for them brains and

bodies of a higher type for their future return to earth-life. They

have to hold this instinct in complete control, to transmute it from

passion into tender and self-denying affection, to develop the

intellectual at the expense of the animal, and thus to raise the whole

man to the human stage, in which every intellectual and physical

capacity shall subserve the purposes of the soul. From all this it

follows that Theosophists should sound the note of self-restraint

within marriage, and the gradual--for with the mass it cannot be

sudden--restriction of the sexual relation to the perpetuation of the

race.

 

Such was the bearing of Theosophical teaching on Neo-Malthusianism, as

laid before me by H.P. Blavatsky, and when I urged, out of my bitter

knowledge of the miseries endured by the poor, that it surely might,

for a time at least, be recommended as a palliative, as a defence in

the hands of a woman against intolerable oppression and enforced

suffering, she bade me look beyond the moment, and see how the

suffering must come back and back with every generation, unless we

sought to remove the roots of wrong. "I do not judge a woman," she

said, "who has resort to such means of defence in the midst of

circumstances so evil, and whose ignorance of the real causes of all

this misery is her excuse for snatching at any relief. But it is not

for you, an Occultist, to continue to teach a method which you now

know must tend to the perpetuation of the sorrow." I felt that she was

right, and though I shrank from the decision--for my heart somewhat

failed me at withdrawing from the knowledge of the poor, so far as I

could, a temporary palliative of evils which too often wreck their

lives and bring many to an early grave, worn old before even middle

age has touched them--yet the decision was made. I refused to reprint

the "Law of Population," or to sell the copyright, giving pain, as I

sadly knew, to all the brave and loyal friends who had so generously

stood by me in that long and bitter struggle, and who saw the results

of victory thrown away on grounds to them inadequate and mistaken!

Will it always be, I wonder, in man's climbing upward, that every step

must be set on his own heart and on the hearts of those he loves?

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER X.

 

AT WAR ALL ROUND.

 

 

Coming back to my work after my long and dangerous illness, I took up

again its thread, heartsick, but with courage unshaken, and I find

myself in the _National Reformer_ for September 15, 1878, saying in a

brief note of thanks that "neither the illness nor the trouble which

produced it has in any fashion lessened my determination to work for

the cause." In truth, I plunged into work with added vigour, for only

in that did I find any solace, but the pamphlets written at this time

against Christianity were marked with considerable bitterness, for it

was Christianity that had robbed me of my child, and I struck

mercilessly at it in return. In the political struggles of that time,

when the Beaconsfield Government was in full swing, with its policy of

annexation and aggression, I played my part with tongue and pen, and

my articles in defence of an honest and liberty-loving policy in

India, against the invasion of Afghanistan and other outrages, laid in

many an Indian heart a foundation of affection for me, and seem to me

now as a preparation for the work among Indians to which much of my

time and thought to-day are given. In November of this same year

(1878) I wrote a little book on "England, India, and Afghanistan" that

has brought me many a warm letter of thanks, and with this, the

carrying on of the suit against Mr. Besant before alluded to, two and

often three lectures every Sunday, to say nothing of the editorial

work on the _National Reformer_, the secretarial work on the

Malthusian League, and stray lectures during the week, my time was

fairly well filled. But I found that in my reading I developed a

tendency to let my thoughts wander from the subject in hand, and that

they would drift after my lost little one, so I resolved to fill up

the gaps in my scientific education, and to amuse myself by reading up

for some examinations; I thought it would serve as an absorbing form

of recreation from my other work, and would at the same time, by

making my knowledge exact, render me more useful as a speaker on

behalf of the causes to which my life was given.

 

At the opening of the new year (1879) I met for the first time a man

to whom I subsequently owed much in this department of work--Edward B.

Aveling, a D.Sc. of London University, and a marvellously able teacher

of scientific subjects, the very ablest, in fact, that I have ever

met. Clear and accurate in his knowledge, with a singular gift for

lucid exposition, enthusiastic in his love of science, and taking

vivid pleasure in imparting his knowledge to others, he was an ideal

teacher. This young man, in January, 1879, began writing under

initials for the _National Reformer_, and in February I became his

pupil, with the view of matriculating in June at the London

University, an object which was duly accomplished. And here let me say

to any one in mental trouble, that they might find an immense relief

in taking up some intellectual recreation of this kind; during that

spring, in addition to my ordinary work of writing, lecturing, and

editing--and the lecturing meant travelling from one end of England to

the other--I translated a fair-sized French volume, and had the

wear-and-tear of pleading my case for the custody of my daughter in

the Court of Appeal, as well as the case before the Master of the

Rolls; and I found it the very greatest relief to turn to algebra,

geometry, and physics, and forget the harassing legal struggles in

wrestling with formulae and problems. The full access I gained to my

children marked a step in the long battle of Freethinkers against

disabilities, for, as noted in the _National Reformer_ by Mr.

Bradlaugh, it was "won with a pleading unequalled in any case on

record for the boldness of its affirmation of Freethought," a pleading

of which he generously said that it deserved well of the party as "the

most powerful pleading for freedom of opinion to which it has ever

been our good fortune to listen."

 

In the London _Daily News_ some powerful letters of protest appeared,

one from Lord Harberton, in which he declared that "the Inquisition

acted on no other principle" than that applied to me; and a second

from Mr. Band, in which he sarcastically observed that "this Christian

community has for some time had the pleasure of seeing her Majesty's

courts repeatedly springing engines of torture upon a young mother--a

clergyman's wife who dared to disagree with his creed--and her evident

anguish, her long and expensive struggles to save her child, have

proved that so far as heretical mothers are concerned modern defenders

of the faith need not envy the past those persuasive instruments which

so long secured the unity of the Church. In making Mrs. Besant an

example, the Master of the Rolls and Lord Justice James have been

careful not to allow any of the effect to be lost by confusion of the

main point--the intellectual heresy--with side questions. There was a

Malthusian matter in the case, but the judges were very clear in

stating that without any reference whatever to that, they would

simply, on the ground of Mrs. Besant's 'religious, or anti-religious,

opinions,' take her child from her." The great provincial papers took

a similar tone, the _Manchester Examiner_ going so far as to say of

the ruling of the judges: "We do not say they have done so wrongly. We

only say that the effect of their judgment is cruel, and it shows that

the holding of unpopular opinions is, in the eye of the law, an

offence which, despite all we had thought to the contrary, may be

visited with the severest punishment a woman and a mother can be

possibly called on to bear." The outcome of all this long struggle and

of another case of sore injustice--in which Mrs. Agar-Ellis, a Roman

Catholic, was separated from her children by a judicial decision

obtained against her by her husband, a Protestant--was a change in the

law which had vested all power over the children in the hands of the

father, and from thenceforth the rights of the married mother were

recognised to a limited extent. A small side-fight was with the

National Sunday League, the president of which, Lord Thurlow, strongly

objected to me as one of the vice-presidents. Mr. P.A. Taylor and

others at once resigned their offices, and, on the calling of a

general meeting, Lord Thurlow was rejected as president. Mr. P.A.

Taylor was requested to assume the presidency, and the vice-presidents

who had resigned were, with myself, re-elected. Little battles of this

sort were a running accompaniment of graver struggles during all these

battling years.

 

And through all the struggles the organised strength of the

Freethought party grew, 650 new members being enrolled in the National

Secular Society in the year 1878-79, and in July, 1879, the public

adhesion of Dr. Edward B. Aveling brought into the ranks a pen of rare

force and power, and gave a strong impulse to the educational side of

our movement. I presided for him at his first lecture at the Hall of

Science on August 10, 1879, and he soon paid the penalty of his

boldness, finding himself, a few months later, dismissed from the

Chair of Comparative Anatomy at the London Hospital, though the Board

admitted that all his duties were discharged with punctuality and

ability. One of the first results of his adhesion was the

establishment of two classes under the Science and Art Department at

South Kensington, and these grew year after year, attended by numbers

of young men and women, till in 1883 we had thirteen classes in full

swing, as well as Latin, and London University Matriculation classes;

all these were taught by Dr. Aveling and pupils that he had trained. I

took advanced certificates, one in honours, and so became qualified as

a science teacher in eight different sciences, and Alice and Hypatia

Bradlaugh followed a similar course, so that winter after winter we

kept these classes going from September to the following May, from

1879 until the year 1888. In addition to these Miss Bradlaugh carried

on a choral union.

 

Personally I found that this study and teaching together with

attendance at classes held for teachers at South Kensington, the study

for passing the First B.Sc. and Prel. Sc. Examinations at London

University, and the study for the B.Sc. degree at London, at which I

failed in practical chemistry three times--a thing that puzzled me not

a little at the time, as I had passed a far more difficult practical

chemical examination for teachers at South Kensington--all this gave

me a knowledge of science that has stood me in good stead in my public

work. But even here theological and social hatred pursued me.

 

When Miss Bradlaugh and myself applied for permission to attend the

botany class at University College, we were refused, I for my sins,

and she only for being her father's daughter; when I had qualified as

teacher, I stood back from claiming recognition from the Department

for a year in order not to prejudice the claims of Mr. Bradlaugh's

daughters, and later, when I had been recognised, Sir Henry Tyler in

the House of Commons attacked the Education Department for accepting

me, and actually tried to prevent the Government grant being paid to

the Hall of Science Schools because Dr. Aveling, the Misses Bradlaugh,

and myself were unbelievers in Christianity. When I asked permission

to go to the Botanical Gardens in Regent's Park the curator refused

it, on the ground that his daughters studied there. On every side

repulse and insult, hard to struggle against, bitter to bear. It was

against difficulties of this kind on every side that we had to make

our way, handicapped in every effort by our heresy. Let our work be as

good as it might--and our Science School was exceptionally

successful--the subtle fragrance of heresy was everywhere

distinguishable, and when Mr. Bradlaugh and myself are blamed for

bitterness in our anti-Christian advocacy, this constant gnawing

annoyance and petty persecution should be taken into account. For him

it was especially trying, for he saw his daughters--girls of ability

and of high character, whose only crime was that they were

his--insulted, sneered at, slandered, continually put at a

disadvantage, because they were his children and loved and honoured

him beyond all others.

 

It was in October, 1879, that I first met Herbert Burrows, though I

did not become intimately acquainted with him till the Socialist

troubles of the autumn of 1887 drew us into a common stream of work.

He came as a delegate from the Tower Hamlets Radical Association to a

preliminary conference, called by Mr. Bradlaugh, at the Hall of

Science, on October 11th, to consider the advisability of holding a

great London Convention on Land Law Reform, to be attended by

delegates from all parts of the kingdom. He was appointed on the

Executive Committee with Mr. Bradlaugh, Mr. Mottershead, Mr. Nieass,

and others. The Convention was successfully held, and an advanced

platform of Land Law Reform adopted, used later by Mr. Bradlaugh as a

basis for some of the proposals he laid before Parliament.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER XI.

 

MR. BRADLAUGH'S STRUGGLE.

 

 

And now dawned the year 1880, the memorable year in which commenced

Mr. Bradlaugh's long Parliamentary battle. After a long and bitter

struggle he was elected, with Mr. Labouchere, as member for

Northampton, at the general election, and so the prize so long fought

for was won. Shall I ever forget that election day, April 2, 1880? How

at four o'clock Mr. Bradlaugh came into the room at the "George",

where his daughters and I were sitting, flung himself into a chair

with, "There's nothing more to do; our last man is polled." Then the

waiting for the declaration through the long, weary hours of suspense,

till as the time drew near we knelt by the window listening--listening

to the hoarse murmur of the crowd, knowing that presently there would

be a roar of triumph or a howl of anger when the numbers were read out

from the steps of the Town Hall. And now silence sank, and we knew the

moment had come, and we held our breath, and then--a roar, a wild roar

of joy and exultation, cheer after cheer, ringing, throbbing, pealing,

and then the mighty surge of the crowd bringing him back, their member

at last, waving hats, handkerchiefs, a very madness of tumultuous

delight, and the shrill strains of "Bradlaugh for Northampton!" with a

ring of triumph in them they had never had before. And he, very grave,

somewhat shaken by the outpour of love and exultation, very silent,

feeling the weight of new responsibility more than the gladness of

victory. And then the next morning, as he left the town, the mass of

men and women, one sea of heads from hotel to station, every window

crowded, his colours waving everywhere, men fighting to get near him,

to touch him, women sobbing, the cries, "Our Charlie, our Charlie;

we've got you and we'll keep you." How they loved him, how they joyed

in the triumph won after twelve years of strife. Ah me! we thought the

struggle over, and it was only beginning; we thought our hero

victorious, and a fiercer, crueller fight lay in front. True, he was

to win that fight, but his life was to be the price of the winning;

victory for him was to be final, complete, but the laurel-wreath was

to fall upon a grave.

 

[Illustration: _From a photograph by T. Westley, 57, Vernon Street,

Northampton._ CHARLES BRADLAUGH AND HENRY LABOUCHERE.]

 

The outburst of anger from the more bigoted of the Christian community

was as savage as the outburst of delight had been exultant, but we

recked little of it. Was he not member, duly elected, without

possibility of assailment in his legal right? Parliament was to meet

on April 29th, the swearing-in beginning on the following day, and Mr.

Bradlaugh had taken counsel with some other Freethinking members as to

the right of Freethinkers to affirm. He held that under the Act 29 and

30 Vict. c. 19, and the Evidence Amendment Acts 1869 and 1870, the

right to substitute affirmation for oath was clear; he was willing to

take the oath as a necessary form if obligatory, but, believing it to

be optional, he preferred affirmation. On May 3rd he presented himself

and, according to the evidence of Sir Erskine May, the Clerk of the

House, given before the second Select Committee on his case, he "came

to the table and delivered the following statement in writing to the

Clerk: 'To the Right Honourable the Speaker of the House of Commons.

I, the undersigned, Charles Bradlaugh, beg respectfully to claim to be

allowed to affirm, as a person for the time being by law permitted to

make a solemn affirmation or declaration, instead of taking an oath.

(Signed) Charles Bradlaugh.' And being asked by the Clerk upon what

grounds he claimed to make an affirmation, he answered: 'By virtue of

the Evidence Amendment Acts, 1869 and 1870.' Whereupon the Clerk

reported to Mr. Speaker" the claim, and Mr. Speaker told Mr. Bradlaugh

that he might address the House on the matter. "Mr. Bradlaugh's

observations were very short. He repeated that he relied upon the

Evidence Further Amendment Act, 1869, and the Evidence Amendment Act,

1870, adding: 'I have repeatedly, for nine years past, made an

affirmation in the highest courts of jurisdiction in this realm. I am

ready to make such a declaration or affirmation.' Substantially those

were the words which he addressed to the Speaker." This was the

simple, quiet, and dignified scene which took place in the House. Mr.

Bradlaugh was directed to withdraw, and he withdrew, and, after

debate, a Select Committee was appointed to consider whether he could

make affirmation; that Committee decided against the claim, and gave

in its report on May 20th. On the following day Mr. Bradlaugh

presented himself at the table of the House to take the oath in the

form prescribed by the law, and on the objection of Sir Henry Drummond

Wolff, who submitted a motion that he should not be allowed to take

the oath, another Committee was appointed.

 

Before this Committee Mr. Bradlaugh stated his case, and pointed out

that the legal obligation lay on him to take the oath, adding: "Any

form that I went through, any oath that I took, I should regard as

binding upon my conscience in the fullest degree. I would go through

no form, I would take no oath, unless I meant it to be so binding." He

wrote in the same sense to the _Times_, saying that he should regard

himself "as bound, not by the letter of its words, but by the spirit

which the affirmation would have conveyed, had I been permitted to use

it." The Committee reported against him, and on June 23rd he was heard

at the Bar of the House, and made a speech so self-restrained, so

noble, so dignified, that the House, in defiance of all its own rules,

broke out over and over again into applause. In the debate that

preceded his speech, members had lost sight of the ordinary rules of

decency, and had used expressions against myself wholly gratuitous in

such a quarrel; the grave rebuke to him who "was wanting in chivalry,

because, while I can answer for myself and am able to answer for

myself, nothing justified the introduction of any other name beside my

own to make prejudice against me," brought irrepressible cheers. His

appeal was wholly to the law. "I have not yet used--I trust no passion

may tempt me into using--any words that would seem to savour of even a

desire to enter into conflict with this House. I have always taught,

preached, and believed the supremacy of Parliament, and it is not

because for a moment the judgment of one Chamber of Parliament should

be hostile to me that I am going to deny the ideas I have always held;

but I submit that one Chamber of Parliament--even its grandest

Chamber, as I have always held this to be--had no right to override

the law. The law gives me the right to sign that roll, to take and

subscribe the oath, and to take my seat there [with a gesture towards

the benches]. I admit that the moment I am in the House, without any

reason but your own good will, you can send me away. That is your

right. You have full control over your members. But you cannot send me

away until I have been heard in my place, not a suppliant as I am now,

but with the rightful audience that each member has always had.... I

am ready to admit, if you please, for the sake of argument, that every

opinion I hold is wrong and deserves punishment. Let the law punish

it. If you say the law cannot, then you admit that you have no right,

and I appeal to public opinion against the iniquity of a decision

which overrides the law and denies me justice. I beg your pardon, sir,

and that of the House too, if in this warmth there seems to lack

respect for its dignity. And as I shall have, if your decision be

against me, to come to that table when your decision is given, I beg

you, before the step is taken in which we may both lose our

dignity--mine is not much, but yours is that of the Commons of

England--I beg you, before the gauntlet is fatally thrown, I beg you,

not in any sort of menace, not in any sort of boast, but as one man

against six hundred, to give me that justice which on the other side

of this hall the judges would give me, were I pleading there before

them."

 

But no eloquence, no plea for justice, could stay the tide of Tory and

religious bigotry, and the House voted that he should not be allowed

to take the oath. Summoned to the table to hear the decision

communicated by the Speaker, he answered that decision with the words

firmly spoken: "I respectfully refuse to obey the order of the House,

because that order was against the law." The Speaker appealed to the

House for direction, and on a division--during which the Speaker and

Charles Bradlaugh were left together in the chamber--the House ordered

the enforcement of Mr. Bradlaugh's withdrawal. Once more the order is

given, once more the refusal made, and then the Serjeant-at-Arms was

bidden to remove him. Strange was the scene as little Captain Cosset

walked up to the member of Herculean proportions, and men wondered how

the order would be enforced; but Charles Bradlaugh was not the man to

make a vulgar brawl, and the light touch on his shoulder was to him

the touch of an authority he admitted and to which he bowed. So he

gravely accompanied his small captor, and was lodged in the Clock

Tower of the House as prisoner until the House should further consider

what to do with him--the most awkward prisoner it had ever had, in

that in his person it was imprisoning the law.

 

In a special issue of the _National Reformer_, giving an account of

the Committee's work and of Mr. Bradlaugh's committal to the Clock

Tower, I find the following from my own pen: "The Tory party, beaten

at the polls by the nation, has thus, for the moment, triumphed in the

House of Commons. The man chosen by the Radicals of Northampton has

been committed to prison on the motion of the Tory ex-Chancellor of

the Exchequer, simply because he desires to discharge the duty laid

upon him by his constituency and by the law of the land. As this paper

goes to press, I go to Westminster to receive from him his directions

as to the conduct of the struggle with the nation into which the House

of Commons has so recklessly plunged." I found him busily writing,

prepared for all events, ready for a long imprisonment. On the

following day a leaflet from my pen, "Law Makers and Law Breakers,"

appealed to the people; after reciting what had happened, it

concluded: "Let the people speak. Gladstone and Bright are for

Liberty, and the help denied them within the House must come to them

from without. No time must be lost. While we remain idle, a

representative of the people is illegally held in prison. Northampton

is insulted, and in this great constituency every constituency is

threatened. On freedom of election depends our liberty; on freedom of

conscience depends our progress. Tory squires and lordlings have

defied the people and measured their strength against the masses. Let

the masses speak." But there was no need to make appeals, for the

outrage itself caused so swiftly a growl of anger that on the very

next day the prisoner was set free, and there came protest upon

protest against the high-handed action of the House. In Westminster

Hall 4,000 people gathered to cheer Mr. Bradlaugh when he came to the

House on the day after his liberation. In less than a week 200

meetings had thundered out their protest. Liberal associations, clubs,

societies, sent up messages of anger and of demand for justice. In

Trafalgar Square there gathered--so said the papers--the largest crowd

ever seen there, and on the Thursday following--the meeting was held

on Monday--the House of Commons rescinded its resolution, refusing to

allow Mr. Bradlaugh to affirm, and admitted him on Friday, July 2nd,

to take his seat after affirmation. "At last the bitter struggle is

over," I wrote, "and law and right have triumphed. The House of

Commons has, by rescinding the resolution passed by Tories and

Ultramontanes, re-established its good name in the eyes of the world.

The triumph is not one of Freethought over Christianity, nor is it

over the House of Commons; it is the triumph of law, brought about by

good men--of all shades of opinion, but of one faith in justice--over

Tory contempt of law and Ultramontane bigotry. It is the reassertion

of civil and religious liberty under the most difficult circumstances,

the declaration that the House of Commons is the creation of the

people, and not a club of the aristocracy with the right of

blackballing in its own hands."

 

The battle between Charles Bradlaugh and his persecutors was now

transferred to the law courts. As soon as he had taken his seat he was

served with a writ for having voted without having taken the oath, and

this began the wearisome proceedings by which his defeated enemies

boasted that they would make him bankrupt, and so vacate the seat he

had so hardly gained. Rich men like Mr. Newdegate sued him, putting

forward a man of straw as nominal plaintiff; for many a weary month

Mr. Bradlaugh kept all his enemies at bay, fighting each case himself;

defeated time after time, he fought on, finally carrying the cases to

the House of Lords, and there winning them triumphantly. But they were

won at such heavy cost of physical strength and of money, that they

undermined his strength and burdened him heavily with debt. For all

this time he had not only to fight in the law courts and to attend

scrupulously to his Parliamentary duties, but he had to earn his

living by lecturing and writing, so that his nights away from the

House were spent in travelling and his days in incessant labour. Many

of his defeated foes turned their weapons against me, hoping thus to

give him pain; thus Admiral Sir John Hay, at Wigton, used language of

me so coarse that the _Scotsman_ and _Glasgow Herald_ refused to print

it, and the editor of the _Scotsman_ described it as "language so

coarse that it could have hardly dropped from a yahoo." August 25th

found me at Brussels, whither I went, with Miss Hypatia Bradlaugh, to

represent the English Freethinkers at the International Freethought

Conference. It was an interesting gathering, attended by men of

world-wide reputation, including Dr. Ludwig Büchner, a man of noble

and kindly nature. An International Federation of Freethinkers was

there founded, which did something towards bringing together the

Freethinkers of different countries, and held interesting congresses

in the following years in London and Amsterdam; but beyond these

meetings it did little, and lacked energy and vitality. In truth, the

Freethought party in each country had so much to do in holding its own

that little time and thought could be given to international

organisation. For myself, my introduction to Dr. Büchner, led to much

interesting correspondence, and I translated, with his approval, his

"Mind in Animals," and the enlarged fourteenth edition of "Force and

Matter," as well as one or two pamphlets. This autumn of 1880 found

the so-called Liberal Government in full tilt against the Irish

leaders, and I worked hard to raise English feeling in defence of

Irish freedom even against attack by one so much honoured as was Mr.

Gladstone. It was uphill work, for harsh language had been used

against England and all things English, but I showed by definite

figures--all up and down England--that life and property were far

safer in Ireland than in England, that Ireland was singularly free

from crime save in agrarian disputes, and I argued that these would

disappear if the law should step in between landlord and tenant, and

by stopping the crimes of rack-renting and most brutal eviction, put

an end to the horrible retaliations that were born of despair and

revenge. A striking point on these evictions I quoted from Mr. T.P.

O'Connor, who, using Mr. Gladstone's words that a sentence of eviction

was a sentence of starvation, told of 15,000 processes of eviction

issued in that one year. The autumn's work was varied by the teaching

of science classes, a debate with a clergyman of the Church of

England, and an operation which kept me in bed for three weeks, but

which, on the other hand, was useful, for I learned to write while

lying on my back, and accomplished in this fashion a good part of the

translation of "Mind in Animals."

 

And here let me point a moral about hard work. Hard work kills no one.

I find a note in the _National Reformer_ in 1880 from the pen of Mr.

Bradlaugh: "It is, we fear, useless to add that, in the judgment of

her best friends, Mrs. Besant has worked far too hard during the last

two years." This is 1893, and the thirteen years' interval has been

full of incessant work, and I am working harder than ever now, and in

splendid health. Looking over the _National Reformer_ for all these

years, it seems to me that it did really fine educational work; Mr.

Bradlaugh's strenuous utterances on political and theological matters;

Dr. Aveling's luminous and beautiful scientific teachings; and to my

share fell much of the educative work on questions of political and

national morality in our dealings with weaker nations. We put all our

hearts into our work, and the influence exercised was distinctly in

favour of pure living and high thinking.

 

In the spring of 1881 the Court of Appeal decided against Mr.

Bradlaugh's right to affirm as Member of Parliament, and his seat was

declared vacant, but he was at once returned again by the borough of

Northampton, despite the virulence of slander directed against him, so

that he rightly described the election as "the most bitter I have ever

fought." His work in the House had won him golden opinions in the

country, and he was already recognised as a power there; so Tory fear

was added to bigoted hatred, and the efforts to keep him out of the

House were increased.

 

He was introduced to the House as a new member to take his seat by Mr.

Labouchere and Mr. Burt, but Sir Stafford Northcote intervened, and

after a lengthy debate, which included a speech from Mr. Bradlaugh at

the Bar, a majority of thirty-three refused to allow him to take the

oath. After a prolonged scene, during which Mr. Bradlaugh declined to

withdraw and the House hesitated to use force, the House adjourned,

and finally the Government promised to bring in an Affirmation Bill,

and Mr. Bradlaugh promised, with the consent of his constituents, to

await the decision of the House on this Bill. Meantime, a League for

the Defence of Constitutional Rights was formed, and the agitation in

the country grew: wherever Mr. Bradlaugh went to speak vast crowds

awaited him, and he travelled from one end of the country to the

other, the people answering his appeal for justice with no uncertain

voice. On July 2nd, in consequence of Tory obstruction, Mr. Gladstone

wrote to Mr. Bradlaugh that the Government were going to drop the

Affirmation Bill, and Mr. Bradlaugh thereupon determined to present

himself once more in the House, and fixed on August 3rd as the date of

such action, so that the Irish Land Bill might get through the House

ere any delay in business was caused by him. The House was then

closely guarded with police; the great gates were closed, reserves of

police were packed in the law courts, and all through July this state

of siege continued. On August 2nd there was a large meeting in

Trafalgar Square, at which delegates were present from all parts of

England, and from as far north as Edinburgh, and on Wednesday, August

3rd, Mr. Bradlaugh went down to the House. His last words to me were:

"The people know you better than they know any one, save myself;

whatever happens, mind, whatever happens, let them do no violence; I

trust to you to keep them quiet." He went to the House entrance with

Dr. Aveling, and into the House alone. His daughters and I went

together, and with some hundreds of others carrying petitions--ten

only with each petition, and the ten rigidly counted and allowed to

pass through the gate, sufficiently opened to let one through at a

time--reached Westminster Hall, where we waited on the steps leading

to the passage of the lobby.

 

An inspector ordered us off. I gently intimated that we were within

our rights. Dramatic order: "Four officers this way." Up they marched

and looked at us, and we looked at them. "I think you had better

consult Inspector Denning before you use violence," I remarked

placidly. They thought they had, and in a few moments up came the

inspector, and seeing that we were standing in a place where we had a

right to be, and were doing no harm, he rebuked his over-zealous

subordinates, and they retired and left us in peace. A man of much

tact and discretion was Inspector Denning. Indeed, all through this,

the House of Commons police behaved admirably well. Even in the attack

they were ordered to make on Mr. Bradlaugh, the police used as little

violence as they could. It was Mr. Erskine, the Deputy

Serjeant-at-Arms, and his ushers, who showed the brutality; as Dr.

Aveling wrote at the time: "The police disliked their work, and, as

brave men, had a sympathy for a brave man. Their orders they obeyed

rigidly. This done, they were kindness itself." Gradually the crowd of

petitioners grew and grew; angry murmurs were heard, for no news came

from the House, and they loved "Charlie," and were mostly north

country men, sturdy and independent. They thought they had a right to

go into the lobby, and suddenly, with the impulse that will sway a

crowd to a single action there was a roar, "Petition, petition,

justice, justice," and they surged up the steps, charging at the

policemen who held the door. Flashed into my mind my chief's charge,

his words, "I trust to you to keep them quiet," and as the police

sprang forward to meet the crowd I threw myself between them, with all

the advantage of the position of the top of the steps that I had

chosen, so that every man in the charging crowd saw me, and as they

checked themselves in surprise I bade them stop for his sake, and keep

for him the peace which he had bade us should not be broken. I heard

afterwards that as I sprang forward the police laughed--they must have

thought me a fool to face the rush of the charging men; but I knew his

friends would never trample me down, and as the crowd stopped the

laugh died out, and they drew back and left me my own way.

 

Sullenly the men drew back, mastering themselves with effort, reining

in their wrath, still for his sake. Ah! had I known what was going on

inside, would I have kept his trust unbroken! and, as many a man said

to me afterwards in northern towns, "Oh! if you had let us go we would

have carried him into the House up to the Speaker's chair." We heard a

crash inside, and listened, and there was sound of breaking glass and

splintering wood, and in a few minutes a messenger came to me: "He is

in Palace Yard." And we went thither and saw him standing, still and

white, face set like marble, coat torn, motionless, as though carved

in stone, facing the members' door. Now we know the whole shameful

story: how as that one man stood alone, on his way to claim his right,

alone so that he could do no violence, fourteen men, said the Central

News, police and ushers, flung themselves upon him, pushed and pulled

him down the stairs, smashing in their violence the glass and wood of

the passage door; how he struck no blow, but used only his great

strength in passive resistance--" Of all I have ever seen, I never saw

one man struggle with ten like that," said one of the chiefs, angrily

disdainful of the wrong he was forced to do--till they flung him out

into Palace Yard. An eye-witness thus reported the scene in the Press:

"The strong, broad, heavy, powerful frame of Mr. Bradlaugh was hard to

move, with its every nerve and muscle strained to resist the coercion.

Bending and straining against the overpowering numbers, he held every

inch with surprising tenacity, and only surrendered it after almost

superhuman exertions to retain it. The sight--little of it as was seen

from the outside--soon became sickening. The overborne man appeared

almost at his last gasp. The face, in spite of the warmth of the

struggle, had an ominous pallor. The limbs barely sustained him....

The Trafalgar Square phrase that this man might be broken but not bent

occurred to minds apprehensive at the present appearance of him."

 

They flung him out, and swift, short words were there interchanged. "I

nearly did wrong at the door," he said afterwards, "I was very angry.

I said to Inspector Denning, 'I shall come again with force enough to

overcome it,' He said, 'When?' I said, 'Within a minute if I raise my

hand.'" He stood in Palace Yard, and there outside the gate was a vast

sea of heads, the men who had journeyed from all parts of England for

love of him, and in defence of the great right he represented of a

constituency to send to Parliament the man of its choice. Ah! he was

never greater than in that moment of outrage and of triumphant wrong;

with all the passion of a proud man surging within him, insulted by

physical violence, injured by the cruel wrenching of all his

muscles--so that for weeks his arms had to be swathed in bandages--he

was never greater than when he conquered his own wrath, crushed down

his own longing for battle, stirred to flame by the bodily struggle,

and the bodily injury, and with thousands waiting within sound of his

voice, longing to leap to his side, he gave the word to tell them to

meet him that evening away from the scene of conflict, and meanwhile

to disperse quietly, "no riot, no disorder." But how he suffered

mentally no words of mine may tell, and none can understand how it

wrung his heart who does not know how he reverenced the great

Parliament of England, how he honoured law, how he believed in justice

being done; it was the breaking down of his national ideals, of his

pride in his country, of his belief that faith would be kept with a

foe by English gentlemen, who with all their faults, he thought,

held honour and chivalry dear. "No man will sleep in gaol for me

to-night," he said to me that day; "no woman can blame me for her

husband killed or wounded, but--" A wave of agony swept over his face,

and from that fatal day Charles Bradlaugh was never the same man.

Some hold their ideals lightly, but his heart-strings were twined

round his; some care little for their country--he was an Englishman,

law-abiding, liberty-loving, to his heart's core, of the type of the

seventeenth-century patriot, holding England's honour dear. It was the

treachery that broke his heart; he had gone alone, believing in the

honour of his foes, ready to submit to expulsion, to imprisonment, and

it was the latter that he expected; but he never dreamed that, going

alone amongst his foes, they would use brutal and cowardly violence,

and shame every Parliamentary tradition by personal outrage on a

duly-elected member, outrage more worthy of a slum pot-house than of

the great Commons House, the House of Hampden and of Vane, the House

that had guarded its own from Royal violence, and had maintained its

privileges in the teeth of kings.

 

These stormy scenes brought about a promise of Government aid; Mr.

Bradlaugh failed to get any legal redress, as, indeed, he expected to

fail, on the ground that the officials of the House were covered by

the House's order, but the Government promised to support his claim to

his seat during the next session, and thus prevented the campaign

against them on which we had resolved. I had solely on my own

responsibility organised a great band of people pledged to refrain

from the use of all excisable articles after a certain date, and to

withdraw all their moneys in the Savings Bank, thus seriously

crippling the financial resources of the Government. The response from

the workers to my appeal to "Stop the supplies" was great and

touching. One man wrote that as he never drank nor smoked he would

leave off tea; others that though tobacco was their one luxury, they

would forego it; and so on. Somewhat reluctantly, I asked the people

to lay aside this formidable weapon, as "we have no right to embarrass

the Government financially save when they refuse to do the first duty

of a Government to maintain law. They have now promised to do justice,

and we must wait." Meanwhile the injuries inflicted on Mr. Bradlaugh,

rupturing the sheaths of some of the muscles of the arm, laid him

prostrate, and various small fights went on during the temporary truce

in the great struggle. I turned up in the House two or three times,

haled thither, though not in person, by the people who kept Mr.

Bradlaugh out, and a speech of mine became the subject of a question

by Mr. Ritchie, while Sir Henry Tyler waged war on the science

classes. Another joy was added to life by the use of my name--which

by all these struggles had gained a marketable value--as author of

pamphlets I had never seen, and this forgery of my name by

unscrupulous people in the colonies caused me a good deal of

annoyance. In the strengthening of the constitutional agitation in the

country, the holding of an International Congress of Freethinkers in

London, the studying and teaching of science, the delivering of

courses of scientific lectures in the Hall of Science, a sharp

correspondence with the Bishop of Manchester, who had libelled

Secularists, and which led to a fiery pamphlet, "God's Views on

Marriage," as retort--in all these matters the autumn months sped

rapidly away. One incident of that autumn I record with regret. I was

misled by very partial knowledge of the nature of the experiments

performed, and by my fear that if scientific men were forbidden to

experiment on animals with drugs they would perforce experiment with

them on the poor in hospitals, to write two articles, republished as a

pamphlet, against Sir Eardley Wilmot's Bill for the "Total Suppression

of Vivisection." I limited my approval to highly skilled men engaged

in original investigations, and took the representations made of the

character of the experiments without sufficient care to verify them.

Hence the publication of the one thing I ever wrote for which I feel

deep regret and shame, as against the whole trend and efforts of my

life. I am thankful to say that Dr. Anna Kingsford answered my

articles, and I readily inserted her replies in the paper in which

mine had appeared--our _National Reformer_--and she touched that

question of the moral sense to which my nature at once responded.

Ultimately, I looked carefully into the subject, found that

vivisection abroad was very different from vivisection in England, saw

that it was in very truth the fiendishly cruel thing that its

opponents alleged, and destroyed my partial defence of even its less

brutal form.

 

1882 saw no cessation of the struggles in which Mr. Bradlaugh and

those who stood by him were involved. On February 7th he was heard for

the third time at the Bar of the House of Commons, and closed his

speech with an offer that, accepted, would have closed the contest. "I

am ready to stand aside, say for four or five weeks, without coming to

that table, if the House within that time, or within such time as its

great needs might demand, would discuss whether an Affirmation Bill

should pass or not. I want to obey the law, and I tell you how I might

meet the House still further, if the House will pardon me for seeming

to advise it. Hon. members have said that would be a Bradlaugh Relief

Bill. Bradlaugh is more proud than you are. Let the Bill pass without

applying to elections that have taken place previously, and I will

undertake not to claim my seat, and when the Bill has passed I will

apply for the Chiltern Hundreds. I have no fear. If I am not fit for

my constituents, they shall dismiss me, but you never shall. The grave

alone shall make me yield." But the House would do nothing. He had

asked for 100,000 signatures in favour of his constitutional right,

and on February 8th, 9th, and 10th 1,008 petitions, bearing 241,970

signatures, were presented; the House treated them with contemptuous

indifference. The House refused to declare his seat vacant, and also

refused to allow him to fill it, thus half-disfranchising Northampton,

while closing every avenue to legal redress. Mr. Labouchere--who did

all a loyal colleague could do to assist his brother member--brought

in an Affirmation Bill; it was blocked. Mr. Gladstone, appealed to

support the law declared by his own Attorney-General, refused to do

anything. An _impasse_ was created, and all the enemies of freedom

rejoiced. Out of this position of what the _Globe_ called "quiet

omnipotence" the House was shaken by an audacious defiance, for on

February 21st the member it was trying to hold at arm's length took

the oath in its startled face, went to his seat, and--waited events.

The House then expelled him--and, indeed, it could scarcely do

anything else after such defiance--and Mr. Labouchere moved for a new

writ, declaring that Northampton was ready, its "candidate was Charles

Bradlaugh, expelled this House." Northampton, ever steadfast, returned

him for the third time--the vote in his favour showing an increase of

359 over the second bye-election--and the triumph was received in all

the great towns of England with wild enthusiasm. By the small majority

of fifteen in a House of 599 members--and this due to the vacillation

of the Government--he was again refused the right to take his seat.

But now the whole Liberal Press took up his quarrel; the oath question

became a test question for every candidate for Parliament, and the

Government was warned that it was alienating its best friends. The

_Pall Mall Gazette_ voiced the general feeling. "What is the evidence

that an Oaths Bill would injure the Government in the country? Of one

thing we may be sure, that if they shirk the Bill they will do no good

to themselves at the elections. Nobody doubts that it will be made a

test question, and any Liberal who declines to vote for such a Bill

will certainly lose the support of the Northampton sort of Radicalism

in every constituency. The Liberal Press throughout the country is

absolutely unanimous. The political Non-conformists are for it. The

local clubs are for it. All that is wanted is that the Government

should pick up a little more moral courage, and recognise that even in

practice honesty is the best policy." The Government did not think so,

and they paid the penalty, for one of the causes that led to their

defeat at the polls was the disgust felt at their vacillation and

cowardice in regard to the rights of constituencies. Not untruly did I

write, in May, 1882, that Charles Bradlaugh was a man "who by the

infliction of a great wrong had become the incarnation of a great

principle"; for the agitation in the country grew and grew, until,

returned again to Parliament at the General Election, he took the oath

and his seat, brought in and carried an Oaths Bill, not only giving

Members of Parliament the right to affirm, but making Freethinkers

competent as jurymen, and relieving witnesses from the insult hitherto

put upon those who objected to swearing; he thus ended an

unprecedented struggle by a complete victory, weaving his name for

ever into the constitutional history of his country.

 

In the House of Lords, Lord Redesdale brought in a Bill disqualifying

Atheists from sitting in Parliament, but in face of the feeling

aroused in the country, the Lords, with many pathetic expressions of

regret, declined to pass it. But, meanwhile, Sir Henry Tyler in the

Commons was calling out for prosecutions for blasphemy to be brought

against Mr. Bradlaugh and his friends, while he carried on his crusade

against Mr. Bradlaugh's daughters, Dr. Aveling, and myself, as science

teachers. I summed up the position in the spring of 1882 in the

following somewhat strong language: "This short-lived 'Parliamentary

Declaration Bill' is but one of the many clouds which presage a storm

of prosecution. The reiterated attempts in the House of Commons to

force the Government into prosecuting heretics for blasphemy; the

petty and vicious attacks on the science classes at the Hall; the

odious and wicked efforts of Mr. Newdegate to drive Mr. Bradlaugh into

the Bankruptcy Court; all these are but signs that the heterogeneous

army of pious and bigoted Christians are gathering together their

forces for a furious attack on those who have silenced them in

argument, but whom they hope to conquer by main force, by sheer

brutality. Let them come. Free-thinkers were never so strong, never so

united, never so well organised as they are to-day. Strong in the

goodness of our cause, in our faith in the ultimate triumph of Truth,

in our willingness to give up all save fidelity to the sacred cause of

liberty of human thought and human speech, we await gravely and

fearlessly the successors of the men who burned Bruno, who imprisoned

Galileo, who tortured Vanini--the men who have in their hands the

blood-red cross of Jesus of Nazareth, and in their hearts the love of

God and the hate of man."

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER XII.

 

STILL FIGHTING.

 

 

All this hot fighting on the religious field did not render me blind

to the misery of the Irish land so dear to my heart, writhing in the

cruel grip of Mr. Forster's Coercion Act. An article "Coercion in

Ireland and its Results," exposing the wrongs done under the Act, was

reprinted as a pamphlet and had a wide circulation.

 

I pleaded against eviction--7,020 persons had been evicted during the

quarter ending in March--for the trial of those imprisoned on

suspicion, for indemnity for those who before the Land Act had striven

against wrongs the Land Act had been carried to prevent, and I urged

that "no chance is given for the healing measures to cure the sore of

Irish disaffection until not only are the prisoners in Ireland set at

liberty, but until the brave, unfortunate Michael Davitt stands once

more a free man on Irish soil." At last the Government reconsidered

its policy and resolved on juster dealings; it sent Lord Frederick

Cavendish over to Ireland, carrying with him the release of the

"suspects," and scarcely had he landed ere the knife of assassination

struck him--a foul and cowardly murder of an innocent messenger of

peace. I was at Blackburn, to lecture on "The Irish Question," and as

I was walking towards the platform, my heart full of joy for the

dawning hope of peace, a telegram announcing the assassination was

placed in my hands. Never shall I forget the shock, the incredulous

horror, the wave of despair. "It is not only two men they have

killed," I wrote, a day or two later; "they have stabbed the new-born

hope of friendship between two countries, and have reopened the gulf

of hatred that was just beginning to close." Alas! the crime succeeded

in its object, and hurried the Government into new wrong. Hastily a

new Coercion Bill was brought in, and rushed through its stages in

Parliament, and, facing the storm of public excitement, I pleaded

still, "Force no remedy," despite the hardship of the task. "There is

excessive difficulty in dealing with the Irish difficulty at the

present moment. Tories are howling for revenge on a whole nation as

answer to the crime committed by a few; Whigs are swelling the outcry;

many Radicals are swept away by the current, and feeling that

'something must be done,' they endorse the Government action,

forgetting to ask whether the 'something' proposed is the wisest

thing. A few stand firm, but they are very few--too few to prevent the

new Coercion Bill from passing into law. But few though we be who lift

up the voice of protest against the wrong which we are powerless to

prevent, we may yet do much to make the new Act of brief duration, by

so rousing public opinion as to bring about its early repeal. When the

measure is understood by the public half the battle will be won; it is

accepted at the moment from faith in the Government; it will be

rejected when its true character is grasped. The murders which have

given birth to this repressive measure came with a shock upon the

country, which was the more terrible from the sudden change from

gladness and hope to darkness and despair. The new policy was welcomed

so joyfully; the messenger of the new policy was slain ere yet the pen

was dry which had signed the orders of mercy and of liberty. Small

wonder that cry of horror should be followed by measures of vengeance;

but the murders were the work of a few criminals, while the measure of

vengeance strikes the whole of the Irish people. I plead against the

panic which confounds political agitation and political redressal of

wrong with crime and its punishment; the Government measure gags every

mouth in Ireland, and puts, as we shall see, all political effort at

the mercy of the Lord-Lieutenant, the magistracy, and the police." I

then sketched the misery of the peasants in the grip of absentee

landlords, the turning out on the roadside to die of the mother with

new-born babe at her breast, the loss of "all thought of the sanctity

of human life when the lives of the dearest are reckoned as less worth

than the shillings of overdue rack-rental." I analysed the new Act:

"When this Act passes, trial by jury, right of public meeting, liberty

of press, sanctity of house, will one and all be held at the will of

the Lord-Lieutenant, the irresponsible autocrat of Ireland, while

liberty of person will lie at the mercy of every constable. Such is

England's way of governing Ireland in the year 1882. And this is

supposed to be a Bill for the 'repression of crime.'" Bluntly, I put

the bald truth: "The plain fact is that the murderers have succeeded.

They saw in the new policy the reconciliation of England and Ireland;

they knew that friendship would follow justice, and that the two

countries, for the first time in history, would clasp hands. To

prevent this they dug a new gulf, which they hoped the English nation

would not span; they sent a river of blood across the road of

friendship, and they flung two corpses to bar the newly-opened gate of

reconciliation and peace. They have succeeded."

 

Into this whirl of political and social strife came the first whisper

to me of the Theosophical Society, in the shape of a statement of its

principles, which conveyed, I remarked, "no very definite idea of the

requirements for membership, beyond a dreamy, emotional, scholarly

interest in the religio-philosophic fancies of the past." Also a

report of an address by Colonel Olcott, which led me to suppose that

the society held to "some strange theory of 'apparitions' of the dead,

and to some existence outside the physical and apart from it." These

came to me from some Hindű Freethinkers, who asked my opinion as to

Secularists joining the Theosophical Society, and Theosophists being

admitted to the National Secular Society. I replied, judging from

these reports, that "while Secularists would have no right to refuse

to enrol Theosophists, if they desired it, among their members, there

is a radical difference between the mysticism of Theosophy and the

scientific materialism of Secularism. The exclusive devotion to this

world implied in the profession of Secularism leaves no room for

other-worldism; and consistent members of our body cannot join a

society which professes belief therein."[27]

 

H.P. Blavatsky penned a brief article in the _Theosophist_ for

August, 1882, in which she commented on my paragraph, remarking, in

her generous way, that it must have been written "while labouring

under entirely misconceived notions about the real nature of our

society. For one so highly intellectual and keen as that renowned

writer to dogmatise and issue autocratic ukases, after she has herself

suffered so cruelly and undeservedly at the hands of blind bigotry and

social prejudice in her lifelong struggle for _freedom of thought_

seems, to say the least, absurdly inconsistent." After quoting my

paragraph she went on: "Until proofs to the contrary, we prefer to

believe that the above lines were dictated to Mrs. Besant by some

crafty misrepresentations from Madras, inspired by a mean personal

revenge rather than a desire to remain consistent with the principles

of 'the scientific materialism of Secularism.' We beg to assure the

Radical editors of the _National Reformer_ that they were both very

strangely misled by false reports about the Radical editors of the

_Theosophist_. The term 'supernaturalists' can no more apply to the

latter than to Mrs. A. Besant and Mr. C. Bradlaugh."

 

H.P. Blavatsky, when she commented, as she occasionally did, on the

struggles going on in England, took of them a singularly large-hearted

and generous view. She referred with much admiration to Mr.

Bradlaugh's work and to his Parliamentary struggle, and spoke warmly

of the services he had rendered to liberty. Again, in pointing out

that spiritualistic trance orations by no means transcended speeches

that made no such claim, I find her first mention of myself: "Another

lady orator, of deservedly great fame, both for eloquence and

learning--the good Mrs. Annie Besant--without believing in controlling

spirits, or for that matter in her own spirit, yet speaks and writes

such sensible and wise things, that we might almost say that one of

her speeches or chapters contains more matter to benefit humanity than

would equip a modern trance-speaker for an entire oratorical

career."[28] I have sometimes wondered of late years whether, had I

met her then or seen any of her writings, I should have become her

pupil. I fear not; I was still too much dazzled by the triumphs of

Western Science, too self-assertive, too fond of combat, too much at

the mercy of my own emotions, too sensitive to praise and blame. I

needed to sound yet more deeply the depths of human misery, to hear

yet more loudly the moaning of "the great Orphan," Humanity, to feel

yet more keenly the lack of wider knowledge and of clearer light if I

were to give effective help to man, ere I could bow my pride to crave

admittance as pupil to the School of Occultism, ere I could put aside

my prejudices and study the Science of the Soul.

 

The long-continued attempts of Sir Henry Tyler and his friends to

stimulate persecutions for blasphemy at length took practical shape,

and in July, 1882, Mr. Foote, the editor, Mr. Ramsey, the publisher,

and Mr. Whittle, the printer of the _Freethinker_, were summoned for

blasphemy by Sir Henry Tyler himself. An attempt was made to involve

Mr. Bradlaugh in the proceedings, and the solicitors promised to drop

the case against the editor and printer if Mr. Bradlaugh would himself

sell them some copies of the paper. But however ready Mr. Bradlaugh

had always shown himself to shield his subordinates by taking his sins

on his own shoulders, he saw no reason why he should assume

responsibility for a paper over which he had no control, and which

was, he thought, by its caricatures, lowering the tone of Freethought

advocacy and giving an unnecessary handle to its foes. He therefore

answered that he would sell the solicitors any works published by

himself or with his authority, and sent them a catalogue of the whole

of such works. The object of this effort of Sir Henry Tyler's was

obvious enough, and Mr. Bradlaugh commented: "The above letters make

it pretty clear that Sir Henry W. Tyler having failed in his endeavour

to get the science classes stopped at the Hall of Science, having also

failed in his attempt to induce Sir W. Vernon Harcourt to prosecute

myself and Mrs. Besant as editors and publishers of this journal,

desires to make me personally and criminally responsible for the

contents of a journal I neither edit nor publish, over which I have

not a shadow of control, and in which I have not the smallest

interest. Why does Sir H.W. Tyler so ardently desire to prosecute, me

for blasphemy? Is it because two convictions will under the 9th and

10th Will. III. cap. 32, render me 'for ever' incapable of sitting in

Parliament?" The _Whitehall Review_ frankly put this forward as an

object to be gained, and Mr. Bradlaugh was summoned to the Mansion

House on a charge of publishing blasphemous libels in the

_Freethinker_; meanwhile Sir Henry Tyler put a notice on the Order

Book to deprive "the daughters of Mr. Charles Bradlaugh" of the grant

they had earned as science teachers, and got an order which proved to

be invalid, but which was acted on, to inspect Mr. Bradlaugh's and my

own private banking accounts, I being no party to the case. Looking

back, I marvel at the incredible meannesses to which Sir Henry Tyler

and others stooped in defence of "religion"--Heaven save the mark! Let

me add that his motion in the House of Commons was a complete failure,

and it was emphasised by the publication at the same time of the

successful work, both as teachers and as students, of the "daughters

of Mr. Charles Bradlaugh," and of my being the only student in all

England who had succeeded in taking honours in botany.

 

I must pause a moment to chronicle, in September, 1882, the death of

Dr. Pusey, whom I had sought in the whirl of my early religious

struggles. I wrote an article on him in the _National Reformer_, and

ended by laying a tribute on his grave: "A strong man and a good man.

Utterly out of harmony with the spirit of his own time, looking with

sternly-rebuking eyes on all the eager research, the joyous love of

nature, the earnest inquiry into a world doomed to be burnt up at the

coming of its Judge. An ascetic, pure in life, stern in faith, harsh

to unbelievers because sincere in his own cruel creed, generous and

tender to all who accepted his doctrines and submitted to his Church.

He never stooped to slander those with whom he disagreed. His hatred

of heresy led him not to blacken the character of heretics, nor to

descend to the vulgar abuse used by pettier priests. And therefore I,

who honour courage and sincerity wherever I find them; I, who do

homage to steadfastness wherever I find it; I, Atheist, lay my small

tribute of respect on the bier of this noblest of the Anglo-Catholics,

Edward Bouverie Pusey."

 

As a practical answer to the numberless attacks made on us, and as a

result of the enormous increase of circulation given to our

theological and political writings by these harassing persecutions, we

moved our publishing business to 63, Fleet Street, at the end of

September, 1882, a shop facing that at which Richard Carlile had

carried on his publishing business for a great time, and so seemed

still redolent with memories of his gallant struggles. Two of the

first things sold here were a pamphlet of mine, a strong protest

against our shameful Egyptian policy, and a critical volume on

"Genesis" which Mr. Bradlaugh found time to write in the intervals of

his busy life. Here I worked daily, save when out of London, until Mr.

Bradlaugh's death in 1891, assisted in the conduct of the business by

Mr. Bradlaugh's elder daughter--a woman of strong character with many

noble qualities, who died rather suddenly in December, 1888, and in

the work on the _National Reformer_, first by Dr. Aveling, and then by

Mr. John Robertson, its present editor. Here, too, from 1884 onwards,

worked with me Thornton Smith, one of Mr. Bradlaugh's most devoted

disciples, who became one of the leading speakers of the National

Secular Society; like her well-loved chief, she was ever a good friend

and a good fighter, and to me the most loyal and loving of colleagues,

one of the few--the very few--Freethinkers who were large-hearted and

generous enough not to turn against me when I became a Theosophist. A

second of these--alas! I could count them on my fingers--was the John

Robertson above mentioned, a man of rare ability and wide culture,

somewhat too scholarly for popular propagandism of the most generally

effective order, but a man who is a strength to any movement, always

on the side of noble living and high thinking, loyal-natured as the

true Scot should be, incapable of meanness or treachery, and the most

genial and generous of friends.

 

Among the new literary ventures that followed on our taking the large

publishing premises in Fleet Street was a sixpenny magazine, edited by

myself, and entitled _Our Corner_; its first number was dated January,

1883, and for six years it appeared regularly, and served me as a

useful mouthpiece in my Socialist and Labour propagandist work. Among

its contributors were Moncure D. Conway, Professor Ludwig Büchner,

Yves Guyot, Professor Ernst Haeckel, G. Bernard Shaw, Constance Naden,

Dr. Aveling, J.H. Levy, J.L. Joynes, Mrs. Edgren, John Robertson,

and many another, Charles Bradlaugh and I writing regularly each

month.

 

1883 broke stormily, fights on every hand, and a huge constitutional

agitation going on in the country, which forced the Government into

bringing in an Affirmation Bill; resolutions from Liberal Associations

all over the land; preparations to oppose the re-election of disloyal

members; no less than a thousand delegates sent up to London by clubs,

Trade Unions, associations of every sort; a meeting that packed

Trafalgar Square; an uneasy crowd in Westminster Hall; a request from

Inspector Denning that Mr. Bradlaugh would go out to them--they feared

for his safety inside; a word from him, "The Government have pledged

themselves to bring in an Affirmation Bill at once;" roar after roar

of cheering; a veritable people's victory on that 15th of February,

1883. It was the answer of the country to the appeal for justice, the

rebuke of the electors to the House that had defied them.

 

Scarcely was this over when a second prosecution for blasphemy against

Messrs. Foote, Ramsey, and Kemp began, and was hurried on in the

Central Criminal Court, before Mr. Justice North, a bigot of the

sternest type. The trial ended in a disagreement of the jury, Mr.

Foote defending himself in a splendid speech. The judge acted very

harshly throughout, interrupted Mr. Foote continuously, and even

refused bail to the defendants during the interval between the first

and second trial; they were, therefore, confined in Newgate from

Thursday to Monday, and we were only allowed to see them through iron

bars and lattice, as they exercised in the prison yard between 8:30

and 9:30 a.m. Brought up to trial again on Monday, they were

convicted, and Mr. Foote was sentenced to a year's imprisonment, Mr.

Ramsey to nine months, and Mr. Kemp to three months. Mr. Foote

especially behaved with great dignity and courage in a most difficult

position, and heard his cruel sentence without wincing, and with the

calm words, "My Lord, I thank you; it is worthy your creed." A few of

us at once stepped in, to preserve to Mr. Ramsey his shop, and to Mr.

Foote his literary property; Dr. Aveling undertook the editing of the

_Freethinker_ and of Mr. Foote's magazine _Progress_; the immediate

necessities of their families were seen to; Mr. and Mrs. Forder took

charge of the shop, and within a few days all was in working order.

Disapproving as many of us did of the policy of the paper, there was

no time to think of that when a blasphemy prosecution had proved

successful, and we all closed up in the support of men imprisoned for

conscience' sake. I commenced a series of articles on "The Christian

Creed; what it is blasphemy to deny," showing what Christians must

believe under peril of prosecution. Everywhere a tremendous impulse

was given to the Freethought movement, as men awakened to the

knowledge that blasphemy laws were not obsolete.

 

From over the sea came a word of sympathy from the pen of H.P.

Blavatsky in the _Theosophist_. "We prefer Mr. Foote's actual position

to that of his severe judge. Aye, and were we in his guilty skin, we

would feel more proud, even in the poor editor's present position,

than we would under the wig of Mr. Justice North."

 

In April, 1883, the long legal struggles of Mr. Bradlaugh against Mr.

Newdegate and his common informer, that had lasted from July 2, 1880,

till April 9, 1883, ended in his complete victory by the judgment of

the House of Lords in his favour. "Court after Court decided against

me," he wrote; "and Whig and Tory journals alike mocked at me for my

persistent resistance. Even some good friends thought that my fight

was hopeless, and that the bigots held me fast in their toils. I have,

however, at last shaken myself free of Mr. Newdegate and his common

informer. The judgment of the House of Lords in my favour is final and

conclusive, and the boasts of the Tories that I should be made

bankrupt for the penalties, have now, for ever, come to naught. Yet

but for the many poor folk who have stood by me with their help and

sympathy, I should have long since been ruined. The days and weeks

spent in the Law Courts, the harassing work connected with each stage

of litigation, the watching daily when each hearing was imminent, the

absolute hindrance of all provincial lecturing--it is hardly possible

for any one to judge the terrible mental and pecuniary strain of all

this long-drawn-out struggle." Aye! it killed him at last, twenty

years before his time, sapping his splendid vitality, undermining his

iron constitution.

 

The blasphemy trial of Mr. Bradlaugh, Mr. Foote, and Mr. Ramsey now

came on, but this time in the Queen's Bench, before the Lord Chief

Justice Coleridge. I had the honour of sitting between Mr. Bradlaugh

and Mr. Foote, charged with the duty of having ready for the former

all his references, and with a duplicate brief to mark off point after

point as he dealt with it. Messrs. Foote and Ramsey were brought up in

custody, but were brave and bright with courage unbroken. Mr.

Bradlaugh applied to have his case taken separately, as he denied

responsibility for the paper, and the judge granted the application;

it was clearly proved that he and I--the "Freethought Publishing

Company"--had never had anything to do with the production of the

paper; that until November, 1881, we published it, and then refused to

publish it any longer; that the reason for the refusal was the

addition of comic Bible illustrations as a feature of the paper. I was

called as witness and began with a difficulty; claiming to affirm, I

was asked by the judge if the oath would not be binding on my

conscience; I answered that any promise was binding on me whatever the

form, and after some little argument the judge found a way out of the

insulting form by asking whether the "invocation of the Deity added

anything to it of a binding nature--added any sanction?" "None, my

Lord," was the prompt reply, and I was allowed to affirm. Sir Hardinge

Giffard subjected me to a very stringent cross-examination, doing his

best to entangle me, but the perfect frankness of my answers broke all

his weapons of finesse and inuendo.

 

Some of the incidents of the trial were curious; Sir Hardinge

Giffard's opening speech was very able and very unscrupulous. All

facts in Mr. Bradlaugh's favour were distorted or hidden; anything

that could be used against him was tricked out in most seductive

fashion. Among the many monstrous perversions of the truth made by

this most pious counsel, was the statement that changes of publisher,

and of registration of the _Freethinker_ were made in consequence of a

question as to prosecuting it put in the House of Commons. The change

of publisher was admittedly made in November; the registration was

made for the first time in November, and could not be changed, as

there was no previous one. The House of Commons was not sitting in

November; the question alluded to was asked in the following February.

This one deliberate lie of the "defender of the faith" will do as well

as quoting a score of others to show how wickedly and maliciously he

endeavoured to secure an unjust verdict.

 

The speech over, a number of witnesses were called. Sir Hardinge did

not call witnesses who knew the facts, such as Mr. Norrish, the

shopman, or Mr. Whittle, the printer. These he carefully avoided,

although he subpoenaed both, because he did not want the real facts to

come out. But he put in two solicitor's clerks, who had been hanging

about the premises, and buying endless _National Reformers_ and

_Freethinkers_, sheaves of them which were never used, but by which

Sir Hardinge hoped to convey the impression of a mass of criminality.

He put in a gentleman from the British Museum, who produced two large

books, presumed to be _National Reformers_ and _Freethinkers_; what

they were brought for nobody understood, the counsel for the Crown as

little as any one, and the judge, surveying them over his spectacles,

treated them with supreme contempt, as utterly irrelevant. Then a man

came to prove that Mr. Bradlaugh was rated for Stonecutter Street, a

fact no one disputed. Two policemen came to say they had seen him go

in. "You saw many people go in, I suppose?" queried the Lord Chief

Justice. On the whole the most miserably weak and obviously malicious

case that could be brought into a court of law.

 

One witness, however, must not be forgotten--Mr. Woodhams, bank

manager. When he stated that Mr. Maloney, the junior counsel for the

Crown, had inspected Mr. Bradlaugh's banking account, a murmur of

surprise and indignation ran round the court. "Oh! Oh!" was heard from

the crowd of barristers behind. The judge looked down incredulously,

and for a moment the examination was stopped by the general movement.

Unless Sir Hardinge Giffard is a splendid actor, he was not aware of

the infamous proceeding, for he looked as startled as the rest of his

legal brethren.

 

Another queer incident occurred, showing, perhaps more than aught

else, Mr. Bradlaugh's swift perception of the situation and adaptation

to the environment. He wanted to read the Mansion House deposition of

Norrish, to show why he was not called; the judge objected, and

declined to allow it to be read. A pause while you might count five;

then; "Well, I think I may say the learned counsel did not call

Norrish because ..." and then the whole substance of the deposition

was given in supposititious form. The judge looked down a minute, and

then went off into silent laughter impossible to control at the adroit

change of means and persistent gaining of end; barristers all round

broke into ripples of laughter unrestrained; a broad smile pervaded

the jury box; the only unmoved person was the defendant who proceeded

in his grave statement as to what Norrish "might" have been asked. The

nature of the defence was very clearly stated by Mr. Bradlaugh: "I

shall ask you to find that this prosecution is one of the steps in a

vindictive attempt to oppress and to crush a political opponent--that

it was a struggle that commenced on my return to Parliament in 1880.

If the prosecutor had gone into the box I should have shown you that

he was one of the first then in the House to use the suggestion of

blasphemy against me there. Since then I have never had any peace

until the Monday of this week. Writs for penalties have been served,

and suits of all kinds have been taken against me. On Monday last the

House of Lords cleared me from the whole of one set, and, gentlemen, I

ask you to-day to clear me from another. Three times I have been

re-elected by my constituents, and what Sir Henry Tyler asks you to do

is to send me to them branded with the dishonour of a conviction,

branded not with the conviction for publishing heresy, but branded

with the conviction, dishonourable to me, of having lied in this

matter. I have no desire to have a prison's walls closed on me, but I

would sooner ten times that, than that my constituents should think

that for one moment I lied to escape the penalties. I am not indicted

for anything I have ever written or caused to be written. As my Lord

at the very first stage this morning pointed out, it is no question

with me, Are the matters indicted blasphemous, or are they not

blasphemous? Are they defensible, or are they not defensible? That is

not my duty here. On this I make no comment. I have no duty here of

even discussing the policy of the blasphemy laws, although I cannot

help thinking that, if I were here making my defence against them, I

might say that they were bad laws unfairly revived, doing more

mischief to those who revive them than to those whom they are revived

against. But it is not for anything I have said myself; it is not for

anything I have written myself; it is not for anything I have

published myself. It is an endeavour to make me technically liable for

a publication with which I have nothing whatever to do, and I will ask

you to defeat that here. Every time I have succeeded I have been met

with some new thing. When I first fought it was hoped to defeat my

election. When I was re-elected it was sought to make me bankrupt by

enormous penalties, and when I escaped the suit for enormous penalties

they hope now to destroy me by this. I have no question here about

defending my heresy, not because I am not ready to defend it when it

is challenged in the right way, and it there be anything in it that

the law can challenge. I have never gone back from anything I have

ever said; I have never gone back from anything I have ever written; I

have never gone back from anything I have ever done; and I ask you not

to allow this Sir Henry Whatley Tyler, who dares not come here to-day,

to use you as the assassin uses the dagger, to stab a man from behind

whom he never dares to face."

 

The summing up by Lord Coleridge was perfect in eloquence, in thought,

in feeling. Nothing more touching could be imagined than the conflict

between the real religious feeling, abhorrent of heresy, and the

determination to be just, despite all prejudice. The earnest effort

lest the prejudice he felt as a Christian should weigh also in the

minds of the jury, and should cause them to pervert justice. The

absolute pleading to them to do what was right and not to admit

against the unbeliever what they would not admit in ordinary cases.

Then the protest against prosecution of opinions; the admission of the

difficulties in the Hebrew Scriptures, and the pathetic fear lest by

persecution "the sacred truths might be struck through the sides of

those who are their enemies." For intellectual clearness and moral

elevation this exquisite piece of eloquence, delivered in a voice of

silvery beauty, would be hard to excel, and Lord Coleridge did this

piece of service to the religion so dear to his heart, that he showed

that a Christian judge could be just and righteous in dealing with a

foe of his creed.

 

There was a time of terrible strain waiting for the verdict, and when

at last it came, "Not Guilty," a sharp clap of applause hailed it,

sternly and rightly reproved by the judge. It was echoed by the

country, which almost unanimously condemned the prosecution as an

iniquitous attempt on the part of Mr. Bradlaugh's political enemies to

put a stop to his political career. Thus the _Pall Mall Gazette_

wrote:--

 

"Whatever may be the personal or political or religious aversion which

is excited by Mr. Bradlaugh, it is impossible for even his bitterest

opponents to deny the brilliance of the series of victories which he

has won in the law courts. His acquittal in the blasphemy prosecution

of Saturday was but the latest of a number of encounters in which he

has succeeded in turning the tables upon his opponents in the most

decisive fashion. The policy of baiting Mr. Bradlaugh which has been

persisted in so long, savours so strongly of a petty and malignant

species of persecution that it is well that those who indulge in it

should be made to smart for their pains. The wise and weighty words

used by the Lord Chief Justice in summing up should be taken seriously

to heart: 'Those persons are to be deprecated who would pervert the

law, even with the best intentions, and "do evil that good may come,

whose damnation" (says the apostle) "is just."' Without emulating the

severity of the apostle, we may say that it is satisfactory that the

promoters of all these prosecutions should be condemned in costs."

 

In the separate trial of Messrs. Foote and Ramsey, Mr. Foote again

defended himself in a speech of marked ability, and spoken of by the

judge as "very striking." Lord Coleridge made a noble charge to the

jury, in which he strongly condemned prosecutions of unpopular

opinions, pointing out that no prosecution short of extermination

could be effective, and caustically remarking on the very easy form of

virtue indulged in by persecutors. "As a general rule," he said,

"persecution, unless far more extreme than in England in the

nineteenth century is possible, is certain to be in vain. It is also

true, and I cannot help assenting to it, that it is a very easy form

of virtue. It is a more difficult form of virtue, quietly and

unostentatiously to obey what we believe to be God's will in our own

lives. It is not very easy to do it; and it makes much less noise in

the world. It is very easy to turn upon somebody else who differs from

us, and in the guise of zeal of God's honour to attack somebody of a

difference of opinion, whose life may be more pleasing to God and more

conducive to His honour than our own. And when it is done by persons

whose own lives are not free from reproach and who take that

particular form of zeal for God which consists in putting the criminal

law in force against others, that, no doubt, does more to create a

sympathy with the defendant than with the prosecutor. And if it should

be done by those who enjoy the wit of Voltaire, and who do not turn

away from the sneers of Gibbon, and rather relish the irony of Hume,

our feelings do not go with the prosecutors, and we are rather

disposed to sympathise with the defendant. It is still worse if the

person who takes such a course takes it, not from a kind of notion

that God wants his assistance, and that he can give it less on his own

account than by prosecuting others--but it is mixed up with anything

of partisan or political feeling, then nothing can be more foreign to

what is high-minded, or religious, or noble, in men's conduct; and

indeed, it seems to me that any one who will do that, not for the

honour of God but for the purpose of the ban, deserves the most

disdainful disapprobation."

 

The jury disagreed, and a _nolle prosequi_ was entered. The net

results of the trials were a large addition to the membership of the

National Secular Society, an increase of circulation of Freethought

literature, the raising of Mr. Foote for a time to a position of great

influence and popularity, and the placing of his name in history as a

brave martyr for liberty of speech. The offence against good taste

will be forgotten; the loyalty to conviction and to courage will

remain. History does not ask if men who suffered for heresy ever

published a rough word; it asks, Were they brave in their

steadfastness; were they faithful to the truth they saw? It may be

well to place on record Mr. Foote's punishment for blasphemy: he spent

twenty-two hours out of the twenty-four alone in his cell; his only

seat was a stool without a back; his employment was picking matting;

his bed was a plank with a thin mattress. During the latter part of

his imprisonment he was allowed some books.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER XIII.

 

SOCIALISM.

 

 

The rest of 1883 passed in the usual way of hard work; the Affirmation

Bill was rejected, and the agitation for Constitutional right grew

steadily; the Liberal Press was won over, and Mr. Bradlaugh was

beginning to earn golden opinions on all sides for his courage, his

tenacity, and his self-control. A successful International Congress at

Amsterdam took some of us over to the Northern Venice, where a most

successful gathering was held. To me, personally, the year has a

special interest, as being the one in which my attention was called,

though only partially, to the Socialist movement. I had heard Louise

Michelle lecture in the early spring; a brief controversy in the

_National Reformer_ had interested me, but I had not yet concerned

myself with the economic basis of Socialism; I had realised that the

land should be public property, but had not gone into the deeper

economic causes of poverty, though the question was pressing with

ever-increasing force on heart and brain. Of Socialist teaching I knew

nothing, having studied only the older English Economists in my

younger days. In 1884 a more definite call to consider 299 these

teachings was to come, and I may perhaps open the record of 1884 with

the words of greeting spoken by me to our readers in the first number

of the _Reformer_ for that year: "What tests 1884 may have for our

courage, what strains on our endurance, what trials of our loyalty,

none can tell. But this we know--that every test of courage

successfully met, every strain of endurance steadily borne, every

trial of loyalty nobly surmounted, leaves courage braver, endurance

stronger, loyalty truer, than each was before. And therefore, for our

own and for the world's sake, I will not wish you, friends, an 1884 in

which there shall be no toil and no battling; but I will wish you,

each and all, the hero's heart and the hero's patience, in the

struggle for the world's raising that will endure through the coming

year."

 

On February 3rd I came for the first time across a paper called

_Justice_, in which Mr. Bradlaugh was attacked, and which gave an

account of a meeting of the Democratic Federation--not yet the Social

Democratic--in which a man had, apparently unrebuked, said that "all

means were justifiable to attain" working-class ends. I protested

strongly against the advocacy of criminal means, declaring that those

who urged the use of such means were the worst foes of social

progress. A few weeks later the _Echo_ repeated a speech of Mr.

Hyndman's in which a "bloodier revolution" than that of France was

prophesied, and the extinction of "book-learning" seemed coupled with

the success of Socialism, and this again I commented on. But I had the

pleasure, a week later, of reprinting from _Justice_ a sensible

paragraph, condemning the advocacy of violence so long as free

agitation was allowed.

 

The spring was marked by two events on which I have not time or space

to dwell--the resignation by Mr. Bradlaugh of his seat, on the

reiteration of the resolution of exclusion, and his triumphant return

for the fourth time by an increased majority, a vote of 4,032, a

higher poll than that of the general election; and the release of Mr.

Foote, on February 25th, from Holloway, whence he was escorted by a

procession a quarter of a mile in length. On the 12th of March he and

his fellow-prisoners received a magnificent reception and were

presented with valuable testimonials at the Hall of Science.

 

Taking up again the thread of Socialism, the great debate in St.

James's Hall, London, between Mr. Bradlaugh and Mr. Hyndman on April

17th, roused me to a serious study of the questions raised. Socialism

has in England no more devoted, no more self-sacrificing advocate than

Henry Hyndman. A man of wide and deep reading, wielding most ably a

singularly fascinating pen, with talents that would have made him

wealthy in any career he adopted, he has sacrificed himself without a

murmur to the people's cause. He has borne obloquy from without,

suspicion and unkindness from those he served, and surrounded by

temptations to betray the people, he has never swerved from his

integrity. He has said rash things, has been stirred to passionate

outbursts and reckless phrases, but love to the people and sympathy

with suffering lay at the root of his wildest words, and they count

but little as against his faithful service. Personally, my debt to him

is of a mixed character; he kept me from Socialism for some time by

his bitter and very unjust antagonism to Mr. Bradlaugh; but it was the

debate at St. James's Hall that, while I angrily resented his

injustice, made me feel that there was something more in practical

Socialism than I had imagined, especially when I read it over

afterwards, away from the magic of Mr. Bradlaugh's commanding

eloquence and personal magnetism. It was a sore pity that English

Socialists, from the outset of their movement, treated Mr. Bradlaugh

so unfairly, so that his friends were set against Socialists ere they

began to examine their arguments. I must confess that my deep

attachment to him led me into injustice to his Socialist foes in those

early days, and often made me ascribe to them calculated malignity

instead of hasty and prejudiced assertion. Added to this, their

uncurbed violence in discussion, their constant interruptions during

the speeches of opponents, their reckless inaccuracy in matters of

fact, were all bars standing in the way of the thoughtful. When I came

to know them better, I found that the bulk of their speakers were very

young men, overworked and underpaid, who spent their scanty leisure in

efforts to learn, to educate themselves, to train themselves, and I

learned to pardon faults which grew out of the bitter sense of

injustice, and which were due largely to the terrible pressure of our

system on characters not yet strong enough--how few are strong

enough!--to bear grinding injustice without loss of balance and of

impartiality. None save those who have worked with them know how much

of real nobility, of heroic self-sacrifice, of constant self-denial,

of brotherly affection, there is among the Social Democrats.

 

At this time also I met George Bernard Shaw, one of the most brilliant

of Socialist writers and most provoking of men; a man with a perfect

genius for "aggravating" the enthusiastically earnest, and with a

passion for representing himself as a scoundrel. On my first

experience of him on the platform at South Place Institute he

described himself as a "loafer," and I gave an angry snarl at him in

the _Reformer_, for a loafer was my detestation, and behold! I found

that he was very poor, because he was a writer with principles and

preferred starving his body to starving his conscience; that he gave

time and earnest work to the spreading of Socialism, spending night

after night in workmen's clubs; and that "a loafer" was only an

amiable way of describing himself because he did not carry a hod. Of

course I had to apologise for my sharp criticism as doing him a

serious injustice, but privately felt somewhat injured at having been

entrapped into such a blunder. Meanwhile I was more and more turning

aside from politics and devoting myself to the social condition of the

people I find myself, in June, protesting against Sir John Lubbock's

Bill which fixed a twelve-hour day as the limit of a "young person's"

toil. "A 'day' of twelve hours is brutal," I wrote; "if the law fixes

twelve hours as a 'fair day' that law will largely govern custom. I

declare that a 'legal day' should be eight hours on five days in the

week and not more than five hours on the sixth. If the labour is of an

exhausting character these hours are too long." On every side now the

Socialist controversy grew, and I listened, read, and thought much,

but said little. The inclusion of John Robertson in the staff of the

_Reformer_ brought a highly intellectual Socialist into closer touch

with us, and slowly I found that the case for Socialism was

intellectually complete and ethically beautiful. The trend of my

thought was shown by urging the feeding of Board School children,

breaking down under the combination of education and starvation, and I

asked, "Why should people be pauperised by a rate-supported meal, and

not pauperised by, state-supported police, drainage, road-mending,

street-lighting, &c? "Socialism in its splendid ideal appealed to my

heart, while the economic soundness of its basis convinced my head.

All my life was turned towards the progress of the people, the helping

of man, and it leaped forward to meet the stronger hope, the lofty

ideal of social brotherhood, the rendering possible to all of freer

life; so long had I been striving thitherward, and here there opened

up a path to the yearned-for goal! How strong were the feelings

surging in my heart may be seen in a brief extract from an article

published second week of January, 1885: "Christian charity? We know

its work. It gives a hundred-weight of coal and five pounds of beef

once a year to a family whose head could earn a hundred such doles if

Christian justice allowed him fair wage for the work he performs. It

plunders the workers of the wealth they make, and then flings back at

them a thousandth part of their own product as 'charity.' It builds

hospitals for the poor whom it has poisoned in filthy courts and

alleys, and workhouses for the worn-out creatures from whom it has

wrung every energy, every hope, every joy. Miss Cobbe summons us to

admire Christian civilisation, and we see idlers flaunting in the

robes woven by the toilers, a glittering tinselled super-structure

founded on the tears, the strugglings, the grey, hopeless misery of

the poor."

 

This first month of January, 1885, brought on me the first attack for

my Socialistic tendencies, from the pen of Mr. W.P. Ball, who wrote

to the _Reformer_ complaining of my paragraph, quoted above, in which

I had advocated rate-supported meals for Board School children. A

brief controversy thus arose, in which I supported my opinion, waiving

the question as to my being "at heart a Socialist." In truth, I

dreaded to make the plunge of publicly allying myself with the

advocates of Socialism, because of the attitude of bitter hostility

they had adopted towards Mr. Bradlaugh. On his strong, tenacious

nature, nurtured on self-reliant individualism, the arguments of the

younger generation made no impression. He could not change his methods

because a new tendency was rising to the surface, and he did not see

how different was the Socialism of our day to the Socialist dreams of

the past--noble ideals of a future not immediately realisable in

truth, but to be worked towards and rendered possible in the days to

come. Could I take public action which might bring me into collision

with the dearest of my friends, which might strain the strong and

tender tie so long existing between us? My affection, my gratitude,

all warred against the idea of working with those who wronged him so

bitterly. But the cry of starving children was ever in my ears; the

sobs of women poisoned in lead works, exhausted in nail works, driven

to prostitution by starvation, made old and haggard by ceaseless work.

I saw their misery was the result of an evil system, was inseparable

from private ownership of the instruments of wealth production; that

while the worker was himself but an instrument, selling his labour

under the law of supply and demand, he must remain helpless in the

grip of the employing classes, and that trade combinations could only

mean increased warfare--necessary, indeed, for the time as weapons of

defence--but meaning war, not brotherly co-operation of all for the

good of all. A conflict which was stripped of all covering, a conflict

between a personal tie and a call of duty could not last long, and

with a heavy heart I made up my mind to profess Socialism openly and

work for it with all my energy. Happily, Mr. Bradlaugh was as tolerant

as he was strong, and our private friendship remained unbroken; but he

never again felt the same confidence in my judgment as he felt before,

nor did he any more consult me on his own policy, as he had done ever

since we first clasped hands.

 

A series of articles in _Our Corner_ on the "Redistribution of

Political Power," on the "Evolution of Society," on "Modern

Socialism," made my position clear. "Over against those who laud the

present state of Society, with its unjustly rich and its unjustly

poor, with its palaces and its slums, its millionaires and its

paupers, be it ours to proclaim that there is a higher ideal in life

than that of being first in the race for wealth, most successful in

the scramble for gold. Be it ours to declare steadfastly that health,

comfort, leisure, culture, plenty for every individual are far more

desirable than breathless struggle for existence, furious trampling

down of the weak by the strong, huge fortunes accumulated out of the

toil of others, to be handed down to those who had done nothing to

earn them. Be it ours to maintain that the greatness of a nation

depends not on the number of its great proprietors, on the wealth of

its great capitalists, or the splendour of its great nobles, but on

the absence of poverty among its people, on the education and

refinement of its masses, on the universality of enjoyment in life....

Enough for each of work, of leisure, of joy; too little for none, too

much for none--such is the Social ideal. Better to strive after it

worthily and fail, than to die without striving for it at all."

 

Then I differentiated the methods of the Socialist and the Radical

Individualist, pleading for union among those who formed the wings of

the army of Labour, and urging union of all workers against the

idlers. For the weakness of the people has ever been in their

divisions, in the readiness of each section to turn its weapons

against other sections instead of against the common foe. All

privileged classes, when they are attacked, sink their differences and

present a serried front to their assailants; the people alone fight

with each other, while the battle between themselves and the

privileged is raging.

 

I strove, as so many others were striving, to sound in the ears of the

thoughtless and the careless the cry of the sufferings of the poor,

endeavouring to make articulate their misery. Thus in a description of

Edinburgh slums came the following: "I saw in a 'house' which was made

by boarding up part of a passage, which had no window, and in which it

was necessary to burn an oil lamp all day, thus adding to the burden

of the rent, a family of three--man, wife, and child--whose lot was

hardly 'of their own making.' The man was tall and bronzed, but he was

dying of heart disease; he could not do hard work, and he was too

clumsy for light work; so he sat there, after two days' fruitless

search, patiently nursing his miserable, scrofulous baby in his dim

and narrow den. The cases of individual hopeless suffering are

heartbreaking. In one room lay a dying child, dying of low fever

brought on by want of food. 'It hae no faither,' sobbed the mother;

and for a moment I did not catch the meaning that the father had left

to the mother all the burden of a child unallowed by law. In another

lay the corpse of a mother, with the children round her, and

hard-featured, gentle-hearted women came in to take back to their

overcrowded beds 'the mitherless bairns.' In yet another a woman,

shrunken and yellow, crouched over a glimmer of fire; "I am dying of

cancer of the womb," she said, with that pathetic resignation to the

inevitable so common among the poor. I sat chatting for a few minutes.

'Come again, deary,' she said as I rose to go; 'it's gey dull sitting

here the day through.'"

 

The article in which these, among other descriptions, occurred was

closed with the following: "Passing out of the slums into the streets

of the town, only a few steps separating the horror and the beauty, I

felt, with a vividness more intense than ever, the fearful contrasts

between the lots of men; and with more pressing urgency the question

seemed to ring in my ears, 'Is there no remedy? Must there always be

rich and poor?' Some say that it must be so; that the palace and the

slum will for ever exist as the light and the shadow. Not so do I

believe. I believe that the poverty is the result of ignorance and of

bad social arrangements, and that therefore it may be eradicated by

knowledge and by social change. I admit that for many of these adult

dwellers in the slums there is no hope. Poor victims of a civilisation

that hides its brutality beneath a veneer of culture and of grace, for

them individually there is, alas! no salvation. But for their

children, yes! Healthy surroundings, good food, mental and physical

training, plenty of play, and carefully chosen work--these might save

the young and prepare them for happy life. But they are being left to

grow up as their parents were, and even when a few hours of school are

given them the home half-neutralises what the education effects. The

scanty aid given is generally begrudged, the education is to be but

elementary, as little as possible is doled out. Yet these children

have each one of them hopes and fears, possibilities of virtue and of

crime, a life to be made or marred. We shower money on generals and on

nobles, we keep high-born paupers living on the national charity, we

squander wealth with both hands on army and navy, on churches and

palaces; but we grudge every halfpenny that increases the education

rate and howl down every proposal to build decent houses for the poor.

We cover our heartlessness and indifference with fine phrases about

sapping the independence of the poor and destroying their

self-respect. With loathsome hypocrisy we repair a prince's palace for

him, and let him live in it rent-free, without one word about the

degradation involved in his thus living upon charity; while we refuse

to 'pauperise' the toiler by erecting decent buildings in which he may

live--not rent-free like the prince, but only paying a rent which

shall cover the cost of erection and maintenance, instead of one which

gives a yearly profit to a speculator. And so, year after year, the

misery grows, and every great city has on its womb a cancer; sapping

its vitality, poisoning its life-blood. Every great city is breeding

in its slums a race which is reverting through the savage to the

brute--a brute more dangerous in that degraded humanity has

possibilities of evil in it beyond the reach of the mere wild beast.

If not for Love's sake, then for fear; if not for justice or for human

pity, then for sheer desire of self-preservation; I appeal to the wise

and to the wealthy to set their hands to the cure of social evil, ere

stolidity gives place to passion and dull patience vanishes before

fury, and they

 

"'Learn at last, in some wild hour, how much the wretched dare.'"

 

Because it was less hotly antagonistic to the Radicals than the two

other Socialist organisations, I joined the Fabian Society, and worked

hard with it as a speaker and lecturer. Sidney Webb, G. Bernard Shaw,

Hubert and Mrs. Bland, Graham Wallas--these were some of those who

gave time, thought, incessant work to the popularising of Socialist

thought, the spreading of sound economics, the effort to turn the

workers' energy toward social rather than merely political reform. We

lectured at workmen's clubs wherever we could gain a hearing, till we

leavened London Radicalism with Socialist thought, and by treating the

Radical as the unevolved Socialist rather than as the anti-Socialist,

we gradually won him over to Socialist views. We circulated questions

to be put to all candidates for parliamentary or other offices,

stirred up interest in local elections, educated men and women into an

understanding of the causes of their poverty, won recruits for the

army of propagandists from the younger of the educated middle class.

That the London working classes to-day are so largely Socialist is

greatly due to the years of work done among them by members of the

Fabian Society, as well to the splendid, if occasionally too militant,

energy of the Social Democratic Federation, and to the devotion of

that noble and generous genius, William Morris.

 

During this same year (1885) a movement was set on foot in England to

draw attention to the terrible sufferings of the Russian political

prisoners, and it was decided at a meeting held in my house to form a

society of the friends of Russia, which should seek to spread accurate

and careful information about the present condition of Russia. At that

meeting were present Charles Bradlaugh, "Stepniak," and many others,

E.R. Pease acting as honorary secretary. It is noteworthy that some

of the most prominent Russian exiles--such as Kropotkin--take the view

that the Tzar himself is not allowed to know what occurs, and is very

largely the victim of the bureaucracy that surrounds him.

 

Another matter, that increased as the months went on, was the attempt

of the police authorities to stop Socialist speaking in the open air.

Christians, Freethinkers, Salvationists, agitators of all kinds were,

for the most part, left alone, but there was a regular crusade against

the Socialists. Liberal and Tory journals alike condemned the way in

which in Dod Street, in September, the Socialists' meetings were

attacked. Quiet persistence was shown by the promoters--members of the

Social Democratic Federation--and they were well supported by other

Socialists and by the Radical clubs. I volunteered to speak on October

4th (my first Sunday in London after the summoning and imprisoning of

the speakers had commenced), but the attitude of the people was so

determined on the preceding Sunday that all interference was

withdrawn.

 

Herbert Burrows stood for the School Board for the Tower Hamlets in

the November of this year, and I find a paragraph in the _Reformer_ in

which I heartily wished him success, especially as the first candidate

who had put forward a demand for industrial education. In this, as in

so many practical proposals, Socialists have led the way. He polled

4,232 votes, despite the furious opposition of the clergy to him as a

Freethinker, of the publicans to him as a teetotaler, of the

maintainers of the present social system to him as a Socialist. And

his fight did much to make possible my own success in 1888.

 

With this autumn, too, began, in connection with the struggle for the

right of meeting, the helping of the workmen to fair trial by

providing of bail and legal defence. The first case that I bailed out

was that of Lewis Lyons, sent to gaol for two months with hard labour

by Mr. Saunders, of the Thames Police Court. Oh, the weary, sickening

waiting in the court for "my prisoner," the sordid vice, the revolting

details of human depravity to which my unwilling eyes and ears were

witnesses. I carried Lyons off in triumph, and the Middlesex

magistrates quashed the conviction, the evidence being pronounced by

them to be "confusing, contradictory, and worthless." Yet but for the

chance of one of us stepping forward to offer bail and to provide the

means for an appeal (I acted on Mr. Bradlaugh's suggestion and advice,

for he acted as counsellor to me all through the weary struggles that

lasted till 1888, putting his great legal knowledge at my disposal,

though he often disapproved my action, thinking me Quixotic)--but for

this, Lewis Lyons would have had to suffer his heavy sentence.

 

The general election took place this autumn, and Northampton returned

Mr. Bradlaugh for the fifth time, thus putting an end to the long

struggle, for he took the oath and his seat in the following January,

and at once gave notice of an Oaths Bill, to give to all who claimed

it, under all circumstances, the right to affirm. He was returned with

the largest vote ever polled for him--4,315--and he entered Parliament

with all the prestige of his great struggle, and went to the front at

once, one of the recognised forces in the House. The action of Mr.

Speaker Peel promptly put an end to an attempted obstruction. Sir

Michael Hicks Beach, Mr. Cecil Raikes, and Sir John Hennaway had

written to the Speaker asking his interference, but the Speaker

declared that he had no authority, no right to stand between a duly

elected member and the duty of taking the oath prescribed by statute.

Thus ended the constitutional struggle of six years, that left the

victor well-nigh bankrupt in health and in purse, and sent him to a

comparatively early grave. He lived long enough to justify his

election, to prove his value to the House and to his country, but he

did not live long enough to render to England all the services which

his long training, his wide knowledge, his courage, and his honesty so

eminently fitted him to yield.

 

[Illustration: NORWICH BRANCH OF THE SOCIALIST LEAGUE.]

 

_Our Corner_ now served as a valuable aid in Socialist propaganda, and

its monthly "Socialist Notes" became a record of Socialist progress in

all lands. We were busy during the spring in organising a conference

for the discussion of "The Present Commercial System, and the Better

Utilisation of National Wealth for the Benefit of the Community," and

this was successfully held at South Place Institute on June 9th, 10th,

11th, the three days being given respectively, to the "Utilisation of

Land," the "Utilisation of Capital," and the "Democratic Policy." On

the 9th Mr. Bradlaugh spoke on the utilisation of waste lands, arguing

that in a thickly populated country no one had the right to keep

cultivable land uncultivated, and that where land was so kept there

should be compulsory expropriation, the state taking the land and

letting it out to cultivating tenants. Among the other speakers were

Edward Carpenter, William Morris, Sidney Webb, John Robertson, William

Saunders, W. Donnisthorpe, Edward Aveling, Charlotte Wilson, Mrs.

Fenwick Miller, Hubert Bland, Dr. Pankhurst, and myself--men and women

of many views, met to compare methods, and so help on the cause of

social regeneration.

 

Bitter attacks were made on me for my Socialist advocacy by some of

the Radicals in the Freethought party, and looking back I find myself

condemned as a "Saint Athanasius in petticoats," and as possessing a

"mind like a milk-jug." This same courteous critic remarked, "I have

heard Mrs. Besant described as being, like most women, at the mercy of

her last male acquaintance for her views on economics." I was foolish

enough to break a lance in self-defence with this assailant, not

having then learned that self-defence was a waste of time that might

be better employed in doing work for others. I certainly should not

now take the trouble to write such a paragraph as the following: "The

moment a man uses a woman's sex to discredit her arguments, the

thoughtful reader knows that he is unable to answer the arguments

themselves. But really these silly sneers at woman's ability have lost

their force, and are best met with a laugh at the stupendous 'male

self-conceit' of the writer. I may add that such shafts are specially

pointless against myself. A woman who thought her way out of

Christianity and Whiggism into Freethought and Radicalism absolutely

alone; who gave up every old friend, male and female, rather than

resign the beliefs she had struggled to in solitude; who, again, in

embracing active Socialism, has run counter to the views of her

nearest 'male friends'; such a woman may very likely go wrong, but I

think she may venture, without conceit, to at least claim independence

of judgment. I did not make the acquaintance of one of my present

Socialist comrades, male or female, until I had embraced Socialism." A

foolish paragraph, as are all self-defences, and a mischievous one, as

all retort breeds fresh strife. But not yet had come the self-control

that estimates the judgments of others at their true value, that recks

not of praise and blame; not yet had I learned that evil should not be

met with evil, wrath with wrath; not yet were the words of the Buddha

the law to which I strove to render obedience: "Hatred ceases not by

hatred at any time; hatred ceases by love." The year 1886 was a

terrible one for labour, everywhere reductions of wages, everywhere

increase of the numbers of the unemployed; turning over the pages of

_Our Corner_, I see "Socialist Notes" filled, month after month, with

a monotonous tale, "there is a reduction of wages at" such and such a

place; so many "men have been discharged at -----, owing to the

slackness of trade." Our hearts sank lower and lower as summer passed

into autumn, and the coming winter threatened to add to starvation the

bitter pains of cold. The agitation for the eight hours' day increased

in strength as the unemployed grew more numerous week by week "We

can't stand it," a sturdy, quiet fellow had said to me during the

preceding winter; "flesh and blood can't stand it, and two months of

this bitter cold, too." "We may as well starve idle as starve

working," had said another, with a fierce laugh. And a spirit of

sullen discontent was spreading everywhere, discontent that was wholly

justified by facts. But ah! how patient they were for the most part,

how sadly, pathetically patient, this crucified Christ, Humanity;

wrongs that would set my heart and my tongue afire would be accepted

as a matter of course. O blind and mighty people, how my heart went

out to you; trampled on, abused, derided, asking so little and needing

so much; so pathetically grateful for the pettiest services; so loving

and so loyal to those who offered you but their poor services and

helpless love. Deeper and deeper into my innermost nature ate the

growing desire to succour, to suffer for, to save. I had long given up

my social reputation, I now gave up with ever-increasing surrender

ease, comfort, time; the passion of pity grew stronger and stronger,

fed by each new sacrifice, and each sacrifice led me nearer and nearer

to the threshold of that gateway beyond which stretched a path of

renunciation I had never dreamed of, which those might tread who were

ready wholly to strip off self for Man's sake, who for Love's sake

would surrender Love's return from those they served, and would go out

into the darkness for themselves that they might, with their own souls

as fuel, feed the Light of the World.

 

As the suffering deepened with the darkening months, the meetings of

the unemployed grew in number, and the murmurs of discontent became

louder. The Social Democratic Federation carried on an outdoor

agitation, not without making blunders, being composed of human

beings, but with abundant courage and self-sacrifice. The policy of

breaking up Socialist meetings went on while other meetings were

winked at, and John Williams, a fiery speaker, but a man with a record

of pathetic struggle and patient heroism, was imprisoned for two

months for speaking in the open air, and so nearly starved in gaol

that he came out with his health broken for life.

 

1887 dawned, the year that was to close so stormily, and Socialists

everywhere were busying themselves on behalf of the unemployed, urging

vestries to provide remunerative work for those applying for relief,

assailing the Local Government Board with practicable proposals for

utilising the productive energies of the unemployed, circulating

suggestions to municipalities and other local representative bodies,

urging remedial measures. A four days' oral debate with Mr. Foote, and

a written debate with Mr. Bradlaugh, occupied some of my energies, and

helped in the process of education to which public opinion was being

subjected. Both these debates were largely circulated as pamphlets. A

series of afternoon debates between representative speakers was

organised at South Place Institute, and Mr. Corrie Grant and myself

had a lively discussion, I affirming "That the existence of classes

who live upon unearned incomes is detrimental to the welfare of the

community, and ought to be put an end to by legislation." Another

debate--in this very quarrelsome spring of 1887--was a written one in

the _National Reformer_ between the Rev. G.F. Handel Rowe and myself

on the proposition, "Is Atheism logically tenable, and is there a

satisfactory Atheistic System for the guidance of Human Conduct." And

so the months went on, and the menace of misery grew louder and

louder, till in September I find myself writing: "This one thing is

clear--Society must deal with the unemployed, or the unemployed will

deal with Society. Stormier and stormier becomes the social outlook,

and they at least are not the worst enemies of Society who seek to

find some way through the breakers by which the ship of the

Commonwealth may pass into quiet waters."

 

Some amusement turned up in the shape of a Charing Cross Parliament,

in which we debated with much vigour the "burning questions" of the

day. We organised a compact Socialist party, defeated a Liberal

Government, took the reins of office, and--after a Queen's Speech in

which her Majesty addressed her loyal Commons with a plainness of

speech never before (or since) heard from the throne--we brought in

several Bills of a decidedly heroic character. G. Bernard Shaw, as

President of the Local Government Board, and I, as Home Secretary,

came in for a good deal of criticism in connection with various

drastic measures. An International Freethought Congress, held in

London, entailed fairly heavy work, and the science classes were ever

with us. Another written debate came with October, this time on the

"Teachings of Christianity," making the fifth of these set discussions

held by me during the year. This same month brought a change, painful

but just: I resigned my much-prized position as co-editor of the

_National Reformer,_ and the number for October 23rd bore Charles

Bradlaugh's name alone. The change did not affect my work on the

paper, but I became merely a subordinate, though remaining, of course,

joint proprietor. The reason cannot be more accurately given than in

the paragraph penned at the time: "For a considerable time past, and

lately in increasing number, complaints have reached me from various

quarters of the inconvenience and uncertainty that result from the

divided editorial policy of this paper on the question of Socialism.

Some months ago I proposed to avoid this difficulty by resigning my

share in the editorship; but my colleague, with characteristic

liberality, asked me to let the proposal stand over and see if matters

would not adjust themselves. But the difficulty, instead of

disappearing, has only become more pressing; and we both feel that our

readers have a right to demand that it be solved.

 

"When I became co-editor of this paper I was not a Socialist; and,

although I regard Socialism as the necessary and logical outcome of

the Radicalism which for so many years the _National Reformer_ has

taught, still, as in avowing myself a Socialist I have taken a

distinct step, the partial separation of my policy in labour questions

from that of my colleague has been of my own making, and not of his,

and it is, therefore, for me to go away. Over by far the greater part

of our sphere of action we are still substantially agreed, and are

likely to remain so. But since, as Socialism becomes more and more a

question of practical politics, differences of theory tend to produce

differences in conduct; and since a political paper must have a single

editorial programme in practical politics, it would obviously be most

inconvenient for me to retain my position as co-editor. I therefore

resume my former position as contributor only, thus clearing the

_National Reformer_ of all responsibility for the views I hold."

 

To this Mr. Bradlaugh added the following:--

 

"I need hardly add to this how very deeply I regret the necessity for

Mrs. Besant's resignation of the joint editorship of this Journal, and

the real grief I feel in accepting this break in a position in which

she has rendered such enormous service to the Freethought and Radical

cause. As a most valued contributor I trust the _National Reformer_

may never lose the efficient aid of her brain and pen. For thirteen

years this paper has been richer for good by the measure of her

never-ceasing and most useful work. I agree with her that a journal

must have a distinct editorial policy; and I think this distinctness

the more necessary when, as in the present case, every contributor has

the greatest freedom of expression. I recognise in the fullest degree

the spirit of self-sacrifice in which the lines, to which I add these

words, have been penned by Mrs. Besant. "CHARLES BRADLAUGH."

 

It was a wrench, this breaking of a tie for which a heavy price had

been paid thirteen years before, but it was just. Any one who makes a

change with which pain is connected is bound, in honour and duty, to

take that pain as much as possible on himself; he must not put his

sacrifice on others, nor pay his own ransom with their coin. There

must be honour kept in the life that reaches towards the Ideal, for

broken faith to that is the only real infidelity.

 

And there was another reason for the change that I dared not name to

him, for his quick loyalty would then have made him stubbornly

determined against change. I saw the swift turning of public opinion,

the gradual approach to him among Liberals who had hitherto held

aloof, and I knew that they looked upon me as a clog and a burden, and

that were I less prominently with him his way would be the easier to

tread. So I slipped more and more into the background, no longer went

with him to his meetings; my use to him in public was over, for I had

become hindrance instead of help. While he was outcast and hated I had

the pride of standing at his side; when all the fair-weather friends

came buzzing round him I served him best by self-effacement, and I

never loved him better than when I stood aside. But I continued all

the literary work unaltered, and no change of opinions touched his

kindness to me, although when, a little later, I joined the

Theosophical Society, he lost his trust in my reasoning powers and

judgment.

 

In this same month of October the unemployed began walking in

procession through the streets, and harshness on the part of the

police led to some rioting. Sir Charles Warren thought it his duty to

dragoon London meetings after the fashion of Continental prefects,

with the inevitable result that an ill-feeling grew up between the

people and the police.

 

At last we formed a Socialist Defence Association, in order to help

poor workmen brought up and sentenced on police evidence only, without

any chance being given them of proper legal defence, and I organised a

band of well-to-do men and women, who promised to obey a telegraphic

summons, night or day, and to bail out any prisoner arrested for

exercising the ancient right of walking in procession and speaking. To

take one instance: Mr. Burleigh, the well-known war correspondent, and

Mr. Winks were arrested and "run in" with Mr. J. Knight, a workman,

for seditious language. I went down to the police-station to offer

bail for the latter: Chief-Constable Howard accepted bail for Messrs.

Burleigh and Winks, but refused it for Mr. Knight. The next day, at

the police-court, the preposterous bail of Ł400 was demanded for Mr.

Knight and supplied by my faithful band, and on the next hearing Mr.

Poland, solicitor to the Treasury, withdrew the charge against him for

lack of evidence!

 

Then came the closing of Trafalgar Square, and the unexpected and

high-handed order that cost some men their lives, many their liberty,

and hundreds the most serious injuries. The Metropolitan Radical

Federation had called a meeting for November 13th to protest against

the imprisonment of Mr. O'Brien, and as Mr. Matthews, from his place

in the House, had stated that there was no intention of interfering

with _bonâ fide_ political meetings, the Radical clubs did not expect

police interference. On November 9th Sir Charles Warren had issued an

order forbidding all meetings in the Square, but the clubs trusted the

promise of the Home Secretary. On Saturday evening only, November

12th, when all arrangements were completed, did he issue a peremptory

order, forbidding processions within a certain area. With this trap

suddenly sprung upon them, the delegates from the clubs, the Fabian

Society, the Social Democratic Federation, and the Socialist League,

met on that same Saturday evening to see to any details that had been

possibly left unsettled. It was finally decided to go to the Square as

arranged, and, if challenged by the police, to protest formally

against the illegal interference, then to break up the processions and

leave the members to find their own way to the Square. It was also

decided to go Sunday after Sunday to the Square, until the right of

public meetings was vindicated.

 

The procession I was in started from Clerkenwell Green, and walked

with its banner in front, and the chosen speakers, including myself,

immediately behind the flag. As we were moving slowly and quietly

along one of the narrow streets debouching on Trafalgar Square,

wondering whether we should be challenged, there was a sudden charge,

and without a word the police were upon us with uplifted truncheons;

the banner was struck down, and men and women were falling under a

hail of blows. There was no attempt at resistance, the people were too

much astounded at the unprepared attack. They scattered, leaving some

of their number on the ground too much injured to move, and then made

their way in twos and threes to the Square. It was garrisoned by

police, drawn up in serried rows, that could only have been broken by

a deliberate charge. Our orders were to attempt no violence, and we

attempted none. Mr. Cunninghame Graham and Mr. John Burns, arm-in-arm,

tried to pass through the police, and were savagely cut about the head

and arrested. Then ensued a scene to be remembered; the horse police

charged in squadrons at a hand-gallop, rolling men and women over like

ninepins, while the foot police struck recklessly with their

truncheons, cutting a road through the crowd that closed immediately

behind them. I got on a waggonette and tried to persuade the driver to

pull his trap across one of the roads, and to get others in line, so

as to break the charges of the mounted police; but he was afraid, and

drove away to the Embankment, so I jumped out and went back to the

Square. At last a rattle of cavalry, and up came the Life Guards,

cleverly handled but hurting none, trotting their horses gently and

shouldering the crowd apart; and then the Scots Guards with bayonets

fixed marched through and occupied the north of the Square. Then the

people retreated as we passed round the word, "Go home, go home." The

soldiers were ready to fire, the people unarmed; it would have been

but a massacre. Slowly the Square emptied and all was still. All other

processions were treated as ours had been, and the injuries inflicted

were terrible. Peaceable, law-abiding workmen, who had never dreamed

of rioting, were left with broken legs, broken arms, wounds of every

description. One man, Linnell, died almost immediately, others from

the effect of their injuries. The next day a regular court-martial in

Bow Street Police Court, witnesses kept out by the police, men dazed

with their wounds, decent workmen of unblemished character who had

never been charged in a police-court before, sentenced to imprisonment

without chance of defence. But a gallant band rallied to their rescue.

William T. Stead, most chivalrous of journalists, opened a Defence

Fund, and money rained in; my pledged bail came up by the dozen, and

we got the men out on appeal. By sheer audacity I got into the

police-court, addressed the magistrate, too astounded by my profound

courtesy and calm assurance to remember that I had no right there, and

then produced bail after bail of the most undeniable character and

respectability, which no magistrate could refuse. Breathing-time

gained, a barrister, Mr. W.M. Thompson, worked day after day with

hearty devotion, and took up the legal defence. Fines we paid, and

here Mrs. Marx Aveling did eager service. A pretty regiment I led out

of Millbank Prison, after paying their fines; bruised, clothes torn,

hatless, we must have looked a disreputable lot. We stopped and bought

hats, to throw an air of respectability over our _cortčge_, and we

kept together until I saw the men into train and omnibus, lest, with

the bitter feelings now roused, conflict should again arise. We formed

the Law and Liberty League to defend all unjustly assailed by the

police, and thus rescued many a man from prison; and we gave poor

Linnell, killed in Trafalgar Square, a public funeral. Sir Charles

Warren forbade the passing of the hearse through any of the main

thoroughfares west of Waterloo Bridge, so the processions waited there

for it. W.T. Stead, R. Cunninghame Graham, Herbert Burrows, and

myself walked on one side the coffin, William Morris, F. Smith, R.

Dowling, and J. Seddon on the other; the Rev. Stewart D. Headlam, the

officiating clergyman, walked in front; fifty stewards carrying long

wands guarded the coffin. From Wellington Street to Bow Cemetery the

road was one mass of human beings, who uncovered reverently as the

slain man went by; at Aldgate the procession took three-quarters of an

hour to pass one spot, and thus we bore Linnell to his grave, symbol

of a cruel wrong, the vast orderly, silent crowd, bareheaded, making

mute protest against the outrage wrought.

 

It is pleasant to put on record here Mr. Bradlaugh's grave approval of

the heavy work done in the police-courts, and the following paragraph

shows how generously he could praise one not acting on his own lines:

"As I have on most serious matters of principle recently differed very

widely from my brave and loyal co-worker, and as the difference has

been regrettably emphasised by her resignation of her editorial

functions on this Journal, it is the more necessary that I should say

how thoroughly I approve, and how grateful I am to her for, her

conduct in not only obtaining bail and providing legal assistance for

the helpless unfortunates in the hands of the police, but also for her

daily personal attendance and wise conduct at the police-stations and

police-courts, where she has done so much to abate harsh treatment on

the one hand and rash folly on the other. While I should not have

marked out this as fitting woman's work, especially in the recent very

inclement weather, I desire to record my view that it has been bravely

done, well done, and most usefully done, and I wish to mark this the

more emphatically as my views and those of Mrs. Besant seem wider

apart than I could have deemed possible on many of the points of

principle underlying what is every day growing into a most serious

struggle." Ever did I find Charles Bradlaugh thus tolerant of

difference of opinion, generously eager to approve what to him seemed

right even in a policy he disapproved.

 

The indignation grew and grew; the police were silently boycotted, but

the people were so persistent and so tactful that no excuse for

violence was given, until the strain on the police force began to

tell, and the Tory Government felt that London was being hopelessly

alienated; so at last Sir Charles Warren fell, and a wiser hand was

put at the helm.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER XIV.

 

THROUGH STORM TO PEACE.

 

 

Out of all this turmoil and stress rose a Brotherhood that had in it

the promise of a fairer day. Mr. Stead and I had become close

friends--he Christian, I Atheist, burning with one common love for

man, one common hatred against oppression. And so in _Our Corner_ for

February, 1888, I wrote:--"Lately there has been dawning on the minds

of men far apart in questions of theology, the idea of founding a new

Brotherhood, in which service of Man should take the place erstwhile

given to service of God--a brotherhood in which work should be worship

and love should be baptism, in which none should be regarded as alien

who was willing to work for human good. One day as I was walking

towards Millbank Gaol with the Rev. S.D. Headlam, on the way to

liberate a prisoner, I said to him: 'Mr. Headlam, we ought to have a

new Church, which should include all who have the common ground of

faith in and love for man.' And a little later I found that my friend

Mr. W.T. Stead, editor of the _Pall Mall Gazette,_ had long been

brooding over a similar thought, and wondering whether men 'might not

be persuaded to be as earnest about making this world happy as they

are over saving their souls.' The teaching of social duty, the

upholding of social righteousness, the building up of a true

commonwealth--such would be among the aims of the Church of the

future. Is the hope too fair for realisation? Is the winning of such

beatific vision yet once more the dream of the enthusiast? But surely

the one fact that persons so deeply differing in theological creeds as

those who have been toiling for the last three months to aid and

relieve the oppressed, can work in absolute harmony side by side for

the one end--surely this proves that there is a bond which is stronger

than our antagonisms, a unity which is deeper than the speculative

theories which divide."

 

How unconsciously I was marching towards the Theosophy which was to

become the glory of my life, groping blindly in the darkness for that

very brotherhood, definitely formulated on these very lines by those

Elder Brothers of our race, at whose feet I was so soon to throw

myself. How deeply this longing for something loftier than I had yet

found had wrought itself into my life, how strong the conviction was

growing that there was something to be sought to which the service of

man was the road, may be seen in the following passage from the same

article:--

 

"It has been thought that in these days of factories and of tramways,

of shoddy, and of adulteration, that all life must tread with even

rhythm of measured footsteps, and that the glory of the ideal could no

longer glow over the greyness of a modern horizon. But signs are not

awanting that the breath of the older heroism is beginning to stir

men's breasts, and that the passion for justice and for liberty, which

thrilled through the veins of the world's greatest in the past, and

woke our pulses to responsive throb, has not yet died wholly out of

the hearts of men. Still the quest of the Holy Grail exercises its

deathless fascination, but the seekers no longer raise eyes to heaven,

nor search over land and sea, for they know that it waits them in the

suffering at their doors, that the consecration of the holiest is on

the agonising masses of the poor and the despairing, the cup is

crimson with the blood of the

 

"'People, the grey-grown speechless Christ.'

 

... If there be a faith that can remove the mountains of ignorance and

evil, it is surely that faith in the ultimate triumph of Right in the

final enthronement of Justice, which alone makes life worth the

living, and which gems the blackest cloud of depression with the

rainbow-coloured arch of an immortal hope."

 

As a step towards bringing about some such union of those ready to

work for man, Mr. Stead and I projected the _Link_, a halfpenny

weekly, the spirit of which was described in its motto, taken from

Victor Hugo: "The people are silence. I will be the advocate of this

silence. I will speak for the dumb. I will speak of the small to the

great and of the feeble to the strong.... I will speak for all the

despairing silent ones. I will interpret this stammering; I will

interpret the grumblings, the murmurs, the tumults of crowds, the

complaints ill-pronounced, and all these cries of beasts that, through

ignorance and through suffering, man is forced to utter ... I will be

the Word of the People. I will be the bleeding mouth whence the gag is

snatched out. I will say everything." It announced its object to be

the "building up" of a "New Church, dedicated to the service of man,"

and "what we want to do is to establish in every village and in every

street some man or woman who will sacrifice time and labour as

systematically and as cheerfully in the temporal service of man as

others do in what they believe to be the service of God." Week after

week we issued our little paper, and it became a real light in the

darkness. There the petty injustices inflicted on the poor found

voice; there the starvation wages paid to women found exposure; there

sweating was brought to public notice. A finisher of boots paid 2s.

6d. per dozen pairs and "find your own polish and thread"; women

working for 10-1/2 hours per day, making shirts--"fancy best"--at from

10d. to 3s. per dozen, finding their own cotton and needles, paying

for gas, towel, and tea (compulsory), earning from 4s. to 10s. per

week for the most part; a mantle finisher 2s. 2d. a week, out of which

6d. for materials; "respectable hard-working woman" tried for

attempted suicide, "driven to rid herself of life from want." Another

part of our work was defending people from unjust landlords, exposing

workhouse scandals, enforcing the Employers' Liability Act, Charles

Bradlaugh's Truck Act, forming "Vigilance Circles" whose members kept

watch in their own district over cases of cruelty to children,

extortion, insanitary workshops, sweating, &c., reporting each case to

me. Into this work came Herbert Burrows, who had joined hands with me

over the Trafalgar Square defence, and who wrote some noble articles

in the _Link_. A man loving the people with passionate devotion,

hating oppression and injustice with equal passion, working himself

with remorseless energy, breaking his heart over wrongs he could not

remedy. His whole character once came out in a sentence when he was

lying delirious and thought himself dying: "Tell the people how I have

loved them always."

 

In our crusade for the poor we worked for the dockers." To-morrow

morning, in London alone 20,000 to 25,000 adult men," wrote Sidney

Webb, "will fight like savages for permission to labour in the docks

for 4d. an hour, and one-third of them will fight in vain, and be

turned workless away." We worked for children's dinners. "If we insist

on these children being educated, is it not necessary that they shall

be fed? If not, we waste on them knowledge they cannot assimilate, and

torture many of them to death. Poor waifs of humanity, we drive them

into the school and bid them learn; and the pitiful, wistful eyes

question us why we inflict this strange new suffering, and bring into

their dim lives this new pang. 'Why not leave us alone? 'ask the

pathetically patient little faces. Why not, indeed, since for these

child martyrs of the slums, Society has only formulas, not food." We

cried out against "cheap goods," that meant "sweated and therefore

stolen goods." "The ethics of buying should surely be simply enough.

We want a particular thing, and we do not desire to obtain it either

by begging or by robbery; but if in becoming possessed of it, we

neither beg it nor steal, we must give for it something equivalent in

exchange; so much of our neighbour's labour has been put into the

thing we desire; if we will not yield him fair equivalent for that

labour, yet take his article, we defraud him, and if we are not

willing to give that fair equivalent we have no right to become the

owners of his product."

 

This branch of our work led to a big fight--a fight most happy in its

results. At a meeting of the Fabian Society, Miss Clementina Black

gave a capital lecture on Female Labour, and urged the formation of a

Consumers' League, pledged only to buy from shops certificated "clean"

from unfair wage. H.H. Champion, in the discussion that followed,

drew attention to the wages paid by Bryant & May (Limited), while

paying an enormous dividend to their shareholders, so that the value

of the original Ł5 shares was quoted at Ł18 7s. 6d. Herbert Burrows

and I interviewed some of the girls, got lists of wages, of fines, &c.

"A typical case is that of a girl of sixteen, a piece-worker; she

earns 4s. a week, and lives with a sister, employed by the same firm,

who 'earns good money, as much as 8s. or 9s. a week.' Out of the

earnings 2s. a week is paid for the rent of one room. The child lives

only on bread and butter and tea, alike for breakfast and dinner, but

related with dancing eyes that once a month she went to a meal where

'you get coffee and bread and butter, and jam and marmalade, and lots

of it.'" We published the facts under the title of "White Slavery in

London," and called for a boycott of Bryant & May's matches. "It is

time some one came and helped us," said two pale-faced girls to me;

and I asked: "Who will help? Plenty of people wish well to any good

cause; but very few care to exert themselves to help it, and still

fewer will risk anything in its support. 'Some one ought to do it, but

why should I?' is the ever re-echoed phrase of weak-kneed amiability.

'Some one ought to do it, so why _not_ I?' is the cry of some earnest

servant of man, eagerly forward springing to face some perilous duty.

Between those two sentences lie whole centuries of moral evolution."

 

I was promptly threatened with an action for libel, but nothing came

of it; it was easier to strike at the girls, and a few days later

Fleet Street was enlivened by the irruption of a crowd of match-girls,

demanding Annie Besant. I couldn't speechify to match-girls in Fleet

Street, so asked that a deputation should come and explain what they

wanted. Up came three women and told their story: they had been asked

to sign a paper certifying that they were well treated and contented,

and that my statements were untrue; they refused. "You had spoke up

for us," explained one, "and we weren't going back on you." A girl,

pitched on as their leader, was threatened with dismissal; she stood

firm; next day she was discharged for some trifle, and they all threw

down their work, some 1,400 of them, and then a crowd of them started

off to me to ask what to do next. If we ever worked in our lives,

Herbert Burrows and I worked for the next fortnight. And a pretty

hubbub we created; we asked for money, and it came pouring in; we

registered the girls to receive strike pay, wrote articles, roused the

clubs, held public meetings, got Mr. Bradlaugh to ask questions in

Parliament, stirred up constituencies in which shareholders were

members, till the whole country rang with the struggle. Mr. Frederick

Charrington lent us a hall for registration, Mr. Sidney Webb and

others moved the National Liberal Club to action; we led a procession

of the girls to the House of Commons, and interviewed, with a

deputation of them, Members of Parliament who cross-questioned them.

The girls behaved splendidly, stuck together, kept brave and bright

all through. Mr. Hobart of the Social Democratic Federation, Messrs.

Shaw, Bland, and Oliver, and Headlam of the Fabian Society, Miss

Clementina Black, and many another helped in the heavy work. The

London Trades Council finally consented to act as arbitrators and a

satisfactory settlement was arrived at; the girls went in to work,

fines and deductions were abolished, better wages paid; the

Match-makers' Union was established, still the strongest woman's

Trades Union in England, and for years I acted as secretary, till,

under press of other duties, I resigned, and my work was given by the

girls to Mrs. Thornton Smith; Herbert Burrows became, and still is,

the treasurer. For a time there was friction between the Company and

the Union, but it gradually disappeared under the influence of common

sense on both sides, and we have found the manager ready to consider

any just grievance and to endeavour to remove it, while the Company

have been liberal supporters of the Working Women's Club at Bow,

founded by H.P. Blavatsky.

 

[Illustration: STRIKE COMMITTEE OF THE MATCHMAKERS' UNION.]

 

The worst suffering of all was among the box-makers, thrown out of

work by the strike, and they were hard to reach. Twopence-farthing per

gross of boxes, and buy your own string and paste, is not wealth, but

when the work went more rapid starvation came. Oh, those trudges

through the lanes and alleys round Bethnal Green Junction late at

night, when our day's work was over; children lying about on shavings,

rags, anything; famine looking out of baby faces, out of women's eyes,

out of the tremulous hands of men. Heart grew sick and eyes dim, and

ever louder sounded the question, "Where is the cure for sorrow, what

the way of rescue for the world?"

 

In August I asked for a "match-girls' drawing-room." "It will want a

piano, tables for papers, for games, for light literature; so that it

may offer a bright, homelike refuge to these girls, who now have no

real homes, no playground save the streets. It is not proposed to

build an 'institution' with stern and rigid discipline and enforcement

of prim behaviour, but to open a home, filled with the genial

atmosphere of cordial comradeship, and self-respecting freedom--the

atmosphere so familiar to all who have grown up in the blessed shelter

of a happy home, so strange, alas! to too many of our East London

girls." In the same month of August, two years later, H.P. Blavatsky

opened such a home.

 

Then came a cry for help from South London, from tin-box makers,

illegally fined, and in many cases grievously mutilated by the

non-fencing of machinery; then aid to shop assistants, also illegally

fined; legal defences by the score still continued; a vigorous

agitation for a free meal for children, and for fair wages to be paid

by all public bodies; work for the dockers and exposure of their

wrongs; a visit to the Cradley Heath chain-makers, speeches to them,

writing for them; a contest for the School Board for the Tower Hamlets

division, and triumphant return at the head of the poll. Such were

some of the ways in which the autumn days were spent, to say nothing

of scores of lectures--Secularist, Labour, Socialist--and scores of

articles written for the winning of daily bread. When the School Board

work was added I felt that I had as much work as one woman's strength

could do.

 

Thus was ushered in 1889, the to me never-to-be-forgotten year in

which I found my way "Home," and had the priceless good fortune of

meeting, and of becoming the pupil of, H.P. Blavatsky. Ever more and

more had been growing on me the feeling that something more than I had

was needed for the cure of social ills. The Socialist position

sufficed on the economic side, but where to gain the inspiration, the

motive, which should lead to the realisation of the Brotherhood of

Man? Our efforts to really organise bands of unselfish workers had

failed. Much indeed had been done, but there was not a real movement

of self-sacrificing devotion, in which men worked for Love's sake

only, and asked but to give, not to take. Where was the material for

the nobler Social Order, where the hewn stones for the building of the

Temple of Man? A great despair would oppress me as I sought for such a

movement and found it not.

 

[Illustration: MEMBERS OF THE MATCHMAKERS' UNION.]

 

Not only so; but since 1886 there had been slowly growing up a

conviction that my philosophy was not sufficient; that life and mind

were other than, more than, I had dreamed. Psychology was advancing

with rapid strides; hypnotic experiments were revealing unlooked-for

complexities in human consciousness, strange riddles of multiplex

personalities, and, most startling of all, vivid intensities of mental

action when the brain, that should be the generator of thought, was

reduced to a comatose state. Fact after fact came hurtling in upon me,

demanding explanation I was incompetent to give. I studied the

obscurer sides of consciousness, dreams, hallucinations, illusions,

insanity. Into the darkness shot a ray of light--A.P. Sinnett's

"Occult World," with its wonderfully suggestive letters, expounding

not the supernatural but a nature under law, wider than I had dared to

conceive. I added Spiritualism to my studies, experimenting privately,

finding the phenomena indubitable, but the spiritualistic explanation

of them incredible. The phenomena of clairvoyance, clairaudience,

thought-reading, were found to be real. Under all the rush of the

outer life, already sketched, these questions were working in my mind,

their answers were being diligently sought. I read a variety of books,

but could find little in them that satisfied me. I experimented in

various ways suggested in them, and got some (to me) curious results.

I finally convinced myself that there was some hidden thing, some

hidden power, and resolved to seek until I found, and by the early

spring of 1889 I had grown desperately determined to find at all

hazards what I sought. At last, sitting alone in deep thought as I had

become accustomed to do after the sun had set, filled with an intense

but nearly hopeless longing to solve the riddle of life and mind, I

heard a Voice that was later to become to me the holiest sound on

earth, bidding me take courage for the light was near. A fortnight

passed, and then Mr. Stead gave into my hands two large volumes. "Can

you review these? My young men all fight shy of them, but you are

quite mad enough on these subjects to make something of them." I took

the books; they were the two volumes of "The Secret Doctrine," written

by H.P. Blavatsky.

 

Home I carried my burden, and sat me down to read. As I turned over

page after page the interest became absorbing; but how familiar it

seemed; how my mind leapt forward to presage the conclusions, how

natural it was, how coherent, how subtle, and yet how intelligible. I

was dazzled, blinded by the light in which disjointed facts were seen

as parts of a mighty whole, and all my puzzles, riddles, problems,

seemed to disappear. The effect was partially illusory in one sense,

in that they all had to be slowly unravelled later, the brain

gradually assimilating that which the swift intuition had grasped as

truth. But the light had been seen, and in that flash of illumination

I knew that the weary search was over and the very Truth was found.

 

I wrote the review, and asked Mr. Stead for an introduction to the

writer, and then sent a note asking to be allowed to call. I received

the most cordial of notes, bidding me come, and in the soft spring

evening Herbert Burrows and I--for his aspirations were as mine on

this matter--walked from Netting Hill Station, wondering what we

should meet, to the door of 17, Lansdowne Road. A pause, a swift

passing through hall and outer room, through folding-doors thrown

back, a figure in a large chair before a table, a voice, vibrant,

compelling, "My dear Mrs. Besant, I have so long wished to see you,"

and I was standing with my hand in her firm grip, and looking for

the first time in this life straight into the eyes of "H.P.B." I

was conscious of a sudden leaping forth of my heart--was it

recognition?--and then, I am ashamed to say, a fierce rebellion, a

fierce withdrawal, as of some wild animal when it feels a mastering

hand. I sat down, after some introductions that conveyed no ideas to

me, and listened. She talked of travels, of various countries, easy

brilliant talk, her eyes veiled, her exquisitely moulded fingers

rolling cigarettes incessantly. Nothing special to record, no word of

Occultism, nothing mysterious, a woman of the world chatting with her

evening visitors. We rose to go, and for a moment the veil lifted, and

two brilliant, piercing eyes met mine, and with a yearning throb in

the voice: "Oh, my dear Mrs. Besant, if you would only come among us!"

I felt a well-nigh uncontrollable desire to bend down and kiss her,

under the compulsion of that yearning voice, those compelling eyes,

but with a flash of the old unbending pride and an inward jeer at my

own folly, I said a commonplace polite good-bye, and turned away with

some inanely courteous and evasive remark. "Child," she said to me

long afterwards, "your pride is terrible; you are as proud as Lucifer

himself." But truly I think I never showed it to her again after that

first evening, though it sprang up wrathfully in her defence many and

many a time, until I learned the pettiness and the worthlessness of

all criticism, and knew that the blind were objects of compassion not

of scorn.

 

Once again I went, and asked about the Theosophical Society, wishful

to join, but fighting against it. For I saw, distinct and clear--with

painful distinctness, indeed--what that joining would mean. I had

largely conquered public prejudice against me by my work on the London

School Board, and a smoother road stretched before me, whereon effort

to help should be praised not blamed. Was I to plunge into a new

vortex of strife, and make myself a mark for ridicule--worse than

hatred--and fight again the weary fight for an unpopular truth? Must I

turn against Materialism, and face the shame of publicly confessing

that I had been wrong, misled by intellect to ignore the Soul? Must I

leave the army that had battled for me so bravely, the friends who

through all brutality of social ostracism had held me dear and true?

And he, the strongest and truest friend of all, whose confidence I had

shaken by my Socialism--must he suffer the pang of seeing his

co-worker, his co-fighter, of whom he had been so proud, to whom he

had been so generous, go over to the opposing hosts, and leave the

ranks of Materialism? What would be the look in Charles Bradlaugh's

eyes when I told him that I had become a Theosophist? The struggle was

sharp and keen, but with none of the anguish of old days in it, for

the soldier had now fought many fights and was hardened by many

wounds. And so it came to pass that I went again to Lansdowne Road to

ask about the Theosophical Society. H.P. Blavatsky looked at me

piercingly for a moment. "Have you read the report about me of the

Society for Psychical Research?" "No; I never heard of it, so far as I

know." "Go and read it, and if, after reading it, you come

back--well." And nothing more would she say on the subject, but

branched off to her experiences in many lands.

 

I borrowed a copy of the Report, read and re-read it. Quickly I saw

how slender was the foundation on which the imposing structure was

built. The continual assumptions on which conclusions were based; the

incredible character of the allegations; and--most damning fact of

all--the foul source from which the evidence was derived. Everything

turned on the veracity of the Coulombs, and they were self-stamped as

partners in the alleged frauds. Could I put such against the frank,

fearless nature that I had caught a glimpse of, against the proud

fiery truthfulness that shone at me from the clear, blue eyes, honest

and fearless as those of a noble child? Was the writer of "The Secret

Doctrine" this miserable impostor, this accomplice of tricksters, this

foul and loathsome deceiver, this conjuror with trap-doors and sliding

panels? I laughed aloud at the absurdity and flung the Report aside

with the righteous scorn of an honest nature that knew its own kin

when it met them, and shrank from the foulness and baseness of a lie.

The next day saw me at the Theosophical Publishing Company's office at

7, Duke Street, Adelphi, where Countess Wachtmeister--one of the

lealest of H.P.B.'s friends--was at work, and I signed an

application to be admitted as fellow of the Theosophical Society.

 

On receiving my diploma I betook myself to Lansdowne Road, where I

found H.P.B. alone. I went over to her, bent down and kissed her,

but said no word. "You have joined the Society?" "Yes." "You have read

the report?" "Yes." "Well?" I knelt down before her and clasped her

hands in mine, looking straight into her eyes. "My answer is, will you

accept me as your pupil, and give me the honour of proclaiming you my

teacher in the face of the world?" Her stern, set face softened, the

unwonted gleam of tears sprang to her eyes; then, with a dignity more

than regal, she placed her hand upon my head. "You are a noble woman.

May Master bless you."

 

From that day, the 10th of May, 1889, until now--two years three and

half months after she left her body on May 8, 1891--my faith in her

has never wavered, my trust in her has never been shaken. I gave her

my faith on an imperious intuition, I proved her true day after day in

closest intimacy living by her side; and I speak of her with the

reverence due from a pupil to a teacher who never failed her, with the

passionate gratitude which, in our School, is the natural meed of the

one who opens the gateway and points out the path. "Folly!

fanaticism!" scoffs the Englishman of the nineteenth century. Be it

so. I have seen, and I can wait. I have been told that I plunged

headlong into Theosophy and let my enthusiasm carry me away. I think

the charge is true, in so far as the decision was swiftly taken; but

it had been long led up to, and realised the dreams of childhood on

the higher planes of intellectual womanhood. And let me here say that

more than all I hoped for in that first plunge has been realised, and

a certainty of knowledge has been gained on doctrines seen as true as

that swift flash of illumination. I _know_, by personal experiment,

that the Soul exists, and that my Soul, not my body, is myself; that

it can leave the body at will; that it can, disembodied, reach and

learn from living human teachers, and bring back and impress on the

physical brain that which it has learned; that this process of

transferring consciousness from one range of being, as it were, to

another, is a very slow process, during which the body and brain are

gradually correlated with the subtler form which is essentially that

of the Soul, and that my own experience of it, still so imperfect, so

fragmentary, when compared with the experience of the highly trained,

is like the first struggles of a child learning to speak compared with

the perfect oratory of the practised speaker; that consciousness, so

far from being dependent on the brain, is more active when freed from

the gross forms of matter than when encased within them; that the

great Sages spoken of by H.P. Blavatsky exist; that they wield powers

and possess knowledge before which our control of Nature and knowledge

of her ways is but as child's play. All this, and much more, have I

learned, and I am but a pupil of low grade, as it were in the infant

class of the Occult School; so the first plunge has been successful,

and the intuition has been justified. This same path of knowledge that

I am treading is open to all others who will pay the toll demanded at

the gateway--and that toll is willingness to renounce everything for

the sake of spiritual truth, and willingness to give all the truth

that is won to the service of man, keeping back no shred for self.

 

On June 23rd, in a review of "The Secret Doctrine" in the _National

Reformer,_ the following passages occur, and show how swiftly some of

the main points of the teaching had been grasped. (There is a blunder

in the statement that of the seven modifications of Matter Science

knows only four, and till lately knew only three; these four are

sub-states only, sub-divisions of the lowest plane.)

 

After saying that the nineteenth-century Englishman would be but too

likely to be repelled if he only skimmed the book, I went on: "With

telescope and with microscope, with scalpel and with battery, Western

Science interrogates nature, adding fact to fact, storing experience

after experience, but coming ever to gulfs unfathomable by its

plummets, to heights unscalable by its ladders. Wide and masterful in

its answers to the 'How?' the 'Why?' ever eludes it, and causes remain

enwrapped in gloom. Eastern Science uses as its scientific instrument

the penetrating faculties of the mind alone, and regarding the

material plane as _Maya_--illusion--seeks in the mental and spiritual

planes of being the causes of the material effects. There, too, is the

only reality; there the true existence of which the visible universe

is but the shadow.

 

"It is clear that from such investigations some further mental

equipment is necessary than that normally afforded by the human body.

And here comes the parting of the ways between East and West. For the

study of the material universe, our five senses, aided by the

instruments invented by Science, may suffice. For all we can hear and

see, taste and handle, these accustomed servitors, though often

blundering, are the best available guides to knowledge. But it lies in

the nature of the case that they are useless when the investigation is

to be into modes of existence which cannot impress themselves on our

nerve-ends. For instance, what we know as colour is the vibration

frequency of etheric waves striking on the retina of the eye, between

certain definite limits--759 trillions of blows from the maximum, 436

trillions from the minimum--these waves give rise in us to the

sensation which the brain translates into colour. (Why the 436

trillion blows at one end of a nerve become 'Red' at the other end we

do not know; we chronicle the fact but cannot explain it.) But our

capacity to respond to the vibration cannot limit the vibrational

capacity of the ether; to _us_ the higher and lower rates of vibration

do not exist, but if our sense of vision were more sensitive we should

see where now we are blind. Following this line of thought we realise

that matter may exist in forms unknown to us, in modifications to

which our senses are unable to respond. Now steps in the Eastern Sage

and says: 'That which you say _may_ be, _is_; we have developed and

cultivated senses as much superior to yours as your eye is superior to

that of the jelly-fish; we have evolved mental and spiritual faculties

which enable us to investigate on the higher planes of being with as

much certainty as you are investigating on the physical plane; there

is nothing _supernatural_ in the business, any more than your

knowledge is supernatural, though much above that accessible to the

fish; we do not speculate on these higher forms of existence; we

_know_ them by personal study, just as you know the fauna and flora of

your world. The powers we possess are not supernatural, they are

latent in every human being, and will be evolved as the race

progresses. All that we have done is to evolve them more rapidly than

our neighbours, by a procedure as open to you as it was to us. Matter

is everywhere, but it exists in seven modifications of which you only

know four, and until lately only knew three; in those higher forms

reside the causes of which you see the effects in the lower, and to

know these causes you must develop the capacity to take cognisance of

the higher planes.'"

 

Then followed a brief outline of the cycle of evolution, and I went

on: "What part does man play in this vast drama of a universe?

Needless to say, he is not the only living form in a Cosmos, which for

the most part is uninhabitable by him. As Science has shown living

forms everywhere on the material plane, races in each drop of water,

life throbbing in every leaf and blade, so the 'Secret Doctrine'

points to living forms on higher planes of existence, each suited to

its environment, till all space thrills with life, and nowhere is

there death, but only change. Amid these myriads are some evolving

towards humanity, some evolving away from humanity as we know it,

divesting themselves of its grosser parts. For man is regarded as a

sevenfold being, four of these parts belonging to the animal body, and

perishing at, or soon after, death; while three form his higher self,

his true individuality, and these persist and are immortal. These form

the Ego, and it is this which passes through many incarnations,

learning life's lesson as it goes, working out its own redemption

within the limits of an inexorable law, sowing seeds of which it ever

reaps the harvest, building its own fate with tireless fingers, and

finding nowhere in the measureless time and space around it any that

can lift for it one weight it has created, one burden it has gathered,

unravel for it one tangle it has twisted, close for it one gulf it has

digged."

 

Then after noting the approaches of Western Science to Eastern, came

the final words: "it is of curious interest to note how some of the

latest theories seem to catch glimpses of the occult Doctrines, as

though Science were standing on the very threshold of knowledge which

shall make all her past seem small. Already her hand is trembling

towards the grasp of forces beside which all those now at her command

are insignificant. How soon will her grip fasten on them? Let us hope

not until social order has been transformed, lest they should only

give more to those who have, and leave the wretched still wretcheder

by force of contrast. Knowledge used by selfishness widens the gulf

that divides man from man and race from race, and we may well shrink

from the idea of new powers in Nature being yoked to the car of Greed.

Hence the wisdom of those 'Masters,' in whose name Madame Blavatsky

speaks, has ever denied the knowledge which is power until Love's

lesson has been learned, and has given only into the hands of the

selfless the control of those natural forces which, misused, would

wreck society."

 

This review, and the public announcement, demanded by honesty, that I

had joined the Theosophical Society, naturally raised somewhat of a

storm of criticism, and the _National Reformer_ of June 30th contained

the following: "The review of Madame Blavatsky's book in the last

_National Reformer_, and an announcement in the _Star_, have brought

me several letters on the subject of Theosophy. I am asked for an

explanation as to what Theosophy is, and as to my own opinion on

Theosophy--the word 'theosoph' is old, and was used among the

Neo-platonists. From the dictionary its new meaning appears to be,

'one who claims to have a knowledge of God, or of the laws of nature

by means of internal illumination.' An Atheist certainly cannot be a

Theosophist. A Deist might be a Theosophist. A Monist cannot be a

Theosophist. Theosophy must at least involve Dualism. Modern

Theosophy, according to Madame Blavatsky, as set out in last week's

issue, asserts much that I do not believe, and alleges some things

that, to me, are certainly not true. I have not had the opportunity of

reading Madame Blavatsky's two volumes, but I have read during the

past ten years many publications from the pen of herself, Colonel

Olcott, and of other Theosophists. They appear to me to have sought to

rehabilitate a kind of Spiritualism in Eastern phraseology. I think

many of their allegations utterly erroneous, and their reasonings

wholly unsound. I very deeply regret indeed that my colleague and

co-worker has, with somewhat of suddenness, and without any

interchange of ideas with myself, adopted as facts matters which seem

to me to be as unreal as it is possible for any fiction to be. My

regret is greater as I know Mrs. Besant's devotion to any course she

believes to be true. I know that she will always be earnest in the

advocacy of any views she undertakes to defend, and I look to possible

developments of her Theosophic views with the very gravest misgiving.

The editorial policy of this paper is unchanged, and is directly

antagonistic to all forms of Theosophy. I would have preferred on this

subject to have held my peace, for the public disagreeing with Mrs.

Besant on her adoption of Socialism has caused pain to both; but on

reading her article and taking the public announcement made of her

having joined the Theosophical organisation, I owe it to those who

look to me for guidance to say this with clearness.

 

"CHARLES BRADLAUGH."

 

"It is not possible for me here to state fully my reasons for joining

the Theosophical Society, the three objects of which are: To found a

Universal Brotherhood without distinction of race or creed; to forward

the study of Aryan literature and philosophy; to investigate

unexplained laws of nature and the physical powers latent in man. On

matters of religious opinion the members are absolutely free. The

founders of the society deny a personal God, and a somewhat subtle

form of Pantheism is taught as the Theosophic view of the universe,

though even this is not forced on members of the society. I have no

desire to hide the fact that this form of Pantheism appears to me to

promise solution of some problems, especially problems in psychology,

which Atheism leaves untouched.

 

"ANNIE BESANT."

 

Theosophy, as its students well know, so far from involving Dualism,

is based on the One, which becomes Two on manifestation, just as

Atheism posits one existence, only cognisable in the duality force and

matter, and as philosophic--though not popular--Theism teaches one

Deity whereof are spirit and matter. Mr. Bradlaugh's temperate

disapproval was not copied in its temperance by some other Freethought

leaders, and Mr. Foote especially distinguished himself by the

bitterness of his attacks. In the midst of the whirl I was called away

to Paris to attend, with Herbert Burrows, the great Labour Congress

held there from July 15th to July 20th, and spent a day or two at

Fontainebleau with H.P. Blavatsky, who had gone abroad for a few

weeks' rest. There I found her translating the wonderful fragments

from "The Book of the Golden Precepts," now so widely known under the

name of "The Voice of the Silence." She wrote it swiftly, without any

material copy before her, and in the evening made me read it aloud to

see if the "English was decent." Herbert Burrows was there, and Mrs.

Candler, a staunch American Theosophist, and we sat round H.P.B. while

I read. The translation was in perfect and beautiful English, flowing

and musical; only a word or two could we find to alter, and she looked

at us like a startled child, wondering at our praises--praises that

any one with the literary sense would endorse if they read that

exquisite prose poem.

 

A little earlier in the same day I had asked her as to the agencies at

work in producing the taps so constantly heard at Spiritualistic

_Séances_. "You don't use spirits to produce taps," she said; "see

here." She put her hand over my head, not touching it, and I heard and

felt slight taps on the bone of my skull, each sending a little

electric thrill down the spine. She then carefully explained how such

taps were producible at any point desired by the operator, and how

interplay of the currents to which they were due might be caused

otherwise than by conscious human volition. It was in this fashion

that she would illustrate her verbal teachings, proving by experiment

the statements made as to the existence of subtle forces controllable

by the trained mind. The phenomena all belonged to the scientific side

of her teaching, and she never committed the folly of claiming

authority for her philosophic doctrines on the ground that she was a

wonder-worker. And constantly she would remind us that there was no

such thing as "miracle"; that all the phenomena she had produced were

worked by virtue of a knowledge of nature deeper than that of average

people, and by the force of a well-trained mind and will; some of them

were what she would describe as "psychological tricks," the creation

of images by force of imagination, and in pressing them on others as a

"collective hallucination"; others, such as the moving of solid

articles, either by an astral hand projected to draw them towards her,

or by using an Elemental; others by reading in the Astral Light, and

so on. But the proof of the reality of her mission from those whom she

spoke of as Masters lay not in these comparatively trivial physical

and mental phenomena, but in the splendour of her heroic endurance,

the depth of her knowledge, the selflessness of her character, the

lofty spirituality of her teaching, the untiring passion of her

devotion, the incessant ardour of her work for the enlightening of

men. It was these, and not her phenomena, that won for her our faith

and confidence--we who lived beside her, knowing her daily life--and

we gratefully accepted her teaching not because she claimed any

authority, but because it woke in us powers, the possibility of which

in ourselves we had not dreamed of, energies of the Soul that

demonstrated their own existence.

 

Returning to London from Paris, it became necessary to make a very

clear and definite presentment of my change of views, and in the

_Reformer_ of August 4th I find the following: "Many statements are

being made just now about me and my beliefs, some of which are

absurdly, and some of which are maliciously, untrue. I must ask my

friends not to give credence to them. It would not be fair to my

friend Mr. Bradlaugh to ask him to open the columns of this Journal to

an exposition of Theosophy from my pen, and so bring about a long

controversy on a subject which would not interest the majority of the

readers of the _National Reformer_. This being so I cannot here answer

the attacks made on me. I feel, however, that the party with which I

have worked for so long has a right to demand of me some explanation

of the step I have taken, and I am therefore preparing a pamphlet

dealing fully with the question. Further, I have arranged with Mr.

R.O. Smith to take as subject of the lectures to be delivered by me at

the Hall of Science on August 4th and 11th 'Why I became a

Theosophist.' Meanwhile I think that my years of service in the ranks

of the Freethought party give me the right to ask that I should not be

condemned unheard, and I even venture to suggest, in view of the

praises bestowed on me by Freethinkers in the past, that it is

possible that there may be something to be said, from the intellectual

standpoint, in favour of Theosophy. The caricatures of it which have

appeared from some Freethinkers' pens represent it about as accurately

as the Christian Evidence caricatures of Atheism represent that

dignified philosophy of life; and, remembering how much they are

themselves misrepresented, I ask them to wait before they judge."

 

The lectures were delivered, and were condensed into a pamphlet

bearing the same title, which has had a very great circulation. It

closed as follows:--

 

"There remains a great stumblingblock in the minds of many

Freethinkers which is certain to prejudice them against Theosophy, and

which offers to opponents a cheap subject for sarcasm--the assertion

that there exist other living beings than the men and animals found on

our own globe. It may be well for people who at once turn away when

such an assertion is made to stop and ask themselves whether they

really and seriously believe that throughout this mighty universe, in

which our little planet is but as a tiny speck of sand in the Sahara,

this one planet only is inhabited by living things? Is all the

universe dumb save for _our_ voices? eyeless save for _our_ vision?

dead save for _our_ life? Such a preposterous belief was well enough

in the days when Christianity regarded our world as the centre of the

universe, the human race as the one for which the Creator had deigned

to die. But now that we are placed in our proper position, one among

countless myriads of worlds, what ground is there for the preposterous

conceit which arrogates as ours all sentient existence? Earth, air,

water, all are teeming with living things suited to their environment;

our globe is overflowing with life. But the moment we pass in thought

beyond our atmosphere everything is to be changed. Neither reason nor

analogy support such a supposition. It was one of Bruno's crimes that

he dared to teach that other worlds than ours were inhabited; but he

was wiser than the monks who burned him. All the Theosophists aver is

that each phase of matter has living things suited to it, and that all

the universe is pulsing with life. 'Superstition!' shriek the bigoted.

It is no more superstition than the belief in Bacteria, or in any

other living thing invisible to the ordinary human eye. 'Spirit' is a

misleading word, for, historically, it connotes immateriality and a

supernatural kind of existence, and the Theosophist believes neither

in the one nor the other. With him all living things act in and

through a material basis, and 'matter' and 'spirit' are not found

dissociated. But he alleges that matter exists in states other than

those at present known to science. To deny this is to be about as

sensible as was the Hindű prince who denied the existence of ice

because water, in his experience, never became solid. Refusal to

believe until proof is given is a rational position; denial of all

outside of our own limited experience is absurd.

 

"One last word to my Secularist friends. If you say to me, 'Leave our

ranks,' I will leave them; I force myself on no party, and the moment

I feel myself unwelcome I will go.[29] It has cost me pain enough and

to spare to admit that the Materialism from which I hoped all has

failed me, and by such admission to bring on myself the disapproval of

some of my nearest friends. But here, as at other times in my life, I

dare not purchase peace with a lie. An imperious necessity forces me

to speak the truth, as I see it, whether the speech please or

displease, whether it bring praise or blame. That one loyalty to Truth

I must keep stainless, whatever friendships fail me or human ties be

broken. She may lead me into the wilderness, yet I must follow her;

she may strip me of all love, yet I must pursue her; though she slay

me, yet will I trust in her; and I ask no other epitaph on my tomb but

 

"'SHE TRIED TO FOLLOW TRUTH.'"

 

Meanwhile, with this new controversy on my hands, the School Board

work went on, rendered possible, I ought to say, by the generous

assistance of friends unknown to me, who sent me, Ł150 a year during

the last year and a half. So also went on the vigorous Socialist work,

and the continual championship of struggling labour movements,

prominent here being the organisation of the South London fur-pullers

into a union, and the aiding of the movement for shortening the hours

of tram and 'bus men, the meetings for which had to be held after

midnight. The feeding and clothing of children also occupied much time

and attention, for the little ones in my district were, thousands of

them, desperately poor. My studies I pursued as best I could, reading

in railway carriages, tramcars, omnibuses, and stealing hours for

listening to H.P.B. by shortening the nights.

 

In October, Mr. Bradlaugh's shaken strength received its death-blow,

though he was to live yet another fifteen months. He collapsed

suddenly under a most severe attack of congestion and lay in imminent

peril, devotedly nursed by his only remaining child, Mrs. Bonner, his

elder daughter having died the preceding autumn. Slowly he struggled

back to life, after four weeks in bed, and, ordered by his physician

to take rest and if possible a sea voyage, he sailed for India on

November 28th, to attend the National Congress, where he was

enthusiastically acclaimed as "Member for India."

 

In November I argued a libel suit, brought by me against the Rev. Mr.

Hoskyns, vicar of Stepney, who had selected some vile passages from a

book which was not mine and had circulated them as representing my

views, during the School Board election of 1888. I had against me the

Solicitor-General, Sir Edward Clarke, at the bar, and Baron Huddleston

on the bench; both counsel and judge did their best to browbeat me and

to use the coarsest language, endeavouring to prove that by advocating

the limitation of the family I had condemned chastity as a crime. Five

hours of brutal cross-examination left my denial of such teachings

unshaken, and even the pleadings of the judge for the clergyman,

defending his parishioners against an unbeliever and his laying down

as law that the statement was privileged, did not avail to win a

verdict. The jury disagreed, not, as one of them told me afterwards,

on the question of the libel, but on some feeling that a clergyman

ought not to be mulcted in damages for his over-zeal in defence of his

faith against the ravening wolf of unbelief, while others, regarding

the libel as a very cruel one, would not agree to a verdict that did

not carry substantial damages. I did not carry the case to a new

trial, feeling that it was not worth while to waste time over it

further, my innocence of the charge itself having been fully proved.

 

Busily the months rolled on, and early in the year 1890 H.P.Blavatsky

had given to her Ł1,000, to use in her discretion for human service,

and if she thought well, in the service of women. After a good deal of

discussion she fixed on the establishment of a club in East London for

working girls, and with her approval Miss Laura Cooper and I hunted

for a suitable place. Finally we fixed on a very large and old house,

193, Bow Road, and some months went in its complete renovation and the

building of a hall attached to it. On August 15th it was opened by

Madame Blavatsky, and dedicated by her to the brightening of the lot

of hardworking and underpaid girls. It has nobly fulfilled its mission

for the last three years. Very tender was H.P.B.'s heart to human

suffering, especially to that of women and children. She was very poor

towards the end of her earthly life, having spent all on her mission,

and refusing to take time from her Theosophical work to write for the

Russian papers which were ready to pay highly for her pen. But her

slender purse was swiftly emptied when any human pain that money could

relieve came in her way. One day I wrote a letter to a comrade that

was shown to her, about some little children to whom I had carried a

quantity of country flowers, and I had spoken of their faces pinched

with want. The following characteristic note came to me:--

 

"MY DEAREST FRIEND,--I have just read your letter to ---- and my heart

is sick for the poor little ones! Look here; I have but 30s. of _my

own money_ of which I can dispose (for as you know I am a pauper, and

proud of it), but I want you to take them and _not say a word_. This

may buy thirty dinners for thirty poor little starving wretches, and I

may feel happier for thirty minutes at the thought. Now don't say a

word, and do it; take them to those unfortunate babies who loved your

flowers and felt happy. Forgive your old uncouth friend, _useless_ in

this world!

 

"Ever yours,

 

"H.P.B."

 

It was this tenderness of hers that led us, after she had gone, to

found the "H.P.B. Home for little children," and one day we hope to

fulfil her expressed desire that a large but homelike Refuge for

outcast children should be opened under the auspices of the

Theosophical Society.

 

The lease of 17, Lansdowne Road expiring in the early summer of 1890,

it was decided that 19, Avenue Road should be turned into the

headquarters of the Theosophical Society in Europe. A hall was built

for the meetings of the Blavatsky Lodge--the lodge founded by her--and

various alterations made. In July her staff of workers was united

under one roof; thither came Archibald and Bertram Keightley, who had

devoted themselves to her service years before, and the Countess

Wachtmeister, who had thrown aside all the luxuries of wealth and of

high social rank to give all to the cause she served and the friend

she loved with deep and faithful loyajty; and George Mead, her

secretary and earnest disciple, a man of strong brain and strong

character, a fine scholar and untiring worker; thither, too, Claude

Wright, most lovable of Irishmen, with keen insight underlying a

bright and sunny nature, careless on the surface, and Walter Old,

dreamy and sensitive, a born psychic, and, like many such, easily

swayed by those around him; Emily Kislingbury also, a studious and

earnest woman; Isabel Cooper Oakley, intuitional and studious, a rare

combination, and a most devoted pupil in Occult studies; James Pryse,

an American, than whom none is more devoted, bringing practical

knowledge to the help of the work, and making possible the large

development of our printing department. These, with myself, were at

first the resident staff, Miss Cooper and Herbert Burrows, who were

also identified with the work, being prevented by other obligations

from living always as part of the household.

 

The rules of the house were--and are--very simple, but H.P.B.

insisted on great regularity of life; we breakfasted at 8 a.m.,

worked till lunch at 1, then again till dinner at 7. After dinner

the outer work for the Society was put aside, and we gathered in

H.P.B.'s room where we would sit talking over plans, receiving

instructions, listening to her explanation of knotty points. By 12

midnight all the lights had to be extinguished. My public work took me

away for many hours, unfortunately for myself, but such was the

regular run of our busy lives. She herself wrote incessantly; always

suffering, but of indomitable will, she drove her body through its

tasks, merciless to its weaknesses and its pains. Her pupils she

treated very variously, adapting herself with nicest accuracy to their

differing natures; as a teacher she was marvellously patient,

explaining a thing over and over again in different fashions, until

sometimes after prolonged failure she would throw herself back in her

chair: "My God!" (the easy "Mon Dieu" of the foreigner) "am I a fool

that you can't understand? Here, So-and-so"--to some one on whose

countenance a faint gleam of comprehension was discernible--"tell

these flapdoodles of the ages what I mean." With vanity, conceit,

pretence of knowledge, she was merciless, if the pupil were a

promising one; keen shafts of irony would pierce the sham. With some

she would get very angry, lashing them out of their lethargy with

fiery scorn; and in truth she made herself a mere instrument for the

training of her pupils, careless what they, or any one else thought of

her, providing that the resulting benefit to them was secured. And we,

who lived around her, who in closest intimacy watched her day after

day, we bear witness to the unselfish beauty of her life, the nobility

of her character, and we lay at her feet our most reverent gratitude

for knowledge gained, lives purified, strength developed. O noble and

heroic Soul, whom the outside purblind world misjudges, but whom your

pupils partly saw, never through lives and deaths shall we repay the

debt of gratitude we owe to you.

 

And thus I came through storm to peace, not to the peace of an

untroubled sea of outer life, which no strong soul can crave, but to

an inner peace that outer troubles may not avail to ruffle--a peace

which belongs to the eternal not to the transitory, to the depths not

to the shallows of life. It carried me scatheless through the terrible

spring of 1891, when death struck down Charles Bradlaugh in the

plenitude of his usefulness, and unlocked the gateway into rest for H.

P. Blavatsky. Through anxieties and responsibilities heavy and

numerous it has borne me; every strain makes it stronger; every trial

makes it serener; every assault leaves it more radiant. Quiet

confidence has taken the place of doubt; a strong security the place

of anxious dread. In life, through death, to life, I am but the

servant of the great Brotherhood, and those on whose heads but for a

moment the touch of the Master has rested in blessing can never again

look upon the world save through eyes made luminous with the radiance

of the Eternal Peace.

 

PEACE TO ALL BEINGS.

 

 

 

 

FOOTNOTES:

 

[Footnote 1: This odious law has now been altered, and a married woman

is a person, not a chattel.]

 

[Footnote 2: "The Disciples," p. 14.]

 

[Footnote 3: "On the Nature and Existence of God." 1874.]

 

[Footnote 4: "On the Nature and Existence of God." 1874.]

 

[Footnote 5: "The Gospel of Atheism." 1876.]

 

[Footnote 6: "Why I do not Believe in God." 1887.]

 

[Footnote 7: Ibid.]

 

[Footnote 8: Ibid.]

 

[Footnote 9: "Life, Death, and Immortality." 1886.]

 

[Footnote 10: "Life, Death, and Immortality." 1886.]

 

[Footnote 11: "Life, Death, and Immortality." 1886.]

 

[Footnote 12: Ibid.]

 

[Footnote 13: "The Gospel of Atheism." 1876.]

 

[Footnote 14: "On the Nature and Existence of God." 1874.]

 

[Footnote 15: "The True Basis of Morality." 1874.]

 

[Footnote 16: "Gospel of Atheism." 1876.]

 

[Footnote 17: "On the Nature and Existence of God." 1874.]

 

[Footnote 18: "A World without God." 1885.]

 

[Footnote 19: "The Gospel of Atheism." 1876.]

 

[Footnote 20: "The Gospels of Christianity and Freethought." 1874.]

 

[Footnote 21: "A World without God." 1885.]

 

[Footnote 22: "A World without God." 1885.]

 

[Footnote 23: "The Gospel of Atheism." 1876.]

 

[Footnote 24: "A World without God." 1885.]

 

[Footnote 25: "A World without God." 1885.]

 

[Footnote 26: "The Christian Creed." 1884.]

 

[Footnote 27: _National Reformer_, June 18, 1882]

 

[Footnote 28: _Theosophist_, June, 1882.]

 

[Footnote 29: I leave these words as they were written in 1889. I

resigned my office in the N.S.S. in 1890, feeling that the N.S.S. was

so identified with Materialism that it had no longer place for me.]

 

 

 

 

LIST OF BOOKS QUOTED.

 

"Autobiography," J.S. Mill, 184

 

"Christian Creed, The," 173

 

"Freethinkers' Text-book," 144

 

"Gospel of Atheism, The," 145, 152, 158, 168

 

"Gospels of Christianity and Freethought," 164

 

"Life, Death, and Immortality," 147, 149, 150

 

_Link_, The, 333

 

_National Reformer_, The, 79, 80, 280, 346-50, 354

 

_Our Corner, _286, 329

 

_Theosophist_, The, 282, 288

 

"True Basis of Morality," 156

 

"Why I do Not Believe in God," 146

 

"World without God," 165, 169, 172

 

 

 

 

INDEX.

 

Affirmation Bill brought in, 287

  rejected, 299

Atheist, position as an, 139

Authorship, first attempts at, 84.

 

Bennett, D.M., prosecution of, 232

Blasphemy prosecution, 283, 287, 289

Blavatsky, H.P., 189, 337

  meeting with, 341

"Bloody Sunday," 324

Bradlaugh, Charles, first meeting with, 135

  as friend, 137

  in the Clock Tower, 258

  and the scene in the House, 265

  _v_. Newdegate; result, 289

  prosecuted for blasphemy, 283, 289

 

Confirmation, 51

 

Daughter, application to remove, 213

  denied access to, 219

Death of father, 21

  of mother, 126

Doubt the first, 58

 

"Elements of Social Science," 196

Engagement, 69

Essay, first Freethought, 113

 

Fenians, the, 73

_Freethinker_ prosecution, 283, 287, 296

Freethought Publishing Company, the, 285

 

Harrow, life at, 30

Hoskyns, Rev. E., libel action against, 359

 

Knowlton pamphlet, the, 205

  prosecution, 208

  trial, 210

 

"Law of Population, The," 212, 210

"Law and Liberty League," the, 326

Lecture, the first, 181

Linnell, the Trafalgar Square victim, 316

  funeral of, 327

_Link_, founding of the, 331

 

Malthusian League formed, 229

Malthusianism and Theosophy, 240

Marriage, 70

  tie broken, no

Match-girls' strike, 335

  Union, established, 336

 

_National Reformer,_ the, 134

  first contribution to, 180

  resignation of co-editorship, 320

National Secular Society joined, 135

  elected vice-president of, 202

  resignation of, 357

Northampton Election, 183

  struggle, 253, 344

 

Oaths Bill, the, 314, 329

_Our Corner_, 286, 314

 

Political Opinions, 174

Pusey, Dr., 109, 284

 

Russian politics, 311

 

Scientific work, 249

School Board, election to, 338

Scott, Thomas, 112, 127

Socialism, 299

  debate on, between Messrs. Bradlaugh and Hyndman, 301

Socialist debates, 318, 319

Socialists and open-air speaking, 312

  Defence Association, 323

Stanley, Dean, 23, 122

 

Theosophical Society, the, 180

  joined, 344

  headquarters established, 361

Theosophy and Charles Bradlaugh, 350

  the National Secular Society, 357

Trafalgar Square, closing of, to the public, 323

Truelove, Edward, trial of, 225

 

Voysey, Rev. Charles, 106

 

Working Women's Club, 337, 360

 

 

 

 

Return to Homepage

 

Glossaries Index

 

Blavatsky Writings Index

 

______________________

 

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