Charles Bradlaugh: a Record of His Life and Work, Volume 1 (of 2)
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Title: Charles Bradlaugh: a Record of His Life and Work, Volume 1 (of 2)
Author: Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner
J. M. Robertson
Release date: March 14, 2014 [eBook #45130]
Most recently updated: October 18, 2026
Language: English
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[Illustration: CHARLES BRADLAUGH Born Sept. 26, 1833 Died Jan. 30,
1891]
CHARLES BRADLAUGH
A Record of His Life and Work by His Daughter.
HYPATIA BRADLAUGH BONNER.
With an Account of his Parliamentary Struggle
Politics and Teachings by
JOHN M. ROBERTSON, M.P.
Seventh Edition
With Portraits and Appendices
T. Fisher Unwin
London Leipsic
Adelphi Terrace Inselstrasse 20
1908
All Rights Reserved
PREFACE.
"I wish you would tell me things, and let me write the story of your
life," I said in chatting to my father one evening about six weeks
before his death. "Perhaps I will, some day," he answered. "I believe I
could do it better than any one else," I went on, with jesting vanity.
"I believe you could," he rejoined, smiling. But to write the story of
Mr Bradlaugh's life with Mr Bradlaugh at hand to give information is
one thing: to write it after his death is quite another. The task has
been exceptionally difficult, inasmuch as my father made a point of
destroying his correspondence; consequently I have very few letters to
help me.
This book comes to the public as a record of the life and work of a
much misrepresented and much maligned man, a record which I have spared
no effort to make absolutely accurate. Beyond this it makes no claim.
For the story of the public life of Mr Bradlaugh from 1880 to 1891,
and for an exposition of his teachings and opinions, I am fortunate
in having the assistance of Mr J. M. Robertson. We both feel that
the book throughout goes more into detail and is more controversial
than is usual or generally desirable with biographies. It has,
however, been necessary to enter into details, because the most
trivial acts of Mr Bradlaugh's life have been misrepresented, and for
these misrepresentations, not for his acts, he has been condemned.
Controversy we have desired to avoid, but it has not been altogether
possible. In dealing with strictures on Mr Bradlaugh's conduct
or opinions, it is not sufficient to say that they are without
justification; one must show how and where the error lies, and where
possible, the source of error. Hence the defence to an attack, to our
regret, often unavoidably assumes a controversial aspect.
A drawback resulting from the division of labour in the composition of
the book is that there are a certain number of repetitions. We trust,
however, that readers will agree with us in thinking that the gain of
showing certain details in different relations outweighs the fault of a
few re-iterations.
In quoting Mr Bradlaugh's words from the _National Reformer_, I have
for the sake of greater clearness and directness altered the editorial
plural to the first person singular.
I desire to express here my great indebtedness to Mrs Mary Reed for her
help, more especially in searching old newspaper files with me at the
British Museum.
HYPATIA BRADLAUGH BONNER.
1894.
CONTENTS
Part 1.
BY HYPATIA BRADLAUGH BONNER.
VOL. I.
CHAPTER I.
PARENTAGE AND CHILDHOOD 1
Origin of the Bradlaugh family--James Bradlaugh--Charles
Bradlaugh, senr.--His marriage--Birth of Charles Bradlaugh--Needy
circumstances of the family--Character and tastes of his
father--Character of his mother--Schooling--Handwriting--Amusements--Early
lessons in politics.
CHAPTER II.
BOYHOOD 7
Charles Bradlaugh as office-boy--Wharf clerk and cashier--Politics
at Bonner's Fields--Sunday School--The Rev. J. G. Packer--Suspended
from duties as Sunday School teacher--Bonner's
Fields on Sunday--Mrs Sharples Carlile--The Warner Street
Temperance Hall--A teetotaller--Mr Packer's methods--An angry
father--The ultimatum--Leaving home--Mr Packer's responsibility.
CHAPTER III.
YOUTH 17
Alone in the world--B. B. Jones--A youthful "coal merchant"--The
baker's wife--Selling braces--Mrs Carlile offers a home--"A
little Hebrew and an imperfect smattering of other tongues"--Hypatia
Carlile--Brother and sister--Youthful oratory--The
_British Banner_--Austin Holyoake--George Jacob Holyoake--The
first pamphlet--A "season's campaign."
CHAPTER IV.
ARMY LIFE 25
Poverty, hunger, and debt--Enlisting for the East India service--Enrolled
in the 50th Foot--Transferred to the 7th Dragoon
Guards--Family reconciliation--The father's changed character--Troubles
at sea--Temperance advocacy under difficulties--"Leaves"--At
Rathmines Church--A right-of-way--A new
officer--Donnybrook Fair--An Irish tragedy.
CHAPTER V.
ARMY LIFE CONCLUDED 35
The father's death--Letters home--Death of Miss Elizabeth
Trimby--Mother and Daughter--Purchasing his discharge--Advantages
derived from Army life--James Thomson.
CHAPTER VI.
MARRIAGE 41
Changes at home--A soldier in search of work--With Mr
Rogers, of 70 Fenchurch Street--Anonymous busybodies again--"Iconoclast"
--The Hooper family--Old letters--Poetry--Calumnies
refuted--Common-sense justice--First recorded lawsuit--Marriage--My
sister's birth--My mother.
CHAPTER VII.
HYDE PARK MEETINGS, 1855 52
The new Sunday Bill--In Hyde Park--"Go to Church"--Hyde
Park again--The Bill abandoned--The Royal Commission--Mr
Bradlaugh's evidence.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE ORSINI ATTEMPT 62
Lecturing and writing--"The Bible: what it is"--Arrest of
Edward Truelove--Felice Orsini--Simon Bernard--Thomas
Allsop--"Thorough"--Recollections of W. E. Adams.
CHAPTER IX.
EARLY LECTURES AND DEBATES 72
Provincial lectures--First visit to Northampton--President of
the London Secular Society--Robert Owen's last paper--_The
Investigator_--Political meetings--Hyde Park--Guildhall--Debates:
Thomas Cooper--Rev. Brewin Grant--Dr Mensor--Rev.
T. D. Matthias--Mr Court--John Smart.
CHAPTER X.
HARD TIMES 90
The Manchester poisoning case--Mr Harvey--Rheumatic fever--Elysium
Villa--My brother's birth--Kate--Railway journeys--A
lecturer's profits--An editor's profits.
CHAPTER XI.
A CLERICAL LIBELLER 99
An articled clerk--The Naples Colour Company--Financial
operations--"Black Friday"--Sunderland Villa--The Rev. Hugh
M'Sorley.
CHAPTER XII.
TOTTENHAM 108
Our home--James Thomson ("B. V.")--Harriet Bradlaugh--Father
and children.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE "NATIONAL REFORMER" 119
The _National Reformer_ Company--The coming of Joseph
Barker--Turkish baths and Secularism--The difficulties of a dual
editorship--A house divided--Sole editor--G. J. Holyoake as
chief contributor--More difficulties--Arbitration--Messrs Smith
and Son's boycott--John Watts as editor--My father resumes--The
_Saturday Review_--"B. V." replies--The Rev. Charles Voysey:
1868 and 1880.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE "NATIONAL REFORMER" AND THE GOVERNMENT PROSECUTIONS 137
Prosecution of _National Reformer_ by Mr Disraeli's Government--"Published
in defiance of Her Majesty's Government"--The
Act of James I.--Collapse of the prosecution--The Press--The
Rev. J. Page Hopps--Prosecution of _National Reformer_ by Mr
Gladstone's Government--Abandonment of the prosecution--John
Stuart Mill--Repeal of the odious Security laws--The
Postmaster-General and the _National Reformer_.
CHAPTER XV.
ITALY 152
Earning money for Garibaldi--Mazzini--An eloquent passport--Police
espionage--Carrying despatches--An American sees "fair
play"--The police and the Life Assurance Companies.
CHAPTER XVI.
PLATFORM WORK, 1860-1861 158
Debate with the Rev. B. Grant at Bradford--Dr Brindley--Pursuing
Mr Bradlaugh to New York--Debates with Dr Baylee
and others--"Extended propaganda"--The _Wigan Examiner_--Mr
Hutchings--Dispensing "justice" to the Atheist--More
debates--Norwich and Yarmouth--The Yarmouth Magistrates.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE DEVONPORT CASE, 1861 175
The speech in Devonport Park--Opening a fortnight's campaign--Arrest--
Imprisonment--The Guildhall--A marine adventure--The
case against Superintendent Edwards--Mr Robert Collier,
Q.C., M.P.--Mr Montagu Smith, Q.C.--An unjust judge--The
Court of Common Pleas--Lord Chief Justice Erle--Mr Justice
Keating--The Court of Appeal.
CHAPTER XVIII.
"KILL THE INFIDEL" 189
Religious liberty at Guernsey--Challenging the island authorities
--Bill-posting extraordinary--"Kill the Infidel"--An infuriated
crowd and a shrewd landlady--The courageous Harbour Master--"An
act of natural justice."
CHAPTER XIX.
PROVINCIAL ADVENTURES, 1860-1863 194
Altrincham--Shaw--Sunderland--Rochdale--The Bellman of
Leigh--Warrington Journalism--Dumfries--Burnley--Chesterfield--Counter
attractions at Worksop--At Boardman's Edge,
discussion precedes the lecture--The Dewsbury poster--Leeds--A
dream of Voltaire.
CHAPTER XX.
A FREEMASON 203
The Philadelphs--The Grand Lodge of England--The Prince of
Wales as Grand Master--"To the oppressed of all Nations"--Joshua
B. Smith as Junior Warden to the Adelphi Lodge--"Ill
winds" that blow good to a Masonic charity.
CHAPTER XXI.
DEBATES, 1860-1866 207
The Rev. W. Barker--Thomas Cooper--A frank avowal--The
Rev. Woodville Woodman again--Mr Porteous--A one-sided
debate--Mr Porteous again.
CHAPTER XXII.
"THE WORLD IS MY COUNTRY; TO DO GOOD IS MY RELIGION" 214
Sympathy with Garibaldi--Irish Catholic Opposition--An
attempt to stab Mr Bradlaugh--Lancashire distress--"Viva la
Polonia"--Death of B. B. Jones--Sheffield inundation--Help for
the needy--A Hall of Science Company.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE REFORM LEAGUE, 1866-1868 220
The National Reform League--Primrose Hill--Trafalgar Square--Sir
Richard Mayne's prohibition--The Derby Cabinet--Hyde
Park--Another prohibition--Fall of the Hyde Park railings--Agricultural
Hall--Bristol--Attacks upon Mr Bradlaugh--Northampton--Luton--Matthew
Arnold casts his stone--On
horseback at Trafalgar Square--Agricultural Hall again--The
_Saturday Review_ and its followers--Hyde Park again--The
Government "admonition" served and withdrawn--Mr Bradlaugh's
resignation--Its result.
CHAPTER XXIV.
PROVINCIAL LECTURING, 1866-1869 238
The Mayor of Liverpool--David King--Huddersfield: Arrest;
Release; Before the Magistrates--The Rev. J. M'Cann--Huddersfield
again--The Murphy riots at Manchester--The New Hall of
Science--Blyth and Mr Thomas Burt--The "infidel" on Portsea
Common--The people who loved my father--A liberal priest.
CHAPTER XXV.
IRELAND 252
English Misgovernment--The Fenian Brotherhood--Colonel
Kelly and General Cluseret--The Irish proclamation of 1867--The
Manchester rescue--The death sentence--The Clerkenwell explosion--Pamphlet
on "the Irish Question"--A Quakers' discussion
society--Lectures on behalf of Ireland--A visit to Dublin.
CHAPTER XXVI.
NORTHAMPTON, 1868 263
Mr Bradlaugh's determination to seek a seat in Parliament--The
choice of Northampton--First election address--Scorn of the
Whigs--Enthusiasm of the people--The election colours--John
Stuart Mill--_The Daily Telegraph_--The Irish Reform League--John
Bright--W. E. Gladstone--Mr Charles Gilpin and Lord
Henley--The press--Dr Lees--Canvassing--The Lord's Day Rest
Association--Mr Giffard, Q.C.--Mr Charles Capper, M.P.--Anti-Compulsory
Vaccination--The nomination day--The poll--Tributes
from the Mayor and from Mr Gilpin--Ministers who
rejoiced.
CHAPTER XXVII.
SOUTHWARK ELECTION, 1869 280
Mr Bradlaugh and Mr Odger.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
LITIGATION, 1867-1871 282
English Joint Stock Bank (Limited) and Charles Bradlaugh--Bradlaugh
_v._ De Rin--The Oath question in different Courts-Confusion
of the law of evidence--A costly victory--The Evidence
Amendment Act, 1870--The _Razor_ libel case--Mr O'Malley, Q.C.--"Outlaw
or Citizen: Which am I?"--Action against the Mirfield
Town Hall Company--Mr Digby Seymour, Q.C.--Mr Justice
Willes.
CHAPTER XXIX.
PERSONAL 299
Financial difficulties--Mr Bradlaugh gives up business in the
City and devotes himself to public work--Our home sold up--A
scattered family--My brother's illness and death--His burial--The
Rev. Drummond Ash--The Rev. Theophilus Bennett--My
father's grief.
CHAPTER XXX.
LECTURES, 1870-1871 304
Freethought and Republican activity--A full lecture list--The
"Impeachment of the House of Brunswick"--A misleading
announcement--Stourbridge and Lord Lyttleton--The High Bailiff
of Newton Abbot--The Sowerby Bridge champion wrestler--Dr
Magee at Norwich Cathedral--Mr Disraeli and the Queen--Mr
Gladstone's "Questionable Book."
CHAPTER XXXI.
FRANCE--THE WAR 312
Mr Bradlaugh's position--Republican France--Madame de
Brimont--"France and Peace"--St James's Hall--Thanks of the
Republican Government--Pleading for the recognition of the
Republic by the English Government--The conference of European
powers--M. C. Tissot.
CHAPTER XXXII.
THE COMMUNE, AND AFTER 322
Communist friends--An effort for peace--Arrested at Calais--Expelled
from France--A second arrest--Allowed to proceed to
Paris--A lecture for French refugees--Prince Jérome Napoléon--Emile
de Girardin--Emanuel Arago--Léon Gambetta--Yves
Guyot--A Marxist attack.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
A DOZEN DEBATES 332
George Jacob Holyoake and Secularism--Alexander Robertson
and the Existence of Deity--The Rev. A. J. Harrison--Father
Ignatius--Mr Burns and Spiritualism.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
FAMILY AFFAIRS 346
Father and children--School in Paris--W. R. Bradlaugh.
CHAPTER XXXV.
REPUBLICANISM AND SPAIN 352
English Republicans--Conference at Birmingham--Mr Bradlaugh
carries English congratulations to the Spanish Republicans
in 1873--Adventures between Irun and Madrid.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
MADRID AND AFTER 364
To Lisbon and back--Senor Castelar--Enthusiasm of the
Madrid Republicans--The return journey--Reported death.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
GREAT GATHERINGS 372
The Parks Regulation Bill (1872)--Agricultural labourers at
Exeter Hall--Miners' meetings in Northumberland, Durham, and
Yorkshire--Agricultural labourers at Yeovil.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
FIRST VISIT TO AMERICA 380
The "London Correspondents'" puff extraordinary--Welcomed
on arrival in New York--The Lotos Club--O'Donovan Rossa--Financial
panic--At Steinway Hall--Stephen Pearl Andrews and
Mrs Victoria Woodhull: a contrast--Wendell Phillips--Charles
Sumner--William Lloyd Garrison--Henry Wilson--Joshua B.
Smith--An accident at Kansas City--Carlile's daughters at
Chicago--Ralph Waldo Emerson--Julia Ward Howe--Dissolution
of Parliament--Return to England.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
TWO NORTHAMPTON ELECTIONS, 1874 392
The first General Election under the Ballot Act--Northampton
and its absent candidate--Reception on his return--Charles
Gilpin's recommendation: his death--The bye-election--Mr
William Fowler--The bitterness of the contest--Departure for
the United States on the night of the poll--Rioting at Northampton
--Hostile camps--Better counsels prevail.
CHARLES BRADLAUGH.
CHAPTER I.
PARENTAGE AND CHILDHOOD.
Although there has often been desultory talk among us concerning the
origin of the Bradlaugh family, there has never been any effort made
to trace it out. The name is an uncommon one: as far as I am aware,
ours is the only family that bears it, and when the name comes before
the public ours is the pride or the shame--for, unfortunately, there
are black sheep in every flock. I have heard a gentleman (an Irishman)
assure Mr Bradlaugh that he was of Irish origin, for was not the Irish
"lough" close akin to the termination "laugh"? Others have said he
was of Scotch extraction, and others again that he must go to the
red-haired Dane to look for his forbears. My father would only laugh
lazily--he took no vivid interest in his particular ancestors of a
few centuries ago--and reply that he could not go farther back than
his grandfather, who came from Suffolk; in his boyhood he had heard
that there were some highly respectable relations at Wickham Market,
in Suffolk. But so little did the matter trouble him that he never
verified it, though, if it were true, it would rather point to the
Danish origin, for parts of Suffolk were undoubtedly colonized by
the Danes in the ninth century, and a little fact which came to our
knowledge a few years ago shows that the name Bradlaugh is no new one
in that province.
Kelsall and Laxfield,[1] where there were Bradlaughs in the beginning
of the 17th century; Wickham Market and Brandeston, whence Mr
Bradlaugh's grandfather came at the beginning of the 19th, and where
there are Bradlaughs at the present day, are all within a narrow radius
of a few miles. The name Bradlaugh commenced to be corrupted into
Bradley prior to 1628, as may be seen from a stone in Laxfield Church,
and has also been so corrupted by a branch of the family within our own
knowledge. The name has also, I know, been spelled "Bradlough."
James Bradlaugh, who came from Brandeston about the year 1807, was a
gunsmith, and settled for a time in Bride Lane, Fleet Street, where
his son Charles, his fourth and last child, was born in February 1811.
He himself died in October of the same year, at the early age of
thirty-one.
Charles Bradlaugh (the elder) was in due course apprenticed to a law
stationer, and consequently this became his nominal profession; in
reality, he was confidential clerk to a firm of solicitors, Messrs
Lepard & Co. The apprentice was, on the occasion of some great trial,
lent to Messrs Lepard, and the mutual satisfaction seems to have
been so great that it was arranged that he should remain with them,
compensation being paid for the cancelling of his indentures. I have
beside me at the moment a letter, yellow and faded, dated July 30th,
1831, inquiring of "---- Batchelour, Esq.," concerning the character
of "a young man of the name of Bradlaugh," with the answer copied on
the back, in which the writer begs "leave to state that I have a high
opinion of him both as regards his moral character and industrious
habits, and that he is worthy of any confidence you may think proper to
place in him."
Charles Bradlaugh stayed with these solicitors until his death in 1852,
when the firm testified their appreciation of his services by putting
an obituary notice in the _Times_, stating that he had been "for
upwards of twenty years the faithful and confidential clerk of Messrs
Lepard & Co., of 6 Cloak Lane." He married a nursemaid named Elizabeth
Trimby, and on September 26th, 1833, was born their first child, who
was named Charles after his father. He was born in a small house in
Bacchus Walk, Hoxton. The houses in Bacchus Walk are small four-roomed
tenements; I am told that they have been altered and improved since
1833, but I do not think the improvement can have been great, for
the little street has a desperate air of squalor and poverty; and
when I went there the other day, Number 5, where my father was born,
could not be held to be in any way conspicuous in respect of superior
cleanliness. But in such a street cleanliness would seem to be almost
an impossibility. From Bacchus Walk the family went to Birdcage Walk,
where I have heard there was a large garden in which my grandfather
assiduously cultivated dahlias, for he seems to have been passionately
fond of flowers. Soon the encroaching tide of population caused their
garden to be taken for building purposes, and they removed to Elizabeth
Street, and again finally to 13 Warner Place South, a little house
nominally of seven rooms, then rented at seven shillings per week.
[Footnote 1: A friend studying the _Topographer and Genealogist_ found
the following extract in Vol. II.:--
"Hoxne Hundred.
"Kelsall Church. Brass; no figure. John Parker, gent., who married
Dorothy Bradlaugh, alias Jacob; died 24 April, 1605, aged 66.
"Laxfield Church. On a stone which had the figure of a man and two
women still remains a shield with the arms of Bradlaugh alias Jacob."
"A stone in the north wall of the vestry for Nicholas Bradley alias
Jacob, buried 8th August, 1628."]
The family, which ultimately numbered seven, two of whom died in
early childhood, was in very straitened circumstances, so much so
that they were glad to receive presents of clothing from a generous
cousin at Teddington, to eke out the father's earnings. The salary
of Charles Bradlaugh, sen., at the time of his death, after "upwards
of twenty years" of "faithful" service, was two guineas a week, with
a few shillings additional for any extra work he might do. He was an
exquisite penman; he could write the "Lord's Prayer" quite clearly and
distinctly in the size and form of a sixpence; and he was extremely
industrious. Very little is known of his tastes; he was exceedingly
fond of flowers, and wherever he was he cultivated his garden, large
or small, with great care; he was an eager fisherman, and would often
get up at three in the morning and walk from Hackney to Temple Mills on
the river Lea, with his son running by his side, bait-can in hand. He
wrote articles upon Fishing, which were reprinted as late as a year or
two ago in a paper devoted to angling, and also contributed a number
of small things under the signature C. B----h to the _London Mirror_,
but little was known about this, as he seems usually to have been very
reticent and reserved, even in his own family. He had his children
baptized--his son Charles was baptized on December 8th, 1833--but
otherwise he seems to have been fairly indifferent on religious
matters, and never went to church.
This is about all that is known concerning my grandfather up till about
the time of his son's conflict with the Rev. J. G. Packer, and what
steps he took then will be told in the proper place. His son Charles
always spoke of him with tenderness and affection, as, indeed, he also
did of his mother; nevertheless, he never seemed able to recall any
incident of greater tenderness on the part of his father than that of
allowing him to go with him on his early morning fishing excursions.
Mrs Bradlaugh belonged undoubtedly to what we regard to-day as "the
old school." Severe, exacting, and imperious with her children, she
was certainly not a bad mother, but she was by no means a tender
or indulgent one. The following incident is characteristic of her
treatment of her children. One Christmas time, when my father and his
sister Elizabeth (his junior by twenty-one months) were yet small
children, visitors were expected, and some loaf sugar was bought--an
unusual luxury in such poor households in those times. The visitors,
with whom came a little boy, arrived in due course, but when the tea
hour was reached, it was discovered that nearly all the sugar was
gone. The two elder children, Charles and Elizabeth, were both charged
with the theft; they denied it, but were disbelieved and forthwith
sent to bed. They listened for the father's home-coming in the hope of
investigation and release; there they both lay unheeded in their beds,
sobbing and unconsoled, until their grandmother brought them a piece of
cake and soothed them with tender words. Then it ultimately appeared
that it was the little boy visitor who stole the sugar; but the
children never forgot the dreadful misery of being unjustly punished.
The very last time the brother and sister were together, they were
recalling and laughing over the agony they endured over that stolen
sugar.
At the age of seven the little Charles went to school: first of all
to the National School, where the teacher had striking ideas upon the
value of corporal punishment, and enforced his instructions with the
ruler so heavily that the scar resulting from a wound so inflicted was
deemed of sufficient importance some nine or ten years later to be
marked in the enlistment description when Mr Bradlaugh joined the army.
Leaving the National School, he went first to a small private school,
and then to a boys' school kept by a Mr Marshall in Coldharbour Street;
all poor schools enough as we reckon schools to-day, but the best the
neighbourhood and his father's means could afford. Such as it was,
however, his schooling came to an end when he was eleven years old.
I have by me some interesting mementoes of those same
schooldays--namely, specimens of his "show" handwriting at the age of
seven, nine, and ten years. The writing is done on paper ornamented
(save the mark!) by coloured illustrations drawn from the Bible. The
first illustrates in wonderful daubs of yellow, crimson, and blue,
passages in the life of Samuel; in the centre is a text written in
a child's unsteady, unformed script; and at the bottom, flanked on
either side by yellow urns disgorging yellow and scarlet flames, come
the signature and date written in smaller and even more unsteady
letters than the text, "Charles Bradlaugh, aged 7 years, Christmas,
1840." The second specimen is adorned with truly awful illustrations
concerning "the death of Ahab," not exactly suggestive of that "peace
and goodwill" of which we hear so much and sometimes see so little.
The writing shows an enormous improvement, and is really a beautiful
specimen of a child's work. The signature, "Charles Bradlaugh, aged
9 years, Christmas, 1842," is firmly and clearly written. The third
piece represents the "Death of Absalom" (the teacher who gave out these
things seems to have been of a singularly dismal turn of mind), with
illustrations from 2 Sam. xiv. and xviii. The writing here has more
character; there is more light and shade in the up and down strokes,
as well as more freedom. As an instance of the humane nature of the
teaching, I quote the text selected to show off the writing: "Then
said Joab, I may not tarry thus with thee. And he took three darts in
his hand and thrust them through the heart of Absalom while he was
yet alive in the midst of the oak. And ten young men of Joab's smote
Absalom and slew him." As a lesson in sheer wanton cruelty this can
hardly be exceeded. The signature, "Charles Bradlaugh, aged ten years,
Christmas, 1843," which is surrounded by sundry pen-and-ink ornaments
is, like the text, written with a much freer hand than that of the
other specimens.
The boy's amusements--apart from the prime one of going fishing with
his father, which he did when eight years old--consisted chiefly in
playing at sham fights with steel nibs for soldiers, and dramatic
performances of "The Miller and his Men," enacted by _artistes_ cut out
of newspaper. Then there was the more sober joy of listening to an old
gentleman and ardent Radical, named Brand, who took a great affection
for the lad, and used to explain to him the politics of the day, and
doubtless by his talk inspired him to plunge into the intricacies of
Cobbett's "Political Gridiron," which he found amongst his father's
books, and from that to the later and more daring step of buying a
halfpenny copy of the People's Charter.
CHAPTER II.
BOYHOOD.
Now came the time when the little Charles Bradlaugh should put aside
his childhood and make a beginning in the struggle for existence. His
earnings were required to help in supplying the needs of the growing
family; and at twelve years old he was made office boy with a salary
of five shillings a week at Messrs Lepard's, where his father was
confidential clerk. In later years, in driving through London with
him, he has many a time pointed out to me the distances he used to run
to save the omnibus fare allowed him, and how if he had to cross the
water he would run round by London Bridge to save the toll. The money
thus saved he would spend in books bought at second-hand bookstalls,
outside of which he might generally be found reading at any odd moments
of leisure. One red-letter day his firm sent him on an errand to the
company of which Mr Mark E. Marsden was the secretary. Mr Marsden,
whose name will be remembered and honoured by many for his unceasing
efforts for political and social progress, chatted with the lad,
asking him many questions, and finished up by giving him a bun and
half-a-crown. As both of these were luxuries which rarely came in the
office boy's way, they made a great impression on him. He never forgot
the incident, although it quite passed out of Mr Marsden's mind, and he
was unable to recall it when the two became friends in after years.
The errand-running came to an end when my father was fourteen, at
which age he was considered of sufficient dignity to be promoted to
the office of wharf clerk and cashier to Messrs Green, Son, & Jones,
coal merchants at Brittania Fields, City Road, at a salary of eleven
shillings a week. About this time, too, partly impelled by curiosity
and swayed by the fervour of the political movement then going on
around him, but also undoubtedly with a mind prepared for the
good seed by the early talks with old Mr Brand, he went to several
week-evening meetings then being held in Bonner's Fields and elsewhere.
It was in 1847 that he first saw William Lovett, at a Chartist meeting
which he attended. His Sundays were devoted to religion; from having
been an eager and exemplary Sunday school scholar he had now become
a most promising Sunday school teacher; so that although discussions
were held at Bonner's Fields almost continually through the day every
Sunday, they were not for him: _he_ was fully occupied with his duties
at the Church of St Peter's, in Hackney Road.
At this time the Rev. John Graham Packer was incumbent at St Peter's;
and when it was announced that the Bishop of London intended to hold
a confirmation at Bethnal Green, Mr Packer naturally desired to make
a good figure before his clerical superior. He therefore selected
the best lads in his class for confirmation, and bade them prepare
themselves for the important occasion. To this end Charles Bradlaugh
carefully studied and compared the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church
of England and the four Gospels, and it was not long before he found,
to his dismay, that they did not agree, and that he was totally
unable to reconcile them. "Thorough" in this as in all else, he was
anxious to understand the discrepancies he found and to be put right.
He therefore, he tells us, "ventured to write Mr Packer a respectful
letter, asking him for his aid and explanation." Instead of help there
came a bolt from the blue. Mr Packer had the consummate folly to write
Mr Bradlaugh senior, denouncing his son's inquiries as Atheistical,
and followed up his letter by suspending his promising pupil for three
months from his duties of Sunday-school teacher.
This three months of suspension was pregnant with influence for him;
for one thing it gave him opportunities which he had heretofore
lacked, and thus brought him into contact with persons of whom up till
then he had scarcely heard. The lad, horrified at being called an
Atheist, and forbidden his Sunday school, naturally shrank from going
to church. It may well be imagined also that under the ban of his
parents' disapproval home was no pleasant place, and it is little to be
wondered at that he wandered off to Bonner's Fields. Bonner's Fields
was in those days a great place for open-air meetings. Discussions on
every possible subject were held; on the week evenings the topics
were mostly political, but on Sundays theological or anti-theological
discourses were as much to the fore as politics. In consequence of my
father's own theological difficulties, he was naturally attracted to
a particular group where such points were discussed with great energy
Sunday after Sunday. After listening a little, he was roused to the
defence of his Bible and his Church, and, finding his tongue, joined in
the debate on behalf of orthodox Christianity.
The little group of Freethinkers to which Mr Bradlaugh was thus drawn
were energetic and enthusiastic disciples of Richard Carlile. Their
out-door meetings were mostly held at Bonner's Fields or Victoria Park,
and the in-door meetings at a place known as Eree's Coffee House. In
the year 1848 it was agreed that they should subscribe together and
have a Temperance Hall of their own for their meetings. To this end
three of them, Messrs Barralet, Harvey, and Harris, became securities
for the lease of No. 1 Warner Place, then a large old-fashioned
dwelling-house; and a Hall was built out at the back. As the promoters
were anxious to be of service to Mrs Sharples Carlile, who after the
death of Richard Carlile was left with her three children in very poor
circumstances, they invited her to undertake the superintendence of the
coffee room, and to reside at Warner Place with her daughters Hypatia
and Theophila and her son Julian.
When my father first met her, Mrs Sharples Carlile, then about
forty-five years of age, was a woman of considerable attainments.
She belonged to a very respectable and strictly religious family at
Bolton; was educated in the Church with her two sisters under the Rev.
Mr Thistlethwaite; and, to use an expression of her own, was "quite an
evangelical being, sang spiritual songs, and prayed myself into the
grave almost." Her mind, however, was not quite of the common order,
and perhaps the excess of ardour with which she had thrown herself into
her religious pursuits made the recoil more easy and more decided.
Be this as it may, it is nevertheless remarkable that, surrounded
entirely by religious people, reading no anti-theological literature,
she unaided thought herself out of "the doctrines of the Church." After
some two-and-a-half-years of this painful evolution, accident made her
acquainted with a Mr Hardie, a follower of Carlile's. He seems to have
lent her what was at that time called "infidel literature," and so
inspired her with the most ardent enthusiasm for Richard Carlile, and
in a less degree for the Rev. Robert Taylor. On the 11th January 1832,
whilst Carlile was undergoing one of the many terms of imprisonment
to which he was condemned for conscience' sake, Miss Sharples came to
London, and on the 29th of the same month she gave her first lecture at
the Rotunda.
On the 11th of February this young woman of barely twenty-eight
summers, but one month escaped from the trammels of life in a country
town, amidst a strictly religious environment, started a "weekly
publication" called _Isis_, dedicated to "The young women of England
for generations to come or until superstition is extinct." The _Isis_
was published at sixpence, and contains many of Miss Sharples'
discourses both on religious and political subjects. In religion she
was a Deist; in politics a Radical and Republican; thus following
in the footsteps of her leader Richard Carlile. I have been looking
through the volume of the _Isis_; it is all very "proper" (as even
Mrs Grundy would have to confess), and I am bound to say that the
stilted phrases and flowery turns of speech of sixty years ago are to
me not a little wearisome; but with all its defects, it is an enduring
record of the ability, knowledge, and courage of Mrs Sharples Carlile.
She reprints some amusing descriptions of herself from the religious
press; and were I not afraid of going too much out of my way, I would
reproduce them here with her comments in order that we might picture
her more clearly; but although this would be valuable in view of the
evil use made of her name in connection with her kindness to my father,
it would take me too far from the definite purpose of my work. In her
preface to the volume, written in 1834, she thus defends her union with
Richard Carlile:--
"There are those who reproach my marriage. They are scarcely worth
notice; but this I have to say for myself, that nothing could have
been more pure in morals, more free from venality. It was not only a
marriage of two bodies, but a marriage of two congenial spirits; or
two minds reasoned into the same knowledge of true principles, each
seeking an object on which virtuous affection might rest, and grow, and
strengthen. And though we passed over a legal obstacle, it was only
because it could not be removed, and was not in a spirit of violation
of the law, nor of intended offence or injury to any one. A marriage
more pure and moral was never formed and continued in England. It was
what marriage should be, though not perhaps altogether what marriage is
in the majority of cases. They who are married equally moral, will not
find fault with mine; but where marriage is merely of the law or for
money, and not of the soul, there I look for abuse."[2]
[Footnote 2: In the _Gauntlet_ for Sept. 22nd, 1833, Carlile, who had
been formally separated from his wife nine months previously, says:--
"Many months did not elapse before we stood pledged to a moral
marriage, and to a resolution to avow that marriage immediately after
my liberation. I took the first opportunity of doing it, as I now take
the first of explaining the introduction. As a public man, I will be
associated with nothing that is to be concealed from the public. Many,
I know, will carp upon my freedom as to divorce and marriage; and to
such persons I say, if they are worth a word, that I do so because I
hate hypocrisy, because I hate everything that is foul and indecent,
because I will not deceive any one. I have led a miserable wedded life
through twenty years, from disparity of mind and temper; and, for
the next twenty, I have resolved to have a wife in whom I may find a
companion and helpmate.... I will make one woman happy, and I will not
make any other woman unhappy. RICHARD CARLILE.
"_P.S._--I would not have intruded this matter upon the public notice
had it not been intended that the lady, as well as myself, will
continue to lecture publicly. We are above deception. Our creed is
truth, and our morals nothing but is morally and reasonably to be
defended. Priestcraft hath no law for us; but every virtue, everything
that is good and useful to human nature in society, has its binding law
on us. We will practise every virtue and war with every vice. This is
our moral marriage and our bond of union. Who shall show against it any
just cause or impediment?"]
Of course, all this happened long before Mr Bradlaugh became acquainted
with Mrs Carlile; when he knew her, sixteen or seventeen years later,
she was a broken woman, who had had her ardour and enthusiasm cooled by
suffering and poverty, a widow with three children, of whom Hypatia,
the eldest, could not have been more than fourteen or fifteen years old
at the most. I have been told by those who knew Mrs Carlile in those
days that in spite of all this she still had a most noble presence,
and looked and moved "like a queen." Her gifts, however, they said,
with smiles, certainly did not lie in attending to the business of the
coffee room--at that she was "no good." She was quiet and reserved, and
although Christians have slandered her both during her lifetime and up
till within this very year on account of her non-legalised union with
Richard Carlile, she was looked up to and revered by those who knew
her, and never was a whisper breathed against her fair fame.
Amongst the frequenters of the Warner Street Temperance Hall I find
the names of Messrs Harvey, Colin Campbell, the brothers Savage,[3] the
brothers Barralet, Tobias Taylor, Edward Cooke, and others, of whom
most Freethinkers have heard something. They seem to have been rather
wild, compared with the sober dignity of the John Street Institution,
especially in the way of lecture bills with startling announcements,
reminding one somewhat of the modern Salvation Army posters. The
neighbourhood looked with no favourable eye upon the little hall, and I
am told that one night, when a baby was screaming violently next door,
a rumour got about that the "infidels" were sacrificing a baby, and
the place was stormed by an angry populace, who were with difficulty
appeased.
[Footnote 3: There were three of these brothers, all remarkable for
their courage, pertinacity, or ability. One of them, John Savage,
refused to pay taxes in 1833. The best of his goods were seized and,
in spite of Mr Savage's protests, carried away in a van. There was so
much feeling about the taxes at the time that no sooner did the people
living in the neighbourhood (Circus Street, Marylebone) hear of the
seizure than they collected in great numbers. The van was followed,
taken possession of, and brought back to Circus Street. The goods were
removed, the horse taken out of the shafts, and the van demolished.
After the news spread throughout the metropolis the excitement became
so great that the Horse Guards at the Regent's Park Barracks were put
under arms. They had lively times sixty years ago.]
It was to this little group of earnest men that the youth Charles
Bradlaugh was introduced in 1848, as one eager to debate, and
enthusiastically determined to convert them all to the "true religion"
in which he had been brought up. He discussed with Colin Campbell,
a smart and fluent debater; he argued with James Savage, a man of
considerable learning, a cool and calm reasoner, and a deliberate
speaker, whose speech on occasion was full of biting sarcasms; and
after a discussion with the latter upon "The Inspiration of the
Bible," my father admitted that he was convinced by the superior
logic of his antagonist, and owning himself beaten, felt obliged to
abandon his defence of orthodoxy. Nevertheless, he did not suddenly
leap into Atheism: his views were for a little time inclined to
Deism; but once started on the road of doubt, his careful study
and--despite his youth--judicial temper, gradually brought him to
the Atheistic position. With the Freethinkers of Warner Place he
became a teetotaller, which was an additional offence in the eyes of
the orthodox; and while still in a state of indecision on certain
theological points, he submitted Robert Taylor's "Diegesis" to his
spiritual director, the Rev. J. G. Packer.
During all this time Mr Packer had not been idle. He obtained a
foothold in my father's family, insisted on the younger children
regularly attending Church and Sunday School, rocked the baby's cradle,
and talked over the father and mother to such purpose that they
consented to hang all round the walls of the sitting-room great square
cards, furnished by him, bearing texts which he considered appropriate
to the moment. One, "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God,"
was hung up in the most prominent place over the fireplace, and just
opposite the place where the victim sat to take his meals. Such stupid
and tactless conduct would be apt to irritate a patient person, and
goad even the most feeble-spirited into some kind of rebellion; and I
cannot pretend that my father was either one or the other. He glowered
angrily at the texts, and was glad enough to put the house door between
himself and the continuous insult put upon him at the instigation of
Mr Packer. In 1860, the rev. gentleman wrote a letter described later
by my father as "mendacious," in which he sought to explain away his
conduct, and to make out that he had tried to restrain Mr Bradlaugh,
senior. In illustration thereof, he related the following incident:--
"The father, returning home one evening, saw a board hanging at the
Infidels' door announcing some discussion by Bradlaugh, in which
my name was mentioned not very respectfully, which announcement so
enraged the father that he took the board down and carried it home
with him, the Infidels calling after him, and threatening him with a
prosecution if he did not restore the placard immediately.
"When Mr Bradlaugh, senior, got home, and had had a little time for
reflection, he sent for me and asked my advice, and I urged him
successfully immediately to send [back] the said placard."
That little story, like certain other little stories, is extremely
interesting, but unfortunately it has not the merit of accuracy. The
facts of the case have been told me by my father's sister (Mrs Norman),
who was less than two years younger than her brother Charles, and who,
like him, is gifted with an excellent, almost unerring memory. Her
story is this. One autumn night (the end of October or beginning of
November) Mr Packer came to the house to see her father. He had not yet
come home from his office, so Mr Packer sat down and rocked the cradle,
which contained a fewdays-old baby girl. After some little time,
during which Mr Packer kept to his post as self-constituted nurse, Mr
Bradlaugh, sen., returned home. The two men were closeted together for
a few minutes, and then went out together. It was a wild and stormy
night, and Mr Bradlaugh wore one of those large cloaks that are I think
called "Inverness" capes. After some time he came home, carrying under
his cape two boards which he had taken away from the Warner Place Hall.
He behaved like a madman, raving and stamping about, until the monthly
nurse, who had long known the family, came downstairs to know what was
the matter. He showed her the boards, and told her he was going to burn
them. Mrs Bailey, the nurse, begged him not to do so, talked to him
and coaxed him, and reminded him that he might have an action brought
against him for stealing, and at length tried to induce him to let her
take them back. By this time the stress of his rage was over, and she,
taking his consent for granted, put on her shawl, and hiding the boards
beneath it, went out into the rain and storm to replace them outside
the Hall. The inference Mrs Norman drew from these proceedings was that
Mr Packer had urged on her father to do what he dared not do himself.
It is worthy of note that when Mrs Norman told me the story neither she
nor I had read Mr Packer's version, and did not even know that he had
written one.
When Mr Packer received the "Diegesis" he seems to have looked upon the
sending of it as an insult, and, exercising all the influence he had
been diligently acquiring over the mind of Mr Bradlaugh, sen., induced
him to notify Messrs Green & Co., the coal merchants and employers of
his son, that he would withdraw his security if within the space of
three days his son did not alter his views. Thus Mr Packer was able to
hold out to his rebellious pupil the threat that he had three days in
which "to change his opinions or lose his situation."
Whether it was ever intended that this threat should be carried out
it is now impossible to determine. Mr Bradlaugh, who seldom failed
to find a word on behalf of those who tried to injure him--even for
Mr Newdegate and Lord Randolph Churchill he could find excuses when
any of us resented their bigoted or spiteful persecution--said in his
"Autobiography," written in 1873, that he thought the menace was used
to terrify him into submission, and that there was no real intention of
enforcing it. Looking at the whole circumstances, and from a practical
point of view, this seems likely. One is reluctant to believe that a
father would permit himself to be influenced by his clergyman to the
extent of depriving his son of the means of earning his bread. His own
earnings were so scanty that he could ill afford to throw away his
son's salary, especially if he would have to keep him in addition.
The one strong point in favour of the harsher view is that when the
son took the threat exactly to the letter, the father never called
him back or made a sign from which might be gathered that he had been
misunderstood; and he suffered the boy to go without one word to show
that the ultimatum had been taken too literally.
At the time, at any rate, my father had no doubt as to the full import
of the threat. He took it in all its naked harshness--three days in
which to change his opinions or lose his situation. To a high-spirited
lad, to lose his situation under such circumstances meant of course
to lose his home, for he could not eat the bread of idleness at such
a cost, even had the father been willing to permit it. On the third
day, therefore, he packed his scanty belongings, parted from his dear
sister Elizabeth, with tears and kisses and a little parting gift,
which she treasures to this hour, and thus left his home. From that
day almost until his death his life was one long struggle against the
bitterest animosity which religious bigotry could inspire. In the face
of all this he pursued the path he had marked out for himself without
once swerving, and although the cost was great, in the end he always
triumphed in his undertakings--up to the very last, when the supreme
triumph came as his life was ebbing away in payment for it, and when he
was beyond caring for the good or evil opinion of any man.
It is now the fashion to make Mr Packer into a sort of scapegoat: his
harsh reception of his pupil's questions and subsequent ill-advised
methods of dealing with him are censured, and he is in a manner made
responsible for my father's Atheism. If no other Christian had treated
Mr Bradlaugh harshly; if every other clergyman had dealt with him in
kindly fashion; if he had been met with kindness instead of slanders
and stones, abuse and ill-usage, then these censors of Mr Packer
might have some just grounds on which to reproach him for misusing
his position; as it is, they should ask themselves which among them
has the right to cast the first stone. The notion that it was Mr
Packer's treatment of him that drove my father into Atheism is, I am
sure, absolutely baseless. Those who entertain this belief forget that
Mr Bradlaugh had already begun to compare and criticise the various
narratives in the four Gospels, and that it was on account of this (and
therefore after it) that the Rev. J. G. Packer was so injudicious as to
denounce him as an Atheist, and to suspend him from his Sunday duties.
This harsh and blundering method of dealing with him no doubt hastened
his progress towards Atheism, but it assuredly did not induce it. It
set his mind in a state of opposition to the Church as represented
by Mr Packer, a state which the rev. gentleman seems blindly to have
fostered by every means in his power; and it gave him the opportunity
of the Sunday's leisure to hear what Atheism really was, expounded by
some of the cleverest speakers in the Freethought movement at that
time. But in spite of all this, he was not driven pell-mell into
Atheism; he joined in the religious controversy from the orthodox
standpoint, and was introduced into the little Warner Place Hall as an
eager champion on behalf of Christianity.
Those persons too who entertain this idea of Mr Packer's responsibility
are ignorant of, or overlook, what manner of man Mr Bradlaugh was.
He could not rest with his mind unsettled or undecided; he worked
out and solved for himself every problem which presented itself to
him. He moulded his ideas on no man's: he looked at the problem on
all sides, studied the pros and cons, and decided the solution for
himself. Therefore, having once started on the road to scepticism,
kindlier treatment would no doubt have made him longer in reaching the
standpoint of pure Rationalism, but in any case the end would have been
the same.
CHAPTER III.
YOUTH.
Driven from home because he refused to be a hypocrite, Charles
Bradlaugh stood alone in the world at sixteen; cut off from kindred
and former friends, with little or nothing in the way of money or
clothes, and with the odium of Atheist attached to his name in lieu of
character. To seek a situation seemed useless: what was to be done? To
whom should he turn for help and sympathy if not to those for whose
opinions he was now suffering? To these he went, and they, scarce
richer than himself, welcomed him with open arms. An old Chartist and
Freethinker, a Mr B. B. Jones, gave him hospitality for a week, while
he cast about for means of earning a livelihood. Mr Jones was an old
man of seventy; and in after years, when he had grown too feeble to
do more than earn a most precarious livelihood by selling Freethought
publications, Mr Bradlaugh had several times the happiness of being
able to show his gratitude practically by lecturing and getting up a
fund for his benefit. Having learned something about the coal trade
whilst with Messrs Green, my father determined to try his fortune as
a "coal merchant;" but unhappily he had no capital, and consequently
required to be paid for the coals before he himself could get them to
supply his customers. Under these circumstances it is hardly wonderful
that his business was small. He, however, got together a few customers,
and managed to earn a sufficient commission to keep him in bread and
cheese. He had some cards printed, and in a boyish spirit of bravado
pushed one under his father's door. Mr Headingley, in the "Biography of
Mr Bradlaugh" that he wrote in 1880, gives the story of the "principal
customer" in pretty much the very words in which he heard it, so I
reproduce it here intact:--
"Bradlaugh's principal customer was the good-natured wife of a
baker, whose shop was situated at the corner of Goldsmith's Road.
As she required several tons of coal per week to bake the bread,
the commission on this transaction amounted to about ten shillings a
week, and this constituted the principal source of Bradlaugh's income.
The spirit of persecution, however, was abroad. Some kind friend
considerately informed the baker's wife that Bradlaugh was in the
habit of attending meetings of Secularists and Freethinkers, where he
had been known to express very unorthodox opinions. This was a severe
blow to the good lady. She had always felt great commiseration for
Bradlaugh's forlorn condition, and a certain pride in herself for
helping him in his distress. When, therefore, he called again for
orders she exclaimed at once, but still with her wonted familiarity--
"'Charles, I hear you are an Infidel!'
"At that time Bradlaugh was not quite sure whether he was an Infidel
or not; but he instinctively foresaw that the question addressed him
might interfere with the smooth and even course of his business;
he therefore deftly sought to avoid the difficulty by somewhat
exaggerating the importance of the latest fluctuation in the coal
market.
"The stratagem was of no avail. His kind but painfully orthodox
customer again returned to the charge, and then Bradlaugh had to fall
back upon the difficulty of defining the meaning of the word Infidel,
in which line of argument he evidently failed to produce a favourable
impression. Again and again he tried to revert to the more congenial
subject of a reduction in the price of coals, and when, finally, he
pressed hard for the usual order, the interview was brought to a close
by the baker's wife. She declared in accents of firm conviction, which
have never been forgotten, that she could not think of having any more
coals from an Infidel.
"'I should be afraid that my bread would smell of brimstone,' she
added with a shudder."
It always strikes me as a little odd that orthodox people, who believe
that the heretic will have to undergo an eternity of punishment--a
punishment so awful that a single hour of it would amply suffice
to avenge even a greater crime than the inability to believe--yet
regard that as insufficient, and do what they can on earth to give
the unbeliever a foretaste of the heavenly mercy to come. This little
story of the kind-hearted woman turned from her kindness by some
bigoted busybody is a mild case in point. Such people put a premium on
hypocrisy, and make the honest avowal of opinion a crime.
In so limited a business the loss of the chief customer was naturally a
serious matter; and although the young coal merchant struggled on for
some time longer, he was at last obliged to seek for other means of
earning his bread. For a little while he tried selling buckskin braces
on commission for Mr Thomas J. Barnes. Mr Barnes gave him a breakfast
at starting in the morning, and a dinner on his return at night, but as
he could only sell a limited quantity of the braces he grew ever poorer
and poorer.
Early in my father's troubles, Mrs Carlile and her children seem to
have taken a warm liking for him. He shared Julian Carlile's bed, and
there was always a place at the family table--such as it was--whenever
he wanted it. He read Hebrew with Mr James Savage, and in turn taught
Hebrew and Greek to Mr Thomas Barralet, then a young man of his own
age, his particular friend and companion at the time. With the Carlile
children he had lessons in French from Mr Harvey, an old friend of
Richard Carlile's. These "French" days, I can readily believe, were
altogether red-letter days. Usually, from motives of economy, the
_menu_ was made up on a strictly vegetarian basis; but when Mr Harvey
came he invariably invited himself to dinner, and having a little
more money than most of the others, he always provided the joint. Mr
Bradlaugh says in his "Autobiography" that while with the Carliles
he picked up "a little Hebrew and an imperfect smattering of other
tongues." Then and with subsequent study he acquired a good knowledge
of Hebrew; French he could read and speak (although with a somewhat
English accent) as easily as his own tongue; he knew a little Arabic
and Greek; and he could make his way through Latin, Italian, or
Spanish, though of German and its allied languages he knew nothing.
It was whilst under Mrs Carlile's roof my father fell in love with
Hypatia, Mrs Carlile's eldest daughter; and this fleeting attachment
of a boy and girl (or rather, I should say of a boy _for_ a girl, for
I know that Miss Carlile laughed at my father's pretensions, and there
is absolutely no reason to suppose that she felt anything more than a
sisterly affection for him) would hardly be worth alluding to had not a
whole scandal been built upon it. As far as I can trace, the vile and
iniquitous statements that have been made as to the relations between
my father and Hypatia Carlile--he between sixteen and seventeen, and
she a year or two younger--originated with the Rev. J. G. Packer and
the Rev. Brewin Grant; and since Mr Bradlaugh's death there have not
been wanting worthy disciples of these gentlemen, who have endeavoured
to revive these unwarranted accusations. Mrs Carlile was also vaguely
accused of making "a tool" of the lad, and involving him in money
transactions!----It is not easy to sympathise with the temper which
makes people so unable to understand the generous heart of a woman
who, herself desperately poor, could yet freely share the crumbs of
her poverty with one whose need was even greater than her own, and
give a home and family to the lad who had forfeited his own purely for
conscience' sake.
As after my father left home he was chiefly sheltered by the Carliles
at 1 Warner Place, I cannot imagine what Mr Headingley[4] means by
saying that Mr Bradlaugh was saved the anxiety of pursuit by his
parents. There was no necessity for pursuit; he was never at any time
far from home, and for the most part was in the same street, only a
few doors off. His parents knew where he was; he was often up and down
their street; and his sister Elizabeth would watch to see him pass, or
would loiter about near the Temperance Hall to catch a glimpse of her
brother. She was peremptorily forbidden to exchange a word with him;
and when they passed in the street, this loving brother and sister,
who were little more than children in years, would look at each other,
and not daring to speak, would both burst into tears. In spite of all
this I never heard my father say an unkind or bitter, or even a merely
reproachful word about either of his parents.
Having once begun to speak at the open-air meetings in Bonner's Fields,
he continued speaking there or at Victoria Park, Sunday after Sunday,
during the day, and in the evening at the Warner Place Temperance Hall,
or at a small Temperance Hall in Philpot Street. I am also informed
that he lectured on Temperance at the _Wheatsheaf_ in Mile End Road.
The _British Banner_ for July 31st, 1850, contains a letter signed
D. J. E., on "Victoria Park on the Lord's Day." The writer, after
dwelling at length upon the sinfulness and general iniquity of the
Sunday frequenters of the park, who, he affirmed, sauntered in "sinful
idleness" ... "willing listeners to the harangues of the Chartist, the
Socialist, the infidel and scoffer," goes on to say of my father:--
"The stump orator for the real scoffing party is an overgrown boy of
seventeen, with such an uninformed mind, that it is really amusing
to see him sometimes stammering and spluttering on in his ignorant
eloquence, making the most ludicrous mistakes, making all history to
suit his private convenience, and often calling yea nay, and nay yea,
when it will serve his purpose. He is styled by the frequenters of the
park as the 'baby'; and I believe he is listened to very often more
from real curiosity to know what one so young will say, than from any
love the working men have to his scoffings."
[Footnote 4: Biography of Charles Bradlaugh.]
At the conclusion of a long letter, the writer says:--
"It gives me great delight to state that the working men have no real
sympathy with Infidels and scoffers, but would far sooner listen to
an exposition of the Word of God. To give you an instance. One Sunday
I opposed the 'baby' of whom I have spoken, and instantly there was
a space cleared for us, and an immense ring formed around us. The
Infidel spoke first, and I replied; he spoke again, and was in the
midst of uttering some dreadful blasphemy, copied from Paine's 'Age of
Reason,' when the people could suppress their indignation no longer,
but uttered one loud cry of disapprobation. When silence had been
obtained, I addressed to them again a few serious kind words, and told
them that if they wish me to read to them the Word of God, I would do
so; that if they wished me to pray with them, I would do so. Upon my
saying this, nearly all the company left the Infidel, and repaired to
an adjoining tree, where I read and expounded the Word of God with
them for about an hour."
In this first press notice of himself Mr Bradlaugh had an introductory
specimen of the accuracy, justice, and generosity, of which he was
later to receive so many striking examples from the English press
generally, and the London and Christian press in particular.
In attending Freethought meetings Charles Bradlaugh became acquainted
with Austin Holyoake, and a friendship sprang up between these two
which ended only with the death of Mr Holyoake in 1874. By Austin
Holyoake he was taken to the John Street Institution, and by him also
he was introduced to his elder and more widely-known brother, Mr George
Jacob Holyoake, who took the chair for him at a lecture on the "Past,
Present, and Future of Theology" at the Temperance Hall, Commercial
Road. Mr G. J. Holyoake, in a sketch of my father's life and career
written in 1891, says:--
"It will interest many to see what was the beginning of his splendid
career on the platform, to copy the only little handbill in existence.
Only a few weeks before his death, looking over an old diary, which
I had not opened for forty-one years, I found the bill, of which I
enclose you the facsimile. It is Bradlaugh's first placard:--
LECTURE HALL,
PHILPOT ST., (3 DOORS FROM COMMERCIAL ROAD).
A LECTURE
WILL BE DELIVERED BY
CHARLES BRADLAUGH, JUN.,
_On Friday, October the 10th, 1850_,
SUBJECT:
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE OF THEOLOGY.
MR GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE,
_Editor of the "Reasoner,"_
WILL TAKE THE CHAIR AT EIGHT O'CLOCK PRECISELY.
A Collection will be made after the Lecture for the Benefit of
C. Bradlaugh, victim of the Rev. J. G. Packer, of St. Peter's,
Hackney Road.
"Being his first public friend, I was asked to take the chair for him.
Bradlaugh's subject was a pretty extensive one for the first lecture
of a youth of seventeen, who looked more like fourteen as he stood up
in a youth's round jacket; but he spoke with readiness, confidence,
and promise."
In May 1850, "at the age of 16 years 7-1/2 months," Mr Bradlaugh wrote
an "Examination of the four Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, Luke
and John, with remarks on the life and death of the meek and lowly
Jesus." This he "altered and amended" in June 1854, but it was never
published. In the preface, written in 1850, he says, "I think I can
prove that there did exist a man named Jesus [Greek: chrêstos] the
good man," but in 1854 he no longer adheres to this position, and
adds a note: "I would not defend the existence of Jesus as a man at
all, although I have not sufficient evidence to deny it." Through the
kindness of a friend I am in possession of the MS. volume containing
this "Examination," which, apart from its value to me personally, is
extremely interesting as showing how carefully my father went about
his work, even at an age when many lads are still at school. A month
or so after writing this critical examination, "C. Bradlaugh, jun.,"
published his first pamphlet, entitled, "A Few Words on the Christian's
Creed." To the Rev. J. G. Packer he dedicated his first printed attack
upon orthodox Christianity, addressing him in the following words:--
"SIR,--Had the misfortunes which I owe to your officious
interference been less than they are, and personal feeling left any
place in my mind for deliberation or for inquiry in selecting a
proper person to whom to dedicate these few remarks, I should have
found myself directed, by many considerations, to the person of the
Incumberer of St Peter's, Hackney Road. A life spent in division from
part of your flock, and in crushing those whom you could not answer,
may well entitle you to the respect of all true bigots.--Hoping that
you will be honoured as you deserve, I am, Reverend Sir, yours truly,
C. BRADLAUGH."
At the end of October in the same year he sent "a report of the
closing season's campaign in Bonner's Fields, Victoria Park," to the
_Reasoner_, from which I take an extract, not without interest for
the light it throws upon the manners and methods then common at these
out-door assemblies:--
"In May last, when I joined the fray, the state of affairs was as
follows: In front of us, near the park gates, were stationed some two
or three of the followers of the Victoria Park Mission, who managed
to get a moderate attendance of hearers; on our extreme left was the
Rev. Henry Robinson, who mustered followers to the amount of three or
four hundred; on our right, and close to our place of meeting, was
erected the tent of the Christian Instruction Society; sometimes,
also, in our midst we have had the Rev. Mr Worrall, V.D.M., who gives
out in his chapel one Sunday that infidelity is increasing, and that
there must be fresh subscriptions for more Sunday-school teachers (who
are never paid), and the next Sunday announces in the Fields that
infidelity is dying away. Besides these, we have had Dr Oxley, and
some dozens of tract distributors, who seemed to have no end to their
munificence--not forgetting Mr Harwood, and a few other irregular
preachers, who told us how wicked they had been in their youth, and
what a mercy it was the Lord had changed them.
"When I first came out I attracted a little extra attention on account
of my having been a Sunday-school teacher, and therefore had more
opposition than some of our other friends; and as the Freethinking
party did not muster quite so well as they do now, I met with some
very unpleasant occurrences. One Monday evening in particular I was
well stoned, and some friends both saw and heard several Christians
urging the boys to pelt me. As, however, the attendance of the
Freethinkers grew more regular, these minor difficulties vanished.
But more serious ones rose in their place. George Offer, Esq., of
Hackney, and Dr Oxley, intimated to the police that I ought not to
be allowed to speak; and a Christian gentleman whose real name and
address we could never get, but who passed by the name of Tucker,
after pretending that he was my friend to Mrs Carlile, and learning
all he could of me, appeared in the Park and made the most untrue
charges. When he found he was being answered, he used to beckon the
police and have me moved on.... I happened to walk up to the Fields
one evening, when I saw some of the bills announcing our lecture at
Warner Place pulled down from the tree on which they had been placed.
I immediately renewed them, and on the religious persons attempting to
pull the bills down again I defended them; and one gentleman having
broken a parasol over my arm in attempting to tear the bills, the
congregation, of which Mr Robinson was the leader, became furious.
The pencil of Cruikshank would have given an instructive and curious
picture of the scene. They were crying out, men and women too, 'Down
with him!' 'Have him down!' And here the scene would have been very
painful to my feelings, for down they would have had me had not my
own party gathered round, on which a treaty of peace was come to on
the following terms, viz. that the man who tried to pull the bills
down would guard them to keep them up as long as the religious people
stayed there. Mr Robinson applied for a warrant against me, but the
magistrate refused to grant it."
On another occasion, when some people whom he and Mr James Savage had
been addressing in the Park had become unduly excited by a Scotch
preacher, who politely informed them that they were "a generation of
vipers," Mr Bradlaugh stepped forward in an attempt to pacify them, but
much to his surprise was himself seized by police. Fortunately, several
of the bystanders volunteered to go to the police station with him, and
he was immediately released.
Nowadays the Parks and the Commons are the happy hunting-grounds
for the outdoor speaker, where he inculcates almost any doctrine he
chooses, unmolested by the police or the public.
CHAPTER IV.
ARMY LIFE.
But all his debating and writing, all his studying, did not fill my
father's pockets; they, like their owner, grew leaner every day. With
his increasing poverty he fell into debt: it was not much that he owed,
only £4 15s., but small as the sum was, it was more than he could
repay, or see any definite prospect of repaying, unless he could strike
out some new path. My grandfather, Mr Hooper, who knew him then, not
personally, but by seeing and hearing him, used to call him "the young
enthusiast," and many a time in later years recalled his figure as he
appeared in the winter of 1850, in words that have brought tears to
my eyes. Tall, gaunt, white-faced and hollow cheeked, with arms too
long for his sleeves, and trousers too short for his legs, he looked,
what indeed he was, nearly starving. "He looked _hungry_, Hypatia," my
grandfather would say with an expressive shudder; "he looked hungry."
And others have told me the same tale. How _could_ his parents bear to
know that he had come to such a pass!
A subscription was offered him by some Freethinking friends, and
deeply grateful as he was, it yet brought his poverty more alarmingly
before him. One night in December, one of the brothers Barralet met
him looking as I have said, and invited him into a coffee house close
by to discuss some scheme or other. They went in and chatted for some
minutes, but when the waiter had brought the food, it seemed suddenly
to strike the guest that the "scheme" was merely an excuse to give him
a supper, and with one look at his companion, he jumped up and fled out
of the room.
On Sunday, the 15th of December, he was lecturing in Bonner's Fields,
and went home with the sons of Mr Samuel Record to dinner. They tell
that while at dinner he threw his arms up above his head and asked
Mr Record in a jesting tone, "How do you think I should look in
regimentals?" The elder man replied, "My boy, you are too noble for
that." Unfortunately, a noble character could not clothe his long
limbs, or fill his empty stomach, nor could it pay that terrible debt
of £4 15s.
With "soldiering" vaguely in his mind, but yet without a clearly
defined intention of enlisting, he went out two days afterwards,
determined upon doing something to put an end to his present position.
He walked towards Charing Cross, and there saw a poster inviting smart
young men to join the East India Company's Service, and holding out
to recruits the tempting bait of a bounty of £6 10s. This bounty was
an overpowering inducement to the poor lad; his debts amounted to £4
15s.; this £6 10s. would enable him to pay all he owed and stand free
once more. As Mr John M. Robertson justly says in his Memoir,[5] this
incident was typical: "All through his life he had to shape his course
to the paying off of his debts, toil as he would." Mr Headingley[6]
tells that
"With a firm step, resolutely and soberly, Bradlaugh went down some
steps to a bar where the recruiting sergeants were in the habit of
congregating. Here he discerned the very fat, beery, but honest
sergeant, who was then enlisting for the East India Service, and at
once volunteered. Bradlaugh little imagined, when he stepped out of
the cellar and crossed Trafalgar Square once more--this time with
the fatal shilling in his pocket--that after all he would never
go to the East Indies, but remain in England to gather around him
vast multitudes of enthusiastic partisans, who, on that very spot,
would insist on his taking his seat in Parliament, as the member for
Northampton; and this, too, in spite of those heterodox views which,
as yet, had debarred him from earning even the most modest livelihood.
"It happened, however, that the sergeant of the East India Company
had 'borrowed a man' from the sergeant of the 50th Foot, and he
determined honestly to pay back his debt with the person of Bradlaugh;
so that after some hocus-pocus transactions between the two sergeants,
Bradlaugh was surprised to find that he had been duly enrolled in
the 50th Foot, and was destined for home service. Such a trick might
have been played with impunity on some ignorant country yokel; but
Bradlaugh at once rebelled, and made matters very uncomfortable for
all persons concerned.
"Among other persons to whom he explained all his grievances was the
medical officer who examined him. This gentleman fortunately took
considerable interest in the case, and had a long chat with Bradlaugh.
He could not engage him for India, as he belonged to the home forces,
but he invited him to look out of the window, where the sergeants were
pacing about, and select the regiment he might prefer. As a matter of
fact, Bradlaugh was not particularly disappointed at being compelled
to remain in England; he objected principally to the lack of respect
implied in trifling with his professed intentions. He was, therefore,
willing to accept the compromise suggested by the physician. So long
as his right of choice was respected, it did not much matter to him in
which regiment he served.
"After watching for a little while the soldiers pacing in front of the
window, his choice fell on a very smart cavalry man, and, being of the
necessary height, he determined to join his corps."
[Footnote 5: Labour and Law, by Charles Bradlaugh. With Memoir by John
M Robertson.]
[Footnote 6: Biography of Charles Bradlaugh.]
The regiment he elected to join proved to be the 7th (Princess Royal's)
Dragoon Guards, and thus, through the kindly assistance of the doctor,
at the age of "17-3/12 years," he found himself a "full private"
belonging to Her Majesty's forces.
After he enlisted he sent word, not to the father and mother who had
treated him so coldly, but to the grandmother who loved him so dearly.
She sent her daughter Mary to tell the parents of this new turn in
their son's affairs, and the news seems to have been conveyed and
received in a somewhat tragic manner. A day or so before Christmas Day
she came with a face of gloomy solemnity to tell something so serious
about Charles that the daughter Elizabeth, who happened to be there,
was ordered out of the room. She remained weeping in the passage during
the whole time of the family conclave, thinking that her brother must
have done something very dreadful indeed.
Then the father went to see his son at Westminster, and obtained
permission for the new recruit to spend the Christmas Day with his
family. It is only natural to suppose that this semi-reconciliation
must have afforded them all some sort of comfort, while I have a very
strong personal conviction that the whole affair preyed upon the
father's mind, and that the harshness he showed his son was really
foreign to his general temper. Anyhow, his character underwent a great
change after he let himself come under the influence of Mr Packer. He
who before never went inside a church, now never missed a Sunday; he
became concentrated and, to a certain extent, morose, and at length, on
the 19th August 1852, some twenty months after his son's enlistment,
he was taken suddenly ill at his desk in Cloak Lane. He was brought
home in a state of unconsciousness, from which he was only aroused to
fall into violent delirium, and so continued without once recovering
his senses until the hour of his death, which was reached on Tuesday
the 24th. He was only forty-one years of age, and had always had good
health previously, never ailing anything; and I feel quite convinced
that the agony of mind which he must have endured from the time when
his son was first denounced to him as an "Atheist" was mainly the cause
of his early death.
The 7th Dragoon Guards was at that time quartered in Ireland, and Mr
A. S. Headingley tells at length the tragic-comic adventures the new
recruit met with at sea on the three days' journey from London to
Dublin:--
"The recruits who were ordered to join their regiment were marched
down to a ship lying in the Thames which was to sail all the way to
Ireland. Bradlaugh was the only recruit who wore a black suit and a
silk hat. The former was very threadbare, and the latter weak about
the rim, but still to the other recruits he seemed absurdly attired;
and as he looked pale and thin and ill conditioned, it was not long
before some one ventured to destroy the dignity of his appearance by
bonneting him. The silk hat thus disposed of, much to the amusement
of the recruits, who considered horse play the equivalent of wit, a
raid was made upon Bradlaugh's baggage. His box was ruthlessly broken
open, and when it was discovered that a Greek lexicon and an Arabic
vocabulary were the principal objects he had thought fit to bring into
the regiment, the scorn and derision of his fellow soldiers knew no
bounds.
"A wild game of football was at once organized with the lexicon,
and it came out of the scuffle torn and unmanageable. The Arabic
vocabulary was a smaller volume, and it fared better. Ultimately,
Bradlaugh recovered the book, and he keeps it still on his shelf,
close to his desk, a cherished and useful relic of past struggles and
endeavours.
* * * * *
"His luggage broken open, his books scattered to the winds, his hat
desecrated and ludicrously mis-shaped by the rough hands of his fellow
recruits, Bradlaugh certainly did not present the picture of a future
leader of men. Yet, even at this early stage of his military life an
opportunity soon occurred which turned the tables entirely in his
favour.
"The weather had been looking ugly for some time, and now became more
and more menacing, till at last a storm broke upon the ship with a
violence so intense that the captain feared for her safety. It was
absolutely necessary to move the cargo, and his crew were not numerous
enough to accomplish, unaided, so arduous a task. Their services
also were urgently required to man[oe]uvre the ship. The captain,
therefore, summoned the recruits to help, and promised that if they
removed the cargo as he indicated, he would give them £5 to share
among themselves. He further encouraged them by expressing his hope
that if the work were well and promptly done, the ship would pull
through the storm.
"The proposition was greeted with cheers, and Bradlaugh, in spite of
his sea-sickness, helped as far as he was able in moving the cargo.
The ship now rode the waves more easily, and in due time the storm
subsided; and, the danger over, the soldiers thought the hour of
reckoning was at hand. The recruits began to inquire about the £5
which had been offered as the reward of their gallant services; but,
with the disappearance of the danger, the captain's generosity had
considerably subsided. He then hit on a mean stratagem to avoid the
fulfilment of his promise. He singled out three or four of the leading
men, the strongest recruits, and gave them two half-crowns each,
calculating that if the strongest had a little more than their share,
they would silence the clamours of the weaker, who were altogether
deprived of their due.
"The captain had not, however, reckoned on the presence of Bradlaugh.
The pale, awkward youth, who as yet had only been treated with jeers
and contempt, was the only person who dared stand up and face him. To
the unutterable surprise of every one, he delivered a fiery, menacing,
unanswerable harangue, upbraiding the captain in no measured terms,
exposing in lucid language the meanness of his action, and concluding
with the appalling threat of a letter to the _Times_. To this day
Bradlaugh remembers, with no small sense of self-satisfaction, the
utter and speechless amazement of the captain at the sight of a person
so miserable in appearance suddenly becoming so formidable in speech
and menace.
"Awakened, therefore, to a consciousness of his own iniquity by
Bradlaugh's eloquence, the captain distributed more money. The
soldiers on their side at once formed a very different opinion of
their companion, and, from being the butt, he became the hero of the
troop. Every one was anxious to show him some sort of deference, and
to make some acknowledgment for the services he had rendered."
While serving with his regiment Mr Bradlaugh was a most active advocate
of temperance; he began, within a day or so of his arrival in Ireland,
upon the quarter-master's daughters. He had been ordered to do some
whitewashing for the quarter-master, and that officer's daughters
saw him while he was at work, and took pity on him. I have told how
he looked; and it is little wonder that his appearance aroused
compassion. They brought him a glass of port wine, but this my father
majestically refused, and delivered to the amused girls a lecture
upon the dangers of intemperance, emphasising his remarks by waves of
the whitewash brush. He has often laughed at the queer figure he must
have presented, tall and thin, with arms and legs protruding from his
clothes, and raised up near to the ceiling on a board, above the two
girls, who listened to the lecture, wineglass in hand. Later on, when
he had gained a certain amount of popularity amongst his comrades, he
used to be let out of the barrack-room windows when he could not get
leave of absence, by means of blankets knotted together, in order to
attend and speak at temperance meetings in Kildare. But the difficulty
was not so much in getting out of barracks as in getting in again; and
sometimes this last was not accomplished without paying the penalty
of arrest. The men of his troop gave him the nickname of "Leaves,"
because of his predilection for tea and books; his soldier's knapsack
contained a Greek lexicon, an Arabic vocabulary, and a Euclid, the
beginnings of the library which at last numbered over 7000 volumes. Mr
Bradlaugh remained a total abstainer for several years--until 1861. At
that time he was in bad health, and was told by his physician that he
was drinking too much tea; he drank tea in those days for breakfast,
dinner, and tea, and whenever he felt thirsty in between. From that
time until 1886 he took milk regularly for breakfast, and in 1886 he
varied this regimen by adding a little coffee to his milk, with a
little claret or hock for dinner or supper, and a cup of tea after
dinner and at teatime. It has been said that he had a "passion for
tea," but that is a mere absurdity. If he had been out, he would ask
on coming in for a cup of tea, as another man would ask for a glass of
beer or a brandy and soda, but he would take it as weak as you liked to
give it him.
The stories of the energetic comment of the 300 dragoons upon the
sermon of the Rev. Mr Halpin at Rathmines Church, and the assertion of
a right of way by "Private Charles Bradlaugh, C. 52, VII D. G.," have
both been graphically told by Mr Headingley[7] and by Mrs Besant.[8]
[Footnote 7: Biography of Charles Bradlaugh.]
[Footnote 8: Review of Reviews, March 1891.]
"On Sundays," relates Mr Headingley, "when it was fine, the regiment
was marched to Rathmines Church, and here, on one occasion--it was
Whit-Sunday--the Rev. Mr Halpin preached a sermon which he described
as being beyond the understandings of the military portion of his
congregation. This somewhat irritated the Dragoon Guards, and
Bradlaugh, to their great delight, wrote a letter to the preacher, not
only showing that he fully understood his sermon, but calling him to
account for the inaccuracy of his facts and the illogical nature of
his opinions.
"It was anticipated that an unpleasant answer might be made to this
letter, and on the following Sunday the Dragoons determined to be
fully prepared for the emergency. Accordingly, they listened carefully
to the sermon. The Rev. Mr Halpin did not fail to allude to the letter
he had received, but at the first sentence that was impertinent and
contemptuous in its tone three hundred dragoons unhooked their swords
as one man, and let the heavy weapons crash on the ground. Never had
there been such a noise in a church, or a preacher so effectively
silenced.
"An inquiry was immediately ordered to be held, Bradlaugh was
summoned to appear, and serious consequences would have ensued; but,
fortunately, the Duke of Cambridge came to Dublin on the next day, the
review which was held in honour of his presence diverted attention,
and so the matter dropped."
I give the right-of-way incident in Mrs Besant's words. While the
regiment was at Ballincollig, she says--
"A curiously characteristic act made him the hero of the Inniscarra
peasantry. A landowner had put up a gate across a right-of-way,
closing it against soldiers and peasants, while letting the gentry
pass through it. 'Leaves' looked up the question, and found the
right-of-way was real; so he took with him some soldiers and some
peasants, pulled down the gate, broke it up, and wrote on one of the
bars, 'Pulled up by Charles Bradlaugh, C. 52, VII D. G.' The landowner
did not prosecute, and the gate did not reappear."
The landlord did not prosecute, because when he made his complaint
to the officer commanding the regiment, the latter suggested that he
should make quite certain that he had the law on his side, for Private
Bradlaugh generally knew what he was about. The peasants, whose rights
had been so boldly defended, did not confine their gratitude to words,
but henceforth they kept their friend supplied with fresh butter,
new-laid eggs, and such homely delicacies as they thought a private in
a cavalry regiment would be likely to appreciate.
After speaking of the difficulties into which my father might have got
over the Rathmines affair, Mrs Besant[9] tells of another occasion in
which his position
"was even more critical. He was orderly room clerk, and a newly
arrived young officer came into the room where he was sitting at work,
and addressed to him some discourteous order. Private Bradlaugh took
no notice. The order was repeated with an oath. Still no movement.
Then it came again with some foul words added. The young soldier rose,
drew himself to his full height, and, walking up to the officer, bade
him leave the room, or he would throw him out. The officer went, but
in a few minutes the grounding of muskets was heard outside, the door
opened, and the Colonel walked in, accompanied by the officer. It was
clear that the private soldier had committed an act for which he might
be court-martialled, and as he said once, 'I felt myself in a tight
place.' The officer made his accusation, and Private Bradlaugh was
bidden to explain. He asked that the officer should state the exact
words in which he had addressed him, and the officer who had, after
all, a touch of honour in him, gave the offensive sentence word for
word. Then Private Bradlaugh said, addressing his Colonel, that the
officer's memory must surely be at fault in the whole matter, as he
could not have used language so unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.
The Colonel turned to the officer with the dry remark, 'I think
Private Bradlaugh is right; there _must_ be some mistake,' and he left
the room."
[Footnote 9: See Character Sketch _Charles Bradlaugh_.--Review of
Reviews, March 1891.]
Many are the stories that might be told of these his soldier's days.
One incident that I have often heard him give, and which may well come
in here, is referred to in Mr Robertson's interesting _Memoir_ appended
to my father's last book, "Labour and Law." This was an experience
gained at Donnybrook Fair, the regiment being then quartered near "that
historic village." "When Fair time came near the peasantry circulated
a well-planned taunt to the effect that the men of the Seventh would
be afraid to present themselves on the great day. The Seventh acted
accordingly. Sixteen picked men got a day's leave--and shillelaghs. 'I
was the shortest of the sixteen,'" said Mr Bradlaugh, as he related the
episode, not without some humorous qualms, and _he_ stood 6 feet 1-1/2
inches. "The sixteen just 'fought through,' and their arms and legs
were black for many weeks, though their heads, light as they clearly
were, did not suffer seriously. But," he added, with a sigh, as he
finished the story, "I _couldn't_ do it now."
A further experience of a really tragic and terrible kind I will relate
in my father's own words, for in these he most movingly describes a
scene he himself witnessed, and a drama in which he took an unwilling
part.
"Those of you who are Irishmen," he begins,[10] "will want no
description of that beautiful valley of the Lee which winds between
the hills from Cork, and in summer seems like a very Paradise, green
grass growing to the water side, and burnished with gold in the
morning, and ruddy to very crimson in the evening sunset. I went there
on a November day. I was one of a troop to protect the law officers,
who had come with the agent from Dublin to make an eviction a few
miles from Inniscarra, where the river Bride joins the Lee. It was a
miserable day--rain freezing into sleet as it fell--and the men beat
down wretched dwelling after wretched dwelling, some thirty or forty
perhaps. They did not take much beating down; there was no flooring
to take up; the walls were more mud than aught else; and there was
but little trouble in the levelling of them to the ground. We had got
our work about three parts done, when out of one of them a woman ran,
and flung herself on the ground, wet as it was, before the Captain
of the troop, and she asked that her house might be spared--not for
long, but for a little while. She said her husband had been born in
it; he was ill of the fever, but could not live long, and she asked
that he might be permitted to die in it in peace. Our Captain had
no power; the law agent from Dublin wanted to get back to Dublin;
his time was of importance, and he would not wait; and that man was
carried out while we were there--in front of us, while the sleet was
coming down--carried out on a wretched thing (you could not call
it a bed), and he died there while we were there; and three nights
afterwards, while I was sentry on the front gate at Ballincollig
Barracks, we heard a cry, and when the guard was turned out, we found
this poor woman there a raving maniac, with one dead babe in one arm,
and another in the other clinging to the cold nipple of her lifeless
breast. And," asked my father, in righteous indignation, "if you had
been brothers to such a woman, sons of such a woman, fathers of such
a woman, would not rebellion have seemed the holiest gospel you could
hear preached?"
[Footnote 10: _National Reformer_, November 16, 1873. A speech on the
Irish Question delivered in New York; reprinted from the _New York
Tribune_ of October 7th.]
CHAPTER V.
ARMY LIFE CONCLUDED.
When his father died in 1852 Private Charles Bradlaugh came home on
furlough to attend the funeral. He was by this time heartily sick of
soldiering, and under the circumstances was specially anxious to get
home to help in the support of his family. (This, one writer, without
the slightest endeavour to be accurate even on the simplest matters,
says is nonsense, because his family only numbered _two_, his mother
and his brother!) His great-aunt, Elizabeth Trimby, promised to buy
him out, and he went back to his regiment buoyed up by her promise.
In September he was in hospital, ill with rheumatic fever, and after
that he seems to have had more or less rheumatism during the remainder
of his stay in Ireland; for in June 1853, in writing to his sister,
apologising for having passed over her birthday without a letter,
he says: "I was, unfortunately, on my bed from another attack of
the rheumatism, which seized my right knee in a manner anything but
pleasant, but it is a mere nothing to the dose I had last September,
and I am now about again."
The letters I have by me of my father's, written home at this time,
instead of teeming with fiery fury and magniloquent phrases as to
shooting his officers,[11] are just a lad's letters; the sentences
for the most part a little formal and empty, with perhaps the most
interesting item reserved for the postscript; now and again crude
verses addressed to his sister, and winding up almost invariably with
"write soon." After the father's death Mr Lepard, a member of the firm
in which he had been confidential clerk for upwards of twenty-one
years, used his influence to get the two youngest children, Robert and
Harriet, into Orphan Asylums. While the matter was yet in abeyance
Elizabeth seems to have written her brother asking if any of the
officers could do anything to help in the matter, and on March 14th he
answers her from Ballincollig:--
[Footnote 11: Whether rightly or wrongly, my father thought he was
treated with exceptional severity by his Captain during the first part
of the time he was in the army; and this has been exaggerated into a
story of how in his letters to his mother during the latter part of
his army life he was "_constantly_ informing her" that "unless she
obtained his discharge he would put a bullet through this officer."
The story, I need hardly say, is quite untrue, and to any one who knew
my father must seem almost too absurd to need refutation. During Mr
Bradlaugh's illness in 1889 Captain Walker, then General Sir Beauchamp
Walker, called twice to inquire at Circus Road. My father was very dull
and depressed one day as he lay in bed, and, thinking to cheer him. I
mentioned the names of persons who I knew he would like to hear had
inquired; and when I read the name from the card, and said that General
Walker had told the maid to "tell Mr Bradlaugh that his old Captain
had called," he was delighted beyond measure, and was for the moment
the boy private again, with the private's feelings for his superior
officer. The visit gratified him almost as much as if it had been one
from Mr Gladstone himself.]
"I am very sorry to say that you have a great deal more to learn of
the world yet, my dear Elizabeth, or you would not expect to find
an officer of the army a subscriber to an Orphan Asylum. There may
be a few, but the most part of them spend all the money they have
in hunting, racing, boating, horses, dogs, gambling, and drinking,
besides other follies of a graver kind, and have little to give to the
poor, and less inclination to give it even than their means."
My father's great-aunt, Miss Elizabeth Trimby, died in June 1853, at
the age of eighty-five. She died without having fulfilled her promise
of buying her nephew's discharge; but as the little money she left,
some £70, came to the Bradlaugh family, they had now the opportunity
of themselves carrying out her intention, or, to be exact, her precise
written wishes.[12]
[Footnote 12: _National Reformer_, Feb. 10, 1884.]
The mother, in her heart, wanted her son home: she needed the comfort
of his presence, and the help of his labour, to add to their scanty
women's earnings; but she was a woman slow to forgive, and her son had
set his parents' commands at defiance, and gone out into the world
alone, rather than bow his neck to the yoke his elders wished to put
upon him. She talked the matter over with her neighbours, and if it
was a kindly, easy-going neighbour, who said, "Oh, I should have
him home," then she allowed her real desires to warm her heart a
little, and think that perhaps she would; if, on the other hand, her
neighbour dilated upon the wickedness of her son, and the enormity of
his offences, then she would harden herself against him. Her daughter
Elizabeth wanted him home badly; and whilst her mother was away at
Mitcham, attending the funeral, and doing other things in connection
with the death of Miss Trimby, Elizabeth wrote to her brother, asking
what it would cost to buy him out. He was instructed to write on a
separate paper, as she was afraid of her mother's anger when she saw
it, and wished to take the favourable opportunity of a soft moment to
tell her. She was left in charge at home, and thinking her mother safe
at Mitcham for a week, she had timed the answer to come in her absence.
One day she had to leave the house to take home some work which she
had been doing. On her return, much to her dismay, her mother met her
at the door perfectly furious. The letter had come during the girl's
short absence, and her mother had come home unexpectedly! "How dared
she write her brother? How dared she ask such a question?" the mother
demanded, and poor Elizabeth was in sad disgrace all that day, and for
some time afterwards. This was the answer her brother sent, on June
22nd, from Cahir--
"As you wish, I send on this sheet what it would cost to buy me off;
but I would not wish to rob you and mother like that.
For the Discharge £30 0 0
Compensation for general clothing 0 17 6
Passage money home 1 16 0
--------
£32 13 6
or about £33.
"I could come home in regimentals, because clothes could be bought
cheaper in London, and I would work like a slave; but do not think, my
dear sister, I want to take the money from you and mother, though I
would do anything to get from the army.
"We are under orders to march into the county of Clare to put down the
rioters at Six Mile Bridge, in the coming election, and expect some
fighting there."
The discharge was applied for in August, but I gather that Mr Lepard,
who assisted my grandmother in the little legal matters arising out of
Miss Trimby's death, was not very favourable to the project, and seems
to have required some guarantee as to my father's character,[13] before
he would remit the money.
[Footnote 13: Amongst some letters my father gave me some long time ago
is one which must have satisfied even Mr Lepard. It is as follows:--
"Cahir Barracks, September 23rd, 1853.
"SIR,--Having been informed by Private Charles Bradlaugh
of the 7th Dragoon Guards, that you require some testimonials as to
character, I beg to inform you that during the time this man has been
in the regiment (since December 1850) his conduct has been extremely
good, and I beg also to add that he is always considered to be a
clever, well-informed, and steady young man. Should you require
any further information, I shall be most happy to give [all] in my
power.--I am, Sir, your obedient Servant,
"E. T. DOWBIGGIN,
"J. Lepard, Esq. Lieut. and Adjutant, 7th Dragoon Guards.
"_P.S._--I may observe that during the last eighteen months this man
has been occupying rather a prominent situation in the regiment, being
that of orderly room clerk, and has consequently been immediately
under my notice."]
However, it was at length definitely arranged that the aunt's promise
should be kept, and that her money should purchase the discharge
according to her intentions. A thoroughly boyish letter gives
expression to Private Bradlaugh's sentiments on hearing the good news.
It is dated from "Cahir, 6th October 1853:--
"MY DEAR MOTHER,--When I opened your letter, before reading
it I waved it three times round my head, and gave a loud 'hurra'
from pure joy, for then I felt assured that all this was not a mere
dream, but something very like reality. The £30 has not yet made its
appearance on the scene. I shall be glad to see it, as I shall not
feel settled till I get away. I am, however, rather damped to hear of
your ill-health, but hope for something better. I have made inquiries
about butter, but it is extremely dear, 1s. to 14d. per lb. in this
county.
"When the £30 arrives I will write to let you know the day I shall be
home. Till then, believe me, my dearest mother, your affectionate Son,
CHARLES BRADLAUGH.
"Love to Elizabeth, Robert, and Harriet."
He did not have to wait long for the appearance of the £30 "on
the scene," which speedily resulted in the following "parchment
certificate:"--
"7th (Princess Royal's) Regiment of Dragoon Guards.
"These are to certify that Charles Bradlaugh, Private, born in the
Parish of Hoxton, in or near the Town of London, in the County of
Middlesex, was enlisted at Westminster for the 7th Dragoon Guards, on
the 17th December 1850, at the age of 17-3/12 years. That he served
in the Army for two years and 301 days. That he is discharged in
consequence of his requesting the same, on payment of £30.
"C. F. AINSLIE, Hd. Commanding Officer.
"Dated at Cahir, 12th October 1853.
"Adjutant General's Office, Dublin.
"Discharge of Private Charles Bradlaugh confirmed.
"14th October 1853. J. EDEN,[14] 7th D. G.
"Character: Very Good.
"C. F. AINSLIE, 7th D. Guards."
The merely formal part of the discharge is made out in his own
handwriting as orderly room clerk.
[Footnote 14: This signature is almost illegible.]
* * * * *
These three years of army life were of great value to my father. First
of all physically: for a little time before he enlisted he had been
half starved, and his health was being undermined by constant privation
just at a time when his great and growing frame most needed nourishing.
In the army he had food, which although it might be of a kind to be
flouted by an epicure, was sufficiently abundant, and came at regular
intervals. The obnoxious drill which he had to go through must have
helped to broaden his chest (at his death he was forty-six-and-a-half
inches round the chest) and harden his muscles, and so gave him the
strength which served him so well in the later years of his life. He
learned to fence and to ride, and both accomplishments proved useful
in latter days. Fencing was always a favourite exercise with him and,
in after days, when alone, he would also often exercise his muscles by
going through a sort of sword drill with the old cavalry sabre, which
is hanging on my wall to-day. Riding he at first abhorred, and probably
any London East End lad would share his sentiments when first set upon
a cavalry charger with a hard mouth; he was compelled to ride until the
blood ran down his legs, and before these wounds had time to heal he
had to be on horseback again. When he was orderly room clerk, and was
not compelled to ride so often, then he took a liking for it, and then
he really learned to sit and manage his horse. Often and often during
the last years of his life he longed to be rich enough to keep a horse,
so that he might ride to the House and wherever his business might
take him within easy distance, and thus get the exercise of which he
stood so urgently in need.
It was, too, while with his regiment in Ireland that Mr Bradlaugh
first became acquainted with James Thomson, an acquaintance which soon
ripened into a friendship which lasted for five-and-twenty years. In
the quiet nights, whilst the private was on sentry duty, he and the
young schoolmaster would have long serious talks upon subjects a little
unusual, perhaps, amongst the rank and file; or in the evening, when
Thomson's work was done, and Private Bradlaugh could get leave, they
would go for a ramble together. They each became the confidant of the
other's troubles and aspirations, and each was sure of a sympathetic
listener.
That his regiment happened to be stationed in Ireland during the whole
time he belonged to it was of immense importance to him. He learned the
character and the needs of the Irish peasantry as he could have learned
it in no other way. The sights he saw and the things he heard whilst
he was in Ireland, as the story I cited a few pages back will show,
produced in him such a profound feeling of tenderness and sympathy for
the Irish people, that not all the personal enmity which was afterwards
shown him by Irishmen could destroy or even weaken.
CHAPTER VI.
MARRIAGE.
Barely three short years away, yet how many changes in that short time.
My father found, father, aunt, and grandmother dead; his little sister
and brother--of five and eight years--in Orphan Asylums. Even his kind
friend Mrs Carlile was dead, and her children scattered, gone to the
other side of the Atlantic, to be lost sight of by him for many years.
Of their fate he learned later that the two daughters were married,
while Julian, his one time companion, was killed in the American War.
On his return my father's first endeavour was, of course, to seek for
work, so that he might help to maintain his mother and sisters; but
although he sought energetically, and at first had much faith in the
charm of his "very good" character, no one seemed to want the tall
trooper. After a little his mother, unhappily, began to taunt him with
the legacy money having been used to buy his discharge; and although
he thought, and always maintained, that the money was morally his, to
be used for that purpose, since it was carrying out the intentions of
his aunt expressed so short a time before her death, he nevertheless
determined to, and in time did, pay every farthing back again to his
mother, through whose hands the money had come to him. He was offered
the post of timekeeper with a builder at Fulham, at a salary of 20s. a
week; this Mrs Bradlaugh objected to, as taking him too far away from
home.
One day he went, amongst other places, into the office of Mr Rogers,
a solicitor, of 70 Fenchurch Street, to inquire whether he wanted a
clerk. Mr Rogers had no vacancy for a clerk, but mentioned casually
that he wanted a lad for errands and office work. My father asked,
"What wages?" "Ten shillings a week," replied Mr Rogers. "Then I'll
take it," quickly decided my father, feeling rather in despair as to
getting anything better, but bravely resolved to get something. Not
that he was in reality very long without work, for his discharge from
the army was dated at Dublin, October 14th, 1853, and I have a letter
written from "70 Fenchurch Street" on January 2nd, 1854, so that he
could not have been idle for more than about two months at the most.
There is no reference whatever in the letter to the newness of his
situation, so that he had probably been with Mr Rogers some weeks
prior to the 2nd January 1854. The solicitor soon found out that his
"errand boy" had considerable legal knowledge and, what was even more
important, a marvellous quickness in apprehension of legal points.
At the end of each three months his salary was increased by five
shillings, and after nine months he had intrusted to him the whole of
the Common Law department. Very soon he was able to add a little to his
income by acting as secretary to a Building Society at the Hayfield
Coffee House, Mile End Road.
As soon as my father found himself in regular employment he began
to write and speak again; but even as the busybodies turned the
kind-hearted baker's wife against him a few years before, so now
again they tried to ruin his career with Mr Rogers. Anonymous and
malicious letters were sent, but they did not find in him a weak though
good-hearted creature, with a fearful apprehension that the smell
usually associated with brimstone would permeate the legal documents;
on the contrary, he was a shrewd man who knew the value of his clerk,
and treated the anonymous letters with contempt, only asking of my
father that he should "not let his propaganda become an injury to his
business."
Thus it was he took the name of "Iconoclast," under the thin veil of
which he did all his anti-theological work until he became candidate
for Parliament in 1868; thenceforward he always spoke and wrote under
his own name, whatever the subject he was dealing with. Any appearance
of concealment or secrecy was dreadfully irksome to him, though in 1854
he had very little choice.
About Christmas 1853 my father made the acquaintance of a family
named Hooper, all of whom were Radicals and Freethinkers except Mrs
Hooper, who would have preferred to have belonged to Church people
because they were so much more thought of. She had great regard for
her neighbours' opinion, and for that reason objected to chess and
cards on Sunday. Abraham Hooper, her husband, must on such points as
these have been a constant thorn in the dear old lady's side: he was
an ardent Freethinker and Radical, a teetotaller, and a non-smoker.
All his opinions he held aggressively; and no matter where was the
place or who was the person, he rarely failed to make an opportunity
to state his opinions. He was very honest and upright, a man whose
word was literally his bond. He had often heard my father speak in
Bonner's Fields, and had named him "the young enthusiast." He himself
from his boyhood onward was always in the thick of popular movements;
although a sturdy Republican, he was one of the crowd who cheered Queen
Caroline; he was present at all the Chartist meetings at London; and
he was a great admirer of William Lovett. On more than one occasion he
was charged by the police whilst taking part in processions. He once
unwittingly became mixed up with a secret society, but he speedily
disentangled himself--there was nothing of the secret conspirator about
him.
He was what might be called "a stiff customer," over six feet in
height, and broad in proportion; and he would call his spade a spade.
If you did not like it--well, it was so much the worse for you, if you
could not give a plain straightforward reason why it should be called
"a garden implement." "Verbosity" was lost upon him; he passed it over
unnoticed, and came back to his facts as though you had not spoken. In
his early old age he had rather a fine appearance, and I have several
times been asked at meetings which he has attended with us, who is that
"grand-looking old man." Although in politics and religion he was all
on the side of liberty, in his own domestic circle he was a tyrant and
a despot, exacting the most rigorous and minute obedience to his will.
His passionate affection for my father was a most beautiful thing to
see. He had heard him speak, as a lad, many a time in Bonner's Fields,
and from 1854 had him always under his eye. "The young enthusiast"
became "my boy Charles," the pride and the joy of his life; and he
loved him with a love which did but grow with his years. My father's
friends were his friends, my father's enemies were his enemies; and
although "Charles" might forgive a friend who had betrayed him and take
him back to friendship again, _he_ never did, and was always prepared
for the betrayal--which, alas! too often came. He outlived my father
by only five months: until a few years before his death he had never
ailed anything, and did not know what headache or toothache meant; but
when his "boy" was gone life had no further interest for him, and he
willingly welcomed death.
And it was the eldest daughter of this single-hearted, if somewhat
rigorous man, Susannah Lamb Hooper, whom my father loved and wedded.
I knew that my mother had kept and cherished most of the letters
written her by my father during their courtship, but I never opened
the packet until I began this biography. These letters turn out to be
more valuable than I had expected, for they entirely dispose of some
few amongst the many fictions which have been more or less current
concerning Mr Bradlaugh.
At the first glance one is struck with the quantity of verse amongst
the letters. I say struck, because nearly, if not quite, all his
critics, friendly and hostile, have asserted that Mr Bradlaugh was
entirely devoid of poetic feeling or love of verse. With the unfriendly
critics this assumed lack seems to indicate something very bad: a
downright vice would be more tolerable in their eyes; and even the
friendly critics appear to look upon it as a flaw in his character.
I am, however, bound to confirm the assumption in so far as that,
during later years at least, he looked for something more than music in
verse; and mere words, however beautifully strung together, had little
charm for him. His earliest favourites amongst poets seem to have been
Ebenezer Elliott, the Corn Law rhymer, and, of course, Shelley. As late
as 1870 he was lecturing upon Burns and Byron; later still he read
Whittier with delight; and I have known him listen with great enjoyment
to Marlowe, Spenser, Sydney, and others, although, curiously enough,
for Swinburne he had almost an active distaste, caring neither to read
his verse nor to hear it read. It is something to remember that it was
my father, and he alone, who threw open his pages to James Thomson ("B.
V.") at a time when he was ignored and unrecognised and could nowhere
find a publisher to recognise the fire and genius of his grand and
gloomy verse.
But to return to his own verses: he began early, and his Bonner's
Fields speeches in 1849 and 1850 more often than not wound up with
a peroration in rhyme; in verse, such as it was, he would sing the
praises of Kossuth, Mazzini, Carlile, or whatever hero was the subject
of his discourse. His verses to my mother were written before and
after marriage: the last I have is dated 1860. I am not going to quote
any of these compositions, for my father died in the happy belief that
all save two or three had perished; but there is one that he sent my
mother which will, I think, bear quoting, and has an interest for its
author's sake. Writing in July 1854, he says: "I trust you will excuse
my boldness in forwarding the enclosed, but think you will like its
pretty style. I begged it from my only literary acquaintance, a young
schoolmaster, so can take no credit to myself"--
"Breathe onward, soft breeze, odour laden,
And gather new sweets on your way,
For a happy and lovely young maiden
Will inhale thy rich perfume this day.
And tell her, oh! breeze softly sighing,
When round her your soft pinions wreathe,
That my love-stricken soul with thee vieing
All its treasures to her would outbreathe.
"Flow onward, ye pure sparkling waters
In sunshine with ripple and spray,
For the fairest of earth's young daughters
Will be imaged within you this day.
And tell her, oh! murmuring river,
When past her your bright billows roll,
That thus, too, her fairest form ever
Is imaged with truth in my soul."
The "young schoolmaster" was, of course, James Thomson; and these
verses express the thought which occurs again so delightfully in No.
XII. of the "Sunday up the River."[15]
[Footnote 15: The City of Dreadful Night, and other Poems. By James
Thomson ("B. V.").]
Another current fiction concerning my father is that he was coarse,
rude, and ill-mannered in his young days. Now, to take one thing alone
as a text: Can I believe that the love letters now before me that he
wrote to my dear mother could have been penned by one of coarse speech
and unrefined thought? The tender and respectful courtesy of some of
them carries one back to a century or so ago, when a true lover was
most choice in the expressions he used to his mistress. No! No one with
a trace of coarseness in his nature could have written these letters.
Another and equally unfounded calumny, which has been most
industriously circulated, concerns my father's own pecuniary position
and his alleged neglect of his mother. I am able to quote passages from
this correspondence which make very clear statements on these points;
and the silent testimony of these letters, written in confidence to his
future wife, is quite incontrovertible. In a letter written on the 17th
November 1854, he says:--
"My present income at the office is £65, and at the Building Society
£35, making about £100 a year, but I have not yet enjoyed this long
enough to feel the full benefit of it. I am confident, if nothing
fresh arises, of an increase at Christmas, but am also trying for
a situation which if I can get would bring me in £150 per annum
and upwards. Your father did not tell me when I saw him that I was
extravagant, but he said that he thought I was not 'a very saving
character,' so that you see, according to good authority, we are
somewhat alike.... I do not blame you for expecting to hear from me,
but I was, as the Americans say, in a fix. I did not like to write,
lest your father might think I was virtually taking advantage of a
consent not yet given.
"You will, of course, understand from my not being a very careful
young man why I am not in a position of healthy pockets, purse
plethora, plenum in the money-box, so necessary to one who wishes
to entangle himself in the almost impenetrable mysteries of
'house-keeping.'
"I don't know whether you were ever sufficiently charmed with
the subject to make any calculations on the £ s. d. questions of
upholstery, etc. I have, and after knocking my head violently
against gigantic 'four posters,' and tumbling over 'neat fender and
fire-irons,' I have been most profoundly impressed with respect
and admiration for every one who could coolly talk upon so awful a
subject."
From the foregoing letter it would appear that Mr. Hooper would not
give a definite consent to the marriage; and a little later my father
writes that he had again asked for the paternal approval, and draws a
picture of "C. B." kneeling to the "krewel father." The consent asked
for was apparently given this time, and plans and preparations for the
marriage were made. On 20th March 1855 my father writes:--
"I also thought that it seemed a rather roundabout way of arriving
at a good end, that I should take upon myself the bother of lodgers
in one house, while mother at home intended to let the two upstairs
rooms to some one else. I also thought that supposing anything were
to happen either to separate me from the Building Society or to
stop its progress, I might be much embarrassed in a pecuniary point
of view with the burden of two rents attached to me. It therefore
struck me, and I suggested to mother and Lizzie, whether it would not
be possible, and not only possible but preferable, that we should
all live in the same house as separate and distinct as though we
were strangers in one sense, and yet not so in another. Mother and
Lizzie both fully agreed with me, but it is a question, my dearest
Susan, which entirely rests with you, and you alone must decide the
question. I have agreed to allow mother 10s. per week, and if we lived
elsewhere, mother out of it would have to pay rent, whilst ours would
be in no way reduced. Again, if you felt dull there would be company
for you, and I might feel some degree of hesitation in leaving you
to find companionship in persons utterly strangers to both of us.
There are doubtless evils connected with my proposal, but I think
they are preventible ones. Mother might wish to interfere with your
mode of arrangements. This she has promised in no way whatever to do.
I leave the matter to yourself--on the ground of economy much might
be said--at any rate my own idea is that we could not hurt by trying
the experiment for a time; but do not let my ideas influence you in
your decision: I will be governed by you: believe me, I only wish and
endeavour to form a plan by which we may live happy and comfortably."
In April we have the first recorded lawsuit in which Mr. Bradlaugh took
part as one of the principals, though earlier than this, soon after
quitting the army, he had shown much legal acumen and practical wisdom
in a case that I cannot do better than quote here in his own words:--
"While I was away," he says, "a number of poor men had subscribed their
funds together, and had erected a Working Man's Hall, in Goldsmith's
Row, Hackney Road. Not having any legal advice, it turned out that they
had been entrapped into erecting their building on freehold ground
without any lease or conveyance from the freeholder, who asserted
his legal right to the building. The men consulted me, and finding
that under the Statute of Frauds they had no remedy, I recommended
them to offer a penalty rent of £20 a year. This being refused, I
constituted myself into a law court; and without any riot or breach
of the peace, I with the assistance of a hundred stout men took every
brick of the building bodily away, and divided the materials, so far
as was possible, amongst the proper owners. I think I can see now the
disappointed rascal of a freeholder when he only had his bare soil left
once more. He did not escape unpunished; for, to encourage the others
to contribute, he had invested some few pounds in the building. He had
been too clever: he had relied on the letter of the law, and I beat him
with a version of common-sense justice."
To return to my father's first suit in law. He brought an action for
false imprisonment against a solicitor named Wyatt. It appeared that
a person named Clements had assigned a wharf and certain book debts
and books to Messrs. Carr, Lamb & Co., and Mr Rogers, their solicitor,
sent Mr Bradlaugh, then his clerk, to Mr Wyatt's office, Gray's Inn, to
fetch away the books. Mr Wyatt refused to give them up: Mr Bradlaugh
seized them and carried them (an immense pile) to a cab he had waiting.
Mr Wyatt appeared on the scene with a clerk, and endeavoured to regain
possession of the books. After much resistance, in which my father's
coat was torn and hands cut, Mr Wyatt, unable to get the books,
called a policeman, and gave his adversary into custody on a charge
of "stealing the books;" this he withdrew for another--"creating a
disturbance and carrying off books." My father was locked up (whether
for minutes or hours I know not) with a boy who had been apprehended
whilst picking pockets. When he was brought before the magistrate he
was discharged, because no one appeared to prosecute. He wrote a number
of letters to Mr Wyatt demanding an apology, but received no answer,
and at length brought an action against him for false imprisonment. The
case came on before Mr Justice Crompton, and much to his delight, he
won a verdict, with £30 damages.
The foregoing is, I think, the only case in Mr Bradlaugh's career in
which he kept damages awarded him for his own personal use. In every
other case the damages were given to some charity--in later years,
always to the Masonic Boys' School. This time however the damages
awarded him by the jury were used in a purely personal manner, for the
money enabled him to hasten his marriage, and on June 5th, 1855, he
and my mother were married at St. Philip's Church, in the Parish of
Stepney, he barely 22 years of age, and she two years his senior.
They went to live at Warner Place, as was suggested in a letter I have
quoted; and my mother, who had been in very poor health for some time
previous to her marriage, seems to have gone with her sister-in-law
to Reigate for a few days at the end of the following July. How very
straitened their circumstances were, the following extract from a
letter of my father's to his wife will show:--
"Carr and Lamb have not settled with me, and I am much pinched for
cash, in fact, so much so that, as mother seems to wish to come to
Reigate, I have thought of letting her come on Sunday, and staying at
home myself, as I cannot manage both. If you feel well enough, I would
like you to come home about next Thursday or Friday, as I begin to
feel rather topsy-turvy.... If I do not come, I will send you money
to clear you through the week. Do not think me in the least degree
unkind if I stay away, because I assure you it is a great source
of discomfort to me; but the fact is, if you want to spend thirty
shillings, and have only twenty, there arises a most unaccountable
difficulty in getting your purse and programme to agree. Had Carr and
L., as I anticipated, closed accounts with me on Monday, all would
have gone on smoothly, but as it is I am cramped. I have also been
disappointed in the receipt of two or three other small sums which,
coupled with an increased expenditure, all help to draw me up short."
The newly-married couple did not stop very long at Warner Place. Mrs
Bradlaugh senior and her daughter-in-law did not get on comfortably
together, and so husband and wife removed to 4 West Street, Bethnal
Green, where their first child, my sister Alice, was born on April
30, 1856. At the outset my parents were devotedly attached to one
another, an attachment which was not in the least degree diminished on
my mother's part until the hour of her death; and had they remained
pinched by the same close grip of poverty as at first their union
might have remained unbroken; who can say? My father was essentially
a "home" man, and when not called away on business preferred his own
fireside to that of any other man. People have taken it upon themselves
to describe my mother's personal appearance, some by one adjective
and some by another; but to my eyes, at least, she was comely to look
upon. She was a brunette, with hair which was black and silky, and the
finest I ever saw; she was nearly as tall as my father, and carried
herself well, although in her later years she was much too stout.
She was good-natured to a fault, generous to lavishness, and had an
open ear and an open pocket for every tale of sorrow or distress.
During my recollection our home was never without one or more needy
visitors: my father's brother and youngest sister, her own brother
and sister, Mr James Thomson, and others too numerous to mention, all
partook of the open-hearted hospitality which was lavished upon them.
She shone at her best in entertaining my father's political friends,
and her good-natured amiability made her a general favourite. She
was passionately attached to her children, and was rewarded by her
children's devotion, which endured through fair weather and foul; as,
indeed, was only her just due, for in all points save one she was the
best of mothers.
And it was this one point which, overbalancing all the rest, ruined
our home, lost her my father's love and her friends' respect, and was
the cause of her own sufferings, unhappiness, and early death. As soon
as fortune and success began to shine ever so feebly on my father's
labours, there did not lack the usual flatterers to his wife, and
panderers to her unhappy weakness. In a terribly short time, by the aid
of thoughtless, good-natured evil-doers and intentional malice, this
weakness developed into absolute and confirmed intemperance, which it
seemed as though nothing could check. With intemperance came the long
train of grievous consequences; easy good nature became extravagant
folly, and was soon followed by the alienation of real friends and a
ruined home. My father was gentleness and forbearance itself, but his
life was bitterly poisoned; he had his wife treated medically, and
sent to a hydropathic establishment, but all to no purpose. When our
home was finally broken up in 1870, and the closest retrenchment was
necessary, my father decided that it was utterly impossible to do that
with dignity as long as my mother remained in London; so she and we two
girls--my brother was at school--went to board with my grandfather at
Midhurst, Sussex. It was intended as a merely temporary arrangement,
and had it proved beneficial to my mother we should, when better
times came, have had a reunited home; but, alas! it was not to be. At
first my father came fairly frequently to Midhurst, but there was no
improvement, and so his visits became fewer and fewer; they brought
him no pleasure, but merely renewed the acuteness of his suffering.
At length he, always thoughtful for those about him and recognising
the terrible strain upon us his daughters in the life we were then
leading, arranged for us each to spend a month alternately with him at
his London lodgings, but not continuously, as he was anxious not to
separate us. Sometimes it was contrived for us both to be in London
together, and these were indeed sun-shiny days. We wrote letters for
him, and did what we could, and he made us happy by persuading us
that we were his secretaries and really useful to him; we tried to
be, but I fear our desires and his loving acceptance of our work went
far beyond its real merits. With time my mother became a confirmed
invalid, and in May 1877 she died very unexpectedly from heart disease
engendered by alcoholism.
Malevolent people have made a jest of all this, but the tragedy was
ours; others even more malevolent have endeavoured to make my father
in some way blameworthy in the matter--they might just as well blame
me! Any one who knows the story in all its details, with its years of
silent martyrdom for him, will know that my father's behaviour was that
of one man in a thousand. Some also have said that my mother was in an
asylum. Perhaps the following quotation from a letter written by her
from Midhurst, a few days before her death, to us who were in London
getting my father's things straight in his new lodgings, will be the
best answer, and will also show a little the kind of woman she was:--
"My chest is so bad. I really feel ill altogether; if either of you
were with me, you could not do me any good. I shall be glad of a
letter to know how Hypatia gets on.
"Do not neglect writing me, my darlings, for my heart is very
sad. With great love to dear Papa, and also to your own dear
selves.--Always believe me, your faithful mother,
S. L. BRADLAUGH."
I have in this chapter said all I intend to say as to the relations
between my father and my mother. I shall perhaps be pardoned--in my
capacity as daughter, if not in that of biographer--for leaving the
matter here, and not going into it more fully. It is a painful subject
for one who loved her parents equally, and would fain have been equally
proud of both. Honestly speaking, I think I should never have had
the courage to touch upon it at all had I not felt that my duty to
my father absolutely required it. He allowed himself to be maligned
and slandered publicly and privately on the subject of his alleged
separation from his wife, but he never once took up the pen to defend
himself. Hence it becomes my unhappy duty to give the world for the
first time some real idea of the truth.
CHAPTER VII.
HYDE PARK MEETINGS, 1855.
In the summer of 1855, Mr Bradlaugh for the first time took part in
a great Hyde Park meeting. He went, like so many others, merely as a
spectator, having no idea that the part he would be called upon to play
would lead him into a position of prominence. In order to get a little
into the spirit of that Hyde Park meeting, I must recall a few of the
events which led up to it.
A Bill had been introduced into the House of Commons by Lord Robert
Grosvenor which was called the New Sunday Bill or the Sunday Trading
Bill, and had for its object the prevention of the whole of that small
trading by poor vendors, with which we are familiar in certain parts
of the metropolis to-day. Who has not seen or heard of the Sunday
marketing in Petticoat Lane, Leather Lane, Golden Lane, Whitecross
Street, and many such another place? This small trading is very useful,
and in many cases absolutely necessary to the very poor, who, being
at work all the week, would not otherwise have time for the purchase
of the Sunday dinner--the one real dinner of the week--shoes, or
such other articles of clothing as decency compels them to have even
when their slender purses almost forbid the purchase. Lord Robert
Grosvenor's Bill fell amongst these like a bombshell, causing the
wildest excitement and indignation.[16]
[Footnote 16: The following handbill, which was circulated after the
second reading of the Sunday Trading Bill, and put in evidence at the
Royal Commission subsequently held, will give a good idea as to the
extent of the proposed measure.
"Tyrannical attack upon the Liberty of the people. Proposed prohibition
of Sunday trading. The New Bill brought in by Lord Robert Grosvenor,
Lord Ebrington, and Mr M. Chambers proposes to prevent trading on
Sundays within the Metropolitan Police District and city of London, and
the liberties thereof. It enacts 'that all persons selling, offering,
or exposing for sale, or causing to be sold or exposed for sale (on
Sundays) any goods, chattels, effects, or things whatsoever, shall, on
summary conviction thereof, be fined 5s., and on a second conviction,
this fine may be increased to 40s.; and the fines will be cumulative,
and every separate act of selling will be a separate offence. The act
will not apply to the sale of medicines or drugs, nor to the selling
or crying of milk or cream before 9 a.m. or after 1 p.m., nor to the
selling or offering of any newspaper or periodical before 10 a.m., nor
to the sale of fruit, cooked victuals, or any unfermented beverage
before 10 a.m. and after 1 p.m., nor to the sale of meat, poultry,
fish, or game, before 9 a.m., from the 31st of May to the 1st of
October in each year, nor to the exercise of the ordinary business of
a licensed victualler or innkeeper. Butchers and others delivering
meat, fish, or game, after 9 a.m. on Sundays, will be liable to the
penalties above mentioned. Nor will that useful class of the community,
the barbers and hairdressers, be exempted, if they presume to 'do
business' after ten o'clock on Sunday mornings, in which case they
may be fined 5s., and 20s. for a second offence. It appears, however,
that the payment of one penalty will protect the offending barber from
any further fine on the same day. Clause 6 saves servants from the
operation of the Act, and visits their disobedience on their masters or
mistresses. The police are required to enforce the provisions of the
Act. Penalties and costs may be levied by distress, and imprisonment
may be inflicted in default of payment for 14 days in the common gaol
or house of correction. The penalties will be appropriated to the
expenses of the police force. No informations are to be quashed for
informality, or to be removed by _certiorari_ into the Court of Queen's
Bench. The Act (is) to commence (if passed) on the 1st day of November,
or All Saints' Day, 1855. A more tyrannical measure was never attempted
to be forced upon the people of this country, and if this 'Saints'
Bill' is allowed to pass, a much more stringent Act will doubtless
follow."]
Then it was that the excitement of the people needed to find some
expression in action, and J. B. Leno, the working man poet, and others,
turned the popular feeling to account by directing it into the form of
an unmistakable protest against this class of legislation. Amongst the
handbills put in circulation was the following, calling a meeting for
June 24th:--
"New Sunday Bill to put down newspapers, shaving, smoking, eating
and drinking of all kinds of food, or recreation for body or mind at
present enjoyed by poor people. An open-air meeting of the artizans,
mechanics, and lower orders of the metropolis will be held in Hyde
Park on Sunday afternoon next, to see how religiously the aristocracy
observe the Sabbath, and how careful they are not to work their
servants or their cattle on that day (_vide_ Lord Robert Grosvenor's
speech). The meeting is summoned for three o'clock on the right bank
of the Serpentine, looking towards Kensington Gardens. Come and bring
your wives and families with you, that they may benefit by the example
set them by their betters.--_A Ratepayer of Walworth._"
The outcome of all this was that large numbers of people found their
way into Hyde Park on Sunday, June 24th. They came with the intention
of holding a meeting of protest. A space was set aside for the meeting,
and a Mr James Bligh called upon to preside. He began by addressing
the people in very temperate language, but was soon interrupted by
an Inspector of Police, who "politely told him he was authorised by
the Commissioner of the Police to prevent any meeting being held in
the Park; inasmuch as the Park was not public property, it would be
illegal." The Inspector said that his orders were imperative, and if
the speaker continued speaking he would be obliged to take him into
custody. Sir Richard Mayne was present with a Superintendent of Police,
and although the meeting was broken up, nevertheless many thousands
remained in the Park. These lounged along the carriage ways and greeted
the carriages with groans and hooting, or chaffing and good-humoured
sarcasm, each according to his feelings. The aristocracy and wealthy
commoners, who were taking their Sunday afternoon airing at their ease
in the Park, did not at all approve of the attendance and attention of
the multitude. The ladies and gentlemen reclining in their carriages
were asked why they allowed their servants to work on Sunday, or were
told to "go to Church," an order which some met by shaking their Church
Services in the faces of the throng, or by sneers; whilst others, such
as Lord and Lady Wilton, Lady Granville, and the Duke and Duchess of
Beaufort, were so frightened that they got out of their carriages at
the demand of the crowd and trudged it on foot.
This little taste of the delights of showing the wealthy their power
and of giving them a little bit of a fright only inflamed the people
the more. During the week following the 24th the excitement continued
to increase, and more handbills and placards were distributed. A very
witty placard issued by the "Leave us alone Club," and some amusing
lines, are quoted in Mr Headingley's Biography; while another which met
with great success was in the following terms:--
"GO TO CHURCH!"
"Lord Robert Grosvenor wishes to drive us all to church! Let us go to
church with Lord Grosvenor next Sunday morning! We can attend on his
Lordship at Park Lane at half-past ten: 'go to church' with him, then
go home to dinner, and be back in time to see 'our friends' in Hyde
Park. Come in your best clothes, as his lordship is very particular."
In the House, Lord Grosvenor fanned the flames of the popular
excitement outside by an express refusal to withdraw the Bill, and by
stating his fixed determination to press the measure. The signs of the
increasing agitation amongst the people were so marked that Sir Richard
Mayne, Commissioner of Police, became alarmed, especially as the police
superintendents of various districts reported to him that large numbers
of people were likely to attend the Park on the Sunday; and on June
29th he communicated with Sir George Grey, then Home Secretary, from
whom, as he stated later on to the Commission, he received instructions
to draft a document forbidding the meeting.
This notice was printed in one or two newspapers on the morning of
Saturday the 30th, but not issued in the form of a handbill until the
afternoon. It was then also posted throughout the metropolis, and on
Sunday morning at the Park Gates.
In common with the rest of the London public, Mr Bradlaugh read this
police notice, and directly he read it he felt convinced that the
Commissioner of Police had no power to prevent a meeting in the Park.
He therefore, after due consideration, resolved not to submit to this
order, but to take part in the general concourse--one can hardly
call it a meeting, since any attempt to form in a mass and listen to
speeches had been prevented on the previous Sunday--in the Park, and if
necessary to resist in his own person any active interference on the
part of the police.
The 1st of July arrived, and people from every district of London and
all round about flocked to the Park, crowding particularly towards the
north side of the Serpentine. Although showing every disposition to be
in the main quiet and orderly, the temper of the crowd was much less
good-humoured than on the previous Sunday; the police placards had
acted as a very successful irritant, and this feeling of irritation was
kept up and augmented by the sight of the wealthy ones parading up and
down in their carriages. As on the former Sunday, they were greeted
with groans and hooting, and so much vigour was thrown into the groans
that in two or three cases the high-spirited horses took fright, and
serious accidents appeared probable. At this point the police charged
the people, and naturally enough rioting (so-called) was the result.
Many persons were hurt, and seventy were taken prisoners. The police
accommodation at the Marlborough Street Police Station proved totally
inadequate for so large a number of prisoners, and the condition of the
cells was compared with that of the Black Hole in Calcutta. My father
was in the Park with my grandfather, Mr A. Hooper, and what he did
there may be learned a little later on from his own words.
This demonstration in Hyde Park produced such an impression that on the
following day, the 2nd of July, Lord Robert Grosvenor, in answer to a
question put to him in the House of Commons, said he was in "rather
an awkward predicament," a statement which we can readily believe.
His Bill, the Honourable Member insisted, was in reality intended to
increase the amount of holiday possible to "the overtaxed thousands of
the metropolis. But," he went on, "considering this is one of those
measures which are peculiarly liable to misrepresentation and ridicule;
considering also the late period of the session, and the formidable
opposition I am threatened with, I think it would not be right to keep
up the irritation that at the present moment exists for the bare chance
of passing this measure during the present session."
This abandonment of his Sunday Bill in a fright by "Saint" Grosvenor,
as he was nicknamed, was a tremendous triumph to all those whom
it affected, a triumph happily not marred by any punishment being
inflicted on the men arrested on various charges connected with the
demonstration, for when these were brought into court on the Monday
they were all discharged. At the John Street Institution a meeting was
held to protest against the action of the police, to express sympathy
with the injured, and to collect subscriptions on their behalf.[17]
[Footnote 17: Probably the re-formation of the National Sunday League
on its present basis in the autumn of 1855 was in great degree owing to
the attempted Sunday legislation of the summer; and it will perhaps be
news to most of the Sunday Leaguers of to-day that in the March of 1856
Mr Bradlaugh was actively engaged in trying to form a branch of the
League in the East End, of which he was the Secretary _pro. tem._, and
which was to hold its meetings in the Hayfield Coffee House, Mile End
Road.]
A Royal Commission was appointed "to inquire into the alleged
disturbances of the public peace in Hyde Park, Sunday, July 1st, 1855;
and the conduct of the metropolitan police in connection with the
same." This Commission sat continuously day by day from Tuesday, July
17th, to Thursday, August 2nd. The sittings were held in the Court
of Exchequer, and the Commission heard eighty-six witnesses on the
part of the complainants, and ninety-three for the police. Amongst
the eighty-six witnesses was my father, who was examined on the 20th
July. I quote the questions, with their often extremely characteristic
answers, from the Parliamentary Blue Book.[18]
[Footnote 18: Vol. XXIII. 1856, pp. 146, 147.]
"Mr C. BRADLAUGH examined by Mr Mitchell:--
"Where do you reside?--At No. 13 Warner Street South, Hackney Road.
"You are a solicitor's clerk?--I am.
"Were you in Hyde Park on the 1st of July?--I was.
"At what time?--From about half-past three to half-past six.
"Where did you walk during that time? I walked completely over the
park, round by the carriage drive, and all round during that time.
"Did you see a man in a cab with several policemen?--Yes. I saw a man
being driven along in a cab with three policemen in the cab, a man
with no shirt on; he was without his shirt, he was trying to look out,
and I saw a policeman strike him over the temple with his truncheon.
"There were three policemen in the cab?--Yes.
"Mr Stuart Wortley: A man without a shirt?--Yes.
"Mr Mitchell: Did you see anybody attacked?--Yes, I saw a rush made
out on to the greensward. I went forward, and I saw four or five
policemen striking a short man: his hat was knocked with a truncheon,
and he held up his hands and said, 'For God's sake, do not hit
me--take me!'
"Did they continue to hit him?--Yes; I ran forward, and put one
truncheon back with my gloved hand, and I said, 'The next man that
strikes I will knock him down!'
"What did they do then?--Then they left off striking him, and they put
him between two policemen, and I suppose he was taken away in custody.
"They found that you were rather a strongish man?--They would.
"Were you attacked by the police?--I was standing on the grass just
after that, and they made another sortie out from the roadway, and
ordered the people to move on, and they moved as fast as they could.
One of them came up to me, and began to push me with his truncheon,
upon which I said to him: 'Do not do that, friend; you have no right
to do it, and I am stronger than you are.' He then beckoned to two
others, who came up, and I took hold of two of the truncheons, one in
each hand, and I said to the centre one: 'If you attempt to touch me,
I will take one of those truncheons, and knock you down with it.' I
took the two truncheons, and I wrested them, and I showed them that I
could do it.
"Did they then leave you alone?--Yes; the people that came behind me
picked me up and carried me up about 100 yards back, cheering me.
"Mr Stuart Wortley.--Did they take you off your legs?--Yes, and I
thought it was the police behind for a moment.
"Mr Mitchell.--You were in the Park for three hours?--Yes.
"How were the people behaving?--I never saw a large assemblage of
people behaving so well.
"You were with your father-in-law, were you not?--Yes, I was.
"What time in the day was this particular occurrence?--About
half-an-hour before I left.
"Mr Henderson.--The people gathered round you?--Yes. I did not want to
be a self-constituted leader, and immediately I could I got away from
the press and came away. I left about half-past six, a few minutes
after or a few minutes before.
"Mr Stuart Wortley.--Had the excitement in the Park increased a good
deal at that time?--Yes; I felt excited by seeing men, unable to
defend themselves, knocked about.
"Mr Mitchell.--Did you see any other rush of the police at the
people?--I saw several rushes. I could not understand the reason for
them at all, except on one occasion; I saw one mounted superintendent
stretch out his arm, and I saw a rush immediately in the direction
that his arm went.
"What sort of a horse had he?--I could not see; I was on the sward. I
only noticed a mounted man.
"You would not know him if you saw him again?--Yes; I think so: I
should certainly know him if I saw him mounted.
"Can you say whether he had whiskers or not?--Yes; I think he had, but
that is more an impression than anything else.
"Did you see them strike any woman?--I saw in the rush, in one of
them, a man and two women thrown down, and I saw the police run over
them. They did not strike them, but they ran right over them. I made a
remark to my father-in-law: 'It is lucky they are no sisters of mine,
or else they would stop to pick them up.'
"You did not go into the Park to resist the police?--Decidedly not.
I went in consequence of seeing the notice of Sir Richard Mayne
forbidding it, and to see what took place there.
"Out of curiosity?--Not exactly. I had heard it said that they were
rabble, and I did not believe it, and I went to see for myself.
"Your indignation was not excited till you got there?--Not till some
time after I had been there. At first I should have come away. The
police were doing nothing, and at first everything seemed to be very
quiet. There was no kind of meeting, except that there had been a
large concourse of people. I should have come away but for those
rushes of the police amongst the people.
"They were not a disorderly crowd?--No.
"Cross-examined by Mr Ellis:--
"You spoke of Sir Richard Mayne's proclamation as forbidding this
meeting. Did you read it?--Yes.
"Does it forbid it?--The tenor of it seemed to me to be forbidding the
assemblage, and I had not heard then, and have not heard now, that
Sir Richard Mayne has any power to forbid my going into the Park;
therefore I went.
"I think that the language of this proclamation is, that all
well-disposed persons are requested to abstain. You do not call that
forbidding?--When those police notices are put up I remember one place
where I was requested to abstain from going to, some few years ago;
and when I went there I found that the request to abstain was enforced
in a precisely similar way, by striking the people with truncheons who
went there. That was at Bonner's Fields.
"Were any persons struck with truncheons there?--Yes.
"Surely the police were armed with cutlasses?--I think I remember
two being drawn as well; but I know some of them were struck with
truncheons. I was struck with a truncheon myself, so that I am
perfectly capable of remembering it.
"You were at Bonner's Fields?--I was.
"Mr Stuart Wortley.--Is there anything else that you wish to
add?--Nothing.
"The witness withdrew."
In his "Autobiography"[19] Mr Bradlaugh says: "I was very proud that
day at Westminster, when, at the conclusion of my testimony, the
Commissioner publicly thanked me, and the people who crowded the Court
of the Exchequer cheered me.... This was a first step in a course in
which I have never flinched or wavered."
[Footnote 19: The Autobiography of Charles Bradlaugh. A page from his
life, written in 1873 for the _National Reformer_.]
Before dismissing this Sunday Trading question altogether, I may as
well notice here that in the succeeding year my father made a short
humorous compilation of some of the more striking "English Sunday
laws" for the _Reasoner_. I am ignorant how many of these are still
in force, but I repeat part of the article here: as a trifle from
my father's pen, it will be welcome to some, and in others it may,
perhaps, provoke inquiry as to how many of these restrictions are
binding (in law) upon us to-day.
"Travelling in a stage or mail coach on a Sunday is lawful, and the
driver is lawfully employed. Contracts to carry passengers in a stage
coach on a Sunday are therefore binding, but the driver of a van
travelling to and from distant towns, such as London and York, is
unlawfully employed, and may be prosecuted and fined 20s. for each
offence; and presuming that the laws of God and England are in unison,
the driver of the van will be damned for Sabbath breaking and the
driver of the coach will go to heaven for the same offence.
"Mackerel may be sold on Sunday either before or after Divine service.
"There is no offence against the common law of England in trading
or working on a Sunday; therefore the statutes must be strictly
construed. If a butcher should shave on a Sunday, he would commit no
offence, because it would not be following his ordinary calling.
"Persons exercising their calling on a Sunday are only subject
to one penalty, for the whole is but one offence, or one act of
exercising, although continued the whole day. A baker, a pastrycook,
or confectioner, is liable to be prosecuted if selling bread or pastry
before nine or half-past one o'clock on the Sunday.
"If the Archbishop of Canterbury's cook, groom, footman, butler, and
all other his men servants and maid servants do not each of them
attend church every Sunday, they may be prosecuted and fined.
"If the Archbishop of Canterbury's coachman drive his master to church
on Sunday, if his footmen stand behind his carriage, these being their
ordinary callings and not works of charity or necessity, they may be
prosecuted and fined 5s. each.
"Tobacconists may be prosecuted for selling tobacco and cigars on a
Sunday.
"Railway officials may be punished for working on a Sunday; certainly
on excursion trains.
"The stokers and men employed on the steamboats plying to Gravesend,
etc., are also liable to prosecution, although a few watermen enjoy
the privilege of Sabbath-breaking by Act of Parliament.
"Civil contracts made on a Sunday are void with some few exceptions,
viz. a soldier may be enlisted on a Sunday. A labourer may be hired
on a Sunday. A guarantee may be given for the faithful services of
a person about to be employed. A bill of exchange may be drawn on a
Sunday.
"Civil process must not be served an a Sunday, but an ecclesiastical
citation may; therefore the Church reserves to itself the right of
Sabbath breaking on all occasions.
"A cookshop may be open on a Sunday for the sale of victuals.
"Every person who should go to Hyde Park, or any of the other parks,
to hear the band play, if out of his own parish, is liable to be fined
3s. 4d.
"If two or three go from out of their smoky city residences to the
sea to fish, or to the green fields to play cricket, they may each be
fined 3s. 4d. if out of the parish in which they reside."
CHAPTER VIII.
THE ORSINI ATTEMPT.
The first allusion which I can find to any lecture delivered by my
father after his return from Ireland appears in the _Reasoner_, and
is the briefest possible notice, in which no comment is made, either
upon the speaker or upon his name, although I find the _nom de guerre_
of "Iconoclast" and the subject (Sunday Trading and Sunday Praying)
given. We may, therefore, conclude that by this time[20] he had become
a tolerably familiar figure on the London Freethought platform. The
next reference I come across relates to his first lecture, given on
24th August 1855, on behalf of Mr B. B. Jones, the aged Freethinker
who sheltered him on his first leaving home, and for whose benefit he
afterwards lectured every year during the remainder of the kindly old
veteran's life.
[Footnote 20: July 1855.]
In the latter part of 1856 my father's lectures are referred to in the
reports of meetings with tolerable regularity, and I gather that even
at that time he was lecturing four or five times a month. He lectured
at a little hall in Philpot Street, Commercial Road; Finsbury Hall,
Bunhill Row; at a hall in St George's Road, near the "Elephant and
Castle," afterwards given up by the Freethinkers who were accustomed to
hire it on Sundays, because they did not approve of the uses to which
it was put during the week; at the Hoxton Secular Class Rooms, 101 High
Street; and the John Street Institution, Fitzroy Square.
Amongst his many and varied occupations he yet contrived to make time
for study, for in the same year he was lecturing on Strauss' "Life of
Jesus," and Mahomet and the Koran, in addition to the more general
questions of the Existence of God, Materialism, etc. And here I may
cite a little instance showing that my father's power of repartee was
a very early development. He happened to be lecturing upon "The God of
the Bible," and in the discussion which ensued "a Christian gentleman,
Mr Dunn, ... informed his auditory that it was only by God's mercy
they existed at all, as all men had been tried and condemned before
their birth, and were now prisoners at large." My father in his reply
promptly took "objection to this phrase, as implying that society was
nothing more than a collection of 'divine ticket-of-leave men.'"
In 1856, too, Mr Bradlaugh once more ventured into print. His first
essay in the publishing way, it may be remembered, was the little
pamphlet on the "Christian's Creed," which he dedicated to the Rev.
Mr Packer. This time he issued, in conjunction with John Watts and
"Anthony Collins," a little publication called "Half-hours with
Freethinkers," which came out in fortnightly numbers, and opened on
October 1st with a paper on Descartes from the pen of "Iconoclast."
Two series were ultimately issued, each of twenty-four numbers, but
some time elapsed between the two; in fact, the second did not come
out until 1864, and was edited by my father and Mr John Watts. These
stories "of the lives and doctrines of those who have stood foremost in
the ranks of Freethought in all countries and in all ages" met with a
hearty welcome, and are in demand even to this day; several were at the
time reprinted in America by the _Boston Investigator_.
The new year of 1857 opened with a promise of growing activity by an
address from "Iconoclast" to a party of Secular friends who assembled
in the hall at Philpot Street, to watch the New Year in, and by a
course of ten (or twelve) lectures in criticism of the Bible, which
he commenced on the following day. On the 12th of February, also, was
held his first discussion, or at least the first I can find recorded,
if we except the youthful encounters of Warner Place. The discussion
between "Mr Douglas and Iconoclast" took place at the little Philpot
Street Hall; but who Mr Douglas was I know not, for the report is
limited to a mention of an allusion by the Christian advocate to
Atheists as "monsters, brutes, and fools," which was--as we may well
believe--"severely commented on by 'Iconoclast.'"
Another and more important work, however, was begun in the early spring
of 1857. This was "The Bible: what it is: Being an examination thereof
from Genesis to Revelation." This work, advertised by my father as
"intended to relieve the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge
from the labour of retranslating the Bible, by proving that it is
not worth the trouble and expense," it was arranged should be issued
in fortnightly numbers by Holyoake & Co., whose "Fleet Street House,"
situate at 147 Fleet Street, was to a considerable extent maintained
by the Freethought party. After the third number, Mr G. J. Holyoake
declined to publish, on the ground that Mr Bradlaugh would probably
go too far in his mode of criticism, and that by publishing the book
he would be identified with it. This seemed an inadequate reason,
since Mr Holyoake published Spiritualistic works, a "Criminal History
of the Clergy," and other books, with which he was most certainly
not identified. Later Mr Holyoake based his refusal to publish on
the ground that a short passage in the third number referring to
the suggestion that the third chapter of Genesis was intended as an
allegorical representation of the union of the sexes, was obscene.
Mr Bradlaugh was both surprised and indignant, as well he might be,
and wrote a letter to the _Investigator_,[21] explaining his position
fully. He was obliged henceforward to publish his work himself; Mr
Edward Truelove, who then had a bookseller's business at 240 Strand,
generously rendering every assistance in his power.
[Footnote 21: The _Investigator_. A Journal of Secularism, edited by
Robert Cooper.]
By this time also he had become a regular contributor to the
_Investigator_, and his first articles were upon the "Lives of Bible
Heroes"--Abraham, Moses, David, and Cain, each following in turn.
On the 22nd of February 1858 Mr Truelove was arrested by Government
warrant for the publication of a pamphlet written by Mr W. E. Adams,
"Is Tyrannicide Justifiable?" in which was discussed the attempt made
by Orsini upon the life of the French Emperor.
Referring to this, my father wrote some notable words in his
Autobiography of 1873. "I became," said he, "Honorary Secretary to the
Defence, and was at the same time associated with the conduct of the
defence of Simon Bernard, who was arrested at the instigation of the
French Government for alleged complicity in the Orsini tragedy. It was
at this period I gained the friendship of poor Bernard, which, without
diminution, I retained until he died; and also the valued friendship
of Thomas Allsop, which I still preserve. My associations were
thenceforward such as to encourage in me a strong and bitter feeling
against the late Emperor Napoleon. Whilst he was in power I hated
him, and never lost an opportunity of working against him until the
_déchéance_ came. I am not sure now that I always judged him fairly;
but nothing, I think, could have tempted me either to write or speak
of him with friendliness or kindliness during his life. _Le sang de
mes amis etait sur son âme._ Now that the tomb covers his remains, my
hatred has ceased; but no other feeling has arisen in its place. Should
any of his family seek to resume the Imperial purple, I should remain
true to my political declarations of sixteen years since, and should
exert myself to the uttermost to prevent France falling under another
Empire. I write this with much sadness, as the years 1870 to 1873
have dispelled some of my illusions, held firmly during the fifteen
years which preceded. I had believed in such men as Louis Blanc, Ledru
Rollin, Victor Hugo, as possible statesmen for France. I was mistaken.
They were writers, talkers, and poets; good men to ride on the stream,
or to drown in honest protest, but lacking force to swim against, or
turn back, the tide by the might of their will. I had believed too in
a Republican France, which is yet only in the womb of time, to be born
after many pangs and sore travailing."
When Mr Bradlaugh acted as Secretary for the Defence, his duties were
performed in no merely formal way, but with the utmost energy and
enthusiasm. In order to give more time to this work, he suspended the
publication of his Commentary on the Bible, and in issuing the "Appeal"
for the Defence fund wrote in earnest entreaty for his staunch and
fearless friend, saying truly enough, "It would be a stain on us for
years if we left poor Truelove to fight the battle of the press alone."
But my father's sympathies were all his life long on the side of the
weak and oppressed, and in this particular instance he came in personal
contact with the friends and associates of Orsini, if not with Orsini
himself (which, indeed, I am under the impression was the case), so
that the whole tone of his surroundings was anti-Napoleonic. Felice
Orsini must have been personally known to many of the advanced thinkers
in England, for I notice that in the winter of 1856 he was lecturing
at Woolwich (and probably elsewhere) on "Austrian and Papal Tyranny in
Italy." Those who knew him, even those who could not approve his deed,
yet honoured and revered him as a hero and a martyr.
My father spoke of him as "the noble, the brave, the true-hearted
Orsini." In 1859, writing of him: "One year since and his blood was
scarce dry! Bernard was a prisoner; Allsop a fugitive. Now Orsini
lives: the spirit of his greatness passed into a hundred others, and
the dead hero lives. Priests in their masses say, 'Pray for the memory
of the dead;' we say, 'Work for the memory of the dead!' Orsini needs
a monument o'er his grave. He is buried in the hearts of the freemen
of Europe, and his monument should be indestructible Republicanism
throughout France, Italy, Hungary, and Poland." Alas! for my father's
dreams of a Republic for those striving and oppressed nations. Poland
still lies at the feet of Russia, Hungary is held in the iron grasp
of Imperial Austria, and but a year or so ago Republican France and
Monarchical Italy were ready to fly at one another's throats.
The result of the prosecution of Mr Truelove, which is told more
fully at the end of this chapter by an abler pen than mine, was the
abandonment by the Government of all proceedings on certain conditions;
and although Mr Truelove, as well as his friends, would have preferred
a trial and acquittal to a withdrawal on the conditions accepted by his
counsel, nevertheless it was an undoubted triumph for the principle
of the liberty of the press and free discussion. When at length the
struggle ended it was proposed to raise a sum of money to compensate Mr
Truelove for the loss he must have sustained in his business, but this
Mr Truelove, with true public spirit, chivalrously refused.
Dr Bernard, in the conduct of whose defence Mr Bradlaugh was also
associated, seems to have been personally a most lovable man. I do not
think that I myself recollect him, but he was so often spoken of in
our family, and always with affection and regret, and his photograph
so proudly kept, that he seems a familiar figure in my early memories;
there was a tradition, of which as a child I was immensely proud (as
though I had played a conscious and important part in the matter!)
that the evening on which I was born, the 31st of March, my father
was delivering an oration upon Orsini in some Hall in London; at the
conclusion he was followed home by the police, and, being aware of the
fact, he led his pursuers a pretty chase. The notes of this address
were afterwards written out on thin paper and ironed, by an expert
laundress attached to my father and mother, into the folds of Dr
Bernard's shirt and conveyed to him in prison. In a notice which he
wrote of a meeting of the Political Reform League in the October of
the same year, Mr Bradlaugh alludes to the presence of "Simon Bernard,
who with his frank and good-humoured bearing seems quite unlike a
conspirator." He not infrequently took the chair at Dr Bernard's
meetings at St. Martin's Hall, Long Acre, and elsewhere, returning home
on one occasion with sundry rents in his coat, the result of Catholic
objections to Dr Bernard's strictures on the Pope, aided by the rancour
of persons friendly to Louis Napoleon.
Mr Headingley[22] says that when Dr Bernard was tried, great anxiety
was felt as to the verdict; and when it was known that one of the
jurymen was a friend, he was sent into the jury box with his pocket
full of sandwiches, so that he should not yield for want of food. But
this proved a needless precaution, for the jury returned with a verdict
of _Not guilty_ after a consultation of less than an hour-and-a-half.
Amongst other exciting incidents of the time, which he learned from my
father's own lips, Mr Headingley relates that--
[Footnote 22: Biography of Charles Bradlaugh.]
"Before the trial, and while Bernard lay in prison awaiting his fate,
considerable fear was entertained lest he should be surreptitiously
given up to the French authorities. A watch was therefore instituted
over the prison; communications, in spite of all regulations to
the contrary, were established with the prisoner; and the Defence
Committee kept informed as to everything that happened within the
walls. Had Bernard been removed, there were friends ever close at
hand, both night and day, ready to give the alarm. A riot would very
probably have ensued, and an attempt made to rescue Bernard in the
confusion."
He goes on to say that "the organization of all these precautionary
measures involved a great deal of labour, and required much tact. The
presence of French police spies was supplemented by the interference
of English spies; and against these it was necessary for Bernard's
friends to be on the alert. On one occasion some mounted police
followed Bradlaugh to his home in Cassland Road, Hackney. At another
time he entered a restaurant near Leicester Square with Dr Bernard
and Mr Sparkhall, an old and trusty friend, who subsequently joined
and helped to organize the English legion that fought so well for
Garibaldi. While they were discussing a French spy came in, and
sitting down in the next compartment, soon pretended to be asleep.
Bradlaugh, recognising the individual, leaned over the compartment,
took a long spill, as if to light a cigar, and held the burning paper
under the spy's nose. As the man was only pretending to be asleep,
this treatment did not fail to awake him most promptly. Further, this
manner of dealing with him left no room for doubt as to his having
been recognised, and he therefore simply rose and quietly left the
restaurant, without even protesting against the burn inflicted on
his most prominent feature. So numerous were the foreign spies in
London at that time, that popular irritation was excited, and once
Bernard himself was mistaken by a mob in the Park, and attacked as a
French spy. His friends had great difficulty in shielding him and in
persuading his aggressors that they were mistaken."
Thomas Allsop,[23] mentioned by Mr Bradlaugh in the same sentence with
Bernard, was also present at the Reform League meeting, and he is
described by my father as "a straightforward old gentleman, carrying
his years well, and apparently untroubled by the late harassing events;
his head gives you an idea of power and dogged determination--it
is worth more than £200." These last words refer, I believe, to a
reward of £200 which was offered for the apprehension of Mr Allsop in
connection with the Orsini matter. Apart from the striking personality
it represents, the name of Thomas Allsop will always bear a peculiar
interest to admirers of Charles Bradlaugh, for it was he who bestowed
upon the, even then, "strong man and strenuous fighter" the motto
"Thorough," which his after life so amply justified, and of which he
was so proud, saying, "When my work is over, and the stone covers the
spot wherein I lie, may I be entitled to have the word 'Thorough'
carven upon its face."
[Footnote 23: Mr Allsop will be known to the English public as the
author of the "Recollections of Samuel Taylor Coleridge." He died a few
years before my father, and he lies near his friend at Brookwood.]
It was during these years of political excitement that my father became
acquainted with Mazzini, Crispi, de Boni, Ledru Rollin, Louis Blanc,
and W. J. Linton.
The author of the "Tyrannicide" pamphlet has been so good as to
write for me his "Recollections of Charles Bradlaugh;" and as the
references to this period are very interesting, I cannot do better than
incorporate them here just as he sent them to me:--
"It was in 1858," Mr W. E. Adams tells us, "that I first made the
personal acquaintance of Charles Bradlaugh. Mr Bradlaugh was at that
time known only as 'Iconoclast,' the general public having, I think,
a very indistinct idea what his real name was. I had heard him as
'Iconoclast' at the old John Street Institution, where many another
dead and gone controversialist had won plaudits from the listening
crowd: Dr Mill, Henry Tyrrell, Samuel Kydd, Robert Cooper. There, too,
the veteran Thomas Cooper had recited 'Paradise Lost,' or told the
eloquent story of the cause of the Commonwealth. Iconoclast, then a
tall, slender, yet powerful young man, with a face stern enough for
an adjutant, and a carriage equal to that of an Elizabethan hero, was
beginning to claim admission to the ranks of the leaders of advanced
thought.
"The year 1858 was the year of Felice Orsini's attempt on the life
of Louis Napoleon. I was at that time, and had been for some years
previously, a member of a Republican association, which was formed to
propagate the principles of Mazzini. When the press, from one end of
the country to the other, joined in a chorus of condemnation of Orsini,
I put down on paper some of the arguments and considerations which I
thought told on Orsini's side. The essay thus produced was read at a
meeting of one of our branches, the members attending which earnestly
urged me to get the piece printed. It occurred to me also that the
publication might be of service, if only to show that there were two
sides to the question 'Tyrannicide.' So I went to Mr G. J. Holyoake,
then carrying on business as a publisher of advanced literature in
Fleet Street. Mr Holyoake not being on the premises, his brother
Austin asked me to leave my manuscript and call again. When I called
again Mr Holyoake returned me the paper, giving among other reasons
for declining to publish it that he was already in negotiation with
Mazzini for a pamphlet on the same subject. 'Very well,' said I, 'all
I want is that something should be said on Orsini's side. If Mazzini
does this, I shall be quite content to throw my production into the
fire.' A few days later, not hearing anything of the Mazzini pamphlet,
I left the manuscript with Mr Edward Truelove, with whom I have ever
since maintained a close and unbroken friendship. Mr Truelove seemed
pleased with the paper, offered to publish it, and proposed to get it
printed. The essay, as I had written it, was entitled 'Tyrannicide,
a Justification.' Mr Truelove, however, suggested that it should be
called 'Tyrannicide: is it Justifiable?' Then there was no name to the
production, which, I need not say, bore many marks of the immaturity
of the author. Mr Truelove said it would be as well to adopt a _nom
de plume_. But if any name was to appear to the pamphlet, I said I was
disposed to think that it should be my own. And so it came to pass that
the pamphlet appeared with the title--'Tyrannicide: is it Justifiable?
by W. E. Adams. Published by Edward Truelove, 240 Strand, London.' Two
or three days after the announcement of the publication, when only a
few hundred copies had been sold, Mr Truelove was arrested, brought
before the Bow Street magistrate, and held to bail for publishing a
seditious libel on Louis Napoleon. As a matter of course, nobody knew
the author. It was suspected indeed that the name attached to the
pamphlet was a fiction, and that the essay was the production of a
French exile.
"The arrest of Mr Truelove was regarded as an attack upon the liberty
of the press--an attempt to restrict the right of public discussion.
So regarding it, a number of gentlemen, prominently identified with
advanced opinions, formed what was called a 'Truelove Defence Fund.'
Mr Bradlaugh, who was among the first to volunteer assistance, was
appointed secretary of the committee; the late James Watson accepted
the office of treasurer; and contributions and other help were
received from John Stuart Mill, W. Cunningham, M.P., Dr Epps, Arthur
Trevelyan, Professor F. W. Newman, W. J. Fox, M.P., Jos. Cowen,
junr., Abel Heywood, P. A. Taylor, Harriet Martineau, etc. Six months
after Mr Truelove had been arrested, the whole affair came to a most
'lame and impotent' conclusion. It was at the instance of Sir Richard
Bethel, Attorney-General under Lord Palmerston, and probably at the
instigation of the Government of Louis Napoleon, whom the pamphlet
was alleged to have libelled, that the prosecution was commenced.
The case was withdrawn by Sir Fitzroy Kelly, Attorney-General under
the Government of Lord Derby, on the understanding that Mr Truelove
would sell no more of the pamphlets. Down to the evening preceding the
day fixed for the trial, Mr Truelove, though he had doubts as to the
result, fully expected that the matter would be fought out. On that
evening, however, when it was too late to instruct other counsel, Mr
Truelove was informed that the counsel already retained for the defence
announced that the affair would have to be compromised. So it came to
pass that Chief Justice Campbell, six months after the prosecution had
been instituted, dismissed Mr Truelove with many words of caution.
It need not be said that Mr Bradlaugh was as much disgusted with
this termination of the case as Mr Truelove himself. The secret of
the collapse, I think, was this:--Edwin James, who was retained for
the defence, and who had political ambitions which were never fully
realised on account of misdeeds which compelled him to retire from
public life and from his own country, practically sold his client in
order that the Government might be relieved from a distasteful and
unpleasant position."
CHAPTER IX.
EARLY LECTURES AND DEBATES.
I do not know at what date or at what place my father delivered his
first provincial lectures, but the earliest of which I can find any
record occurred in January 1858, when on the 10th of that month he
delivered two lectures at Manchester, a town in which, as we shall
see later on, he was not altogether unknown, although in a totally
different capacity. In reading the little there is to read about these
early lecturing days I have been impressed with the fact that while
in London his lectures were favourably received, and he was evidently
gaining goodwill as he went from one hall to another, in the country he
seems to have touched the hearts and the feelings of his audiences for
or against him wherever he went. At these first Manchester lectures the
reporter writes: "His manly, earnest, and fearless style of advocacy
were much admired, and evidently produced a deep impression. Everybody
who heard him wished to hear him again." In the April following he
lectured in Sheffield, and from that time forward his visits to the
provinces were very frequent. Sheffield almost adopted him, and he went
there again and again; in 1858 and 1859 he went also to Newcastle,
Sunderland, Bradford, Northampton, Doncaster, Accrington, Blackburn,
Halifax, Bolton, and other towns, leaving a trail of excitement in his
wake wherever he went. The descriptions of his personal appearance and
the comments on his lectures at this time are more or less amusing.
The first I will note here shall be one from his own pen, written to
Mr Alfred Jackson in 1858, on the occasion of his earliest visit to
Sheffield. He says: "You ask me to tell you how you may know me. I am
6 ft. 1 in. in height, about twenty-five years of age, dress in dark
clothing, am of fair complexion, with only the ghost of a prospective
whisker."
In a brief account of his Sheffield lectures that year my father says
that when he reached the Temperance Hall a copy of the _Sheffield
Independent_ was put into his hands, in which the Rev. Brewin Grant
announced his intention to take no notice of him. But Mr Grant proved
to be of a rather fickle temper, for on the morning following this
first lecture "a small bill was printed and industriously circulated,
entitled 'Iconoclast clasted,' being a challenge to myself from this
very Brewin Grant who had previously determined not to notice me." On
the first night Mr Bradlaugh had "a perfect crowd of opponents;" on the
second he found that fresh troops had been levied against him. These
"were led to the fray by the Rev. Eustace Giles (a stout Dissenting
minister with a huge black bag). After the lecture this gentleman rose
to reply, and commenced by extracting from his bag three huge volumes
of Van der Hooght's Hebrew Bible, which he declared was the original
Word of God, and which he requested me to read aloud to the audience. I
complied by reading and translating a verse, to each word of which Mr
Giles and his coadjutors nodded approval."
Going to Newcastle in September, my father found that the description
of his personal appearance had so preceded him that the gentleman who
met him, Mr Mills, came "straight to me on the platform as though we
were old acquaintances instead of meeting for the first time." In
Newcastle he lectured twice in the Nelson Street Lecture Hall (which
has quite recently, I believe, been turned into a market), and was
fairly, if briefly, reported by the _Newcastle Daily Chronicle_. While
in the town he took the opportunity of listening to a lecture delivered
by "J. Cowen, jun.," as Mr Joseph Cowen was then styled.
From Newcastle he went to Sunderland, where a person who came from
the Rev. Mr Rees, a clergyman of that place, brought him a parody of
the Church service entitled "The Secularist's Catechism," which was
intended as some far-reaching and scathing sarcasm on the Secularist's
"creed," but which is really as pretty a piece of blasphemy as ever
issued from the pen of a Christian minister. Mr Bradlaugh tells how the
person who brought it "gave it to me in a fearful manner, keeping as
far away from me as possible, and evidently regarding me as a dangerous
animal; he backed towards the room door after putting the paper in
my hand, and seemed relieved in mind that I had not in some manner
personally assaulted him."
On his next visit to Sheffield, where he was announced to deliver
three lectures on three successive evenings, the walls were covered
with bills advising the people to keep away, and the clergy in church
and chapel publicly warned their congregations against attending the
lectures. In spite of all these precautions (or was it because of
them?) the lectures were a decided success, the audiences increasing
with each evening, until on the last evening "the large Temperance
Hall was full in every part, the applause was unanimous, and not one
opponent appeared." The visit of "Iconoclast" to Bradford produced a
great flutter in the clerical society of that town; and after he left
we hear that "almost every missionary and clerical speaker opened fire
upon him," and one sensitive gentleman wrote to the _Bradford Observer_
expressing his grief that the Teetotal Hall should be "prostituted" by
being let to the Freethought lecturer.
In his _Autobiography_ my father himself puts the date of his first
lecturing visit to Northampton as the year 1857, and this year is again
given in the little book issued as a _souvenir_ of the unveiling of the
statue of their late member by the Northampton Radical Association in
June 1894; but I am inclined to think that this is a mistake, that my
father's memory misled him a little, and, that he put the date a few
months too early. In any case, although I have made diligent inquiry,
the first lectures of which I can find any note took place on Sunday
and Monday, January 30th and 31st, 1859, in the large room of the
Woolpack Inn, Kingswell Street. On the Monday evening the chair was
taken by the late Mr Joseph Gurney, J.P., who, in company with his
old friend Mr Shipman, had already heard Mr Bradlaugh lecture at the
John Street Institution in London, and had been much impressed by the
ability and earnest eloquence of the young speaker. The people crowded
the street outside the Woolpack Inn for some time before the doors of
the lecture-room were open, and the room was packed in a few moments.
I wonder how many times after that did Mr Gurney preside at densely
packed meetings for Mr Bradlaugh! Mr Gurney himself subsequently
attained all the municipal honours Northampton could bestow upon her
deserving townsman, nominated Charles Bradlaugh seven out of eight
times that he contested the borough, and only did not nominate him on
the eighth occasion because his position as chief magistrate prevented
him.
In the following March it was arranged that my father should lecture
in the Guildhall, at Doncaster. Doncaster, with its reputation as a
race town, was also in those days the abode of the "unco' guid." Some
of the inhabitants appear to have been much put out at the proposed
lecture, and certain "Friends of Religion," as they called themselves,
issued a "Caution to the public, especially the religious portion,"
in which they, the "People of Doncaster," are entreated to give
"Iconoclast the extacy (_sic_) of gazing on the unpeopled interior of
the Guildhall." The "Friends of Religion" prefaced their entreaty by
announcing that "the juvenile destroyer of images" had been engaged as
a "grand speculation!" Presumably this "Caution" resulted in a famous
advertisement, for the _Doncaster Herald_ says that the Guildhall was
"crowded to excess," and in writing his account of the lecture, which
he says was a "frantic panegyric in honour of hell and a blasphemous
denunciation of heaven," the reporter to this journal seems to have
worked himself up into a fine frenzy. One can almost see him with his
tossed-back hair, his rolling eyes and gnashing teeth, as he hurled
these dynamitic words at the readers of the _Herald_:--
"There boldly, defiantly, recklessly--with the air of the dreadnought
bravo or the Alpine bandit--stood the creator's work [elsewhere styled
'clayformed ingrate'] toiling, sweating, labouring strenuously, to
heap slander upon his creator, and to convert into odious lies the
book by which that creator has made himself known to the world!...
Need we go further to express our more than disgust--our horror--at
the fact of a young and accomplished man standing forth in crowded
halls, and, while the beauteous moon marches aloft in the vast and
indefinable firmament, and the myriad of silvery stars shoot their
refulgent rays upon the desecrated lecture-room, actually telling
the people that no God lives! no Supreme hand fretted the brave
o'erhanging firmament with golden fire--no Jehovah made the wide
carpet of fair nature bespangled with laughing flowers--no God made
roaring seas and mighty rivers--no God revealed the Bible--no God made
man!"
One really needs to draw breath after all that: the lecture-room
lighted by star rays, the firmament fretted with golden fire, the
laughing flowers and roaring seas, must surely have carried conviction.
The _Doncaster Chronicle_, if more prosaic, is not the less hostile.
Its report thus describes the lecturer:--
"He is a tall, beardless, whiskerless young man, with a pale face,
and has rather a harmless and prepossessing appearance"--[compare the
_Herald's_ 'Alpine bandit!']--"certainly not the fierce individual we
had previously imagined him to be from the elements of destruction
indicated in his name--'the image breaker!' He is a person possessing
great fluency of speech, of ready wit, and the declamatory style of
his oratory is well calculated to excite and carry away a popular
audience."
And the _Chronicle_, in a vain endeavour to outvie its colleague in
choice epithets, winds up by styling the arguments of Atheists as "the
miserable sophistry of these 'filthy dreamers,'" the delicate wording
of which phrase would be hard for even a "coarse" Atheist to match,
and urges that "for the sake of the youth of our town, the municipal
authorities will not again lend the Guildhall for such an object." In
Sheffield Mr Bradlaugh was rapidly growing in popularity; lecturing
there again immediately after his Doncaster lecture, he had an audience
of 2000 persons to hear his address on "Has Man a Soul?"
Later in the year he was again in Doncaster, and this time the "Friends
of Religion" had succeeded so far in their endeavours that the Granby
Music Hall was refused, and it was rumoured that the lectures would
not be permitted. A temporary platform was however erected under the
roof of the Corn Market, and, in lieu of the electric light of to-day,
the lecturer was made dimly visible to his audience by means of a lamp
raised upon a pole. The audience was said to number about 4000, "the
hollow and partly arched roof of the Corn Market served as a sounding
board, and the tones of Iconoclast, whilst speaking, were distinctly
heard through the surrounding streets. Although the town was in a
state of considerable excitement, the meeting was on the whole very
orderly." It was a beautiful evening; and when the lecture was over
several hundred persons escorted "Iconoclast in a sort of triumphant
procession" to his lodgings. As this was not exactly in accordance with
the anticipations of the "Friends of Religion," my father was informed
by the Mayor that several magistrates had protested against the use
of the Corporate property (the Corn Market), which they had occupied
without the express permission of the Corporation, and in consequence
the lectures must be given elsewhere. Accordingly, a large open yard
near the market was obtained for that night; and although no fresh
announcement was made, the news rapidly spread throughout the town.
At half-past seven Mr Bradlaugh began to speak from a waggon. The
subject was that of the "History and Teaching of Jesus Christ," and the
audience, which increased every moment until it spread into the grounds
of the adjoining Corn Market, ultimately numbering between 7000 and
8000 persons, was very quiet and attentive. Missiles were thrown from
a neighbouring house, and fireworks also were thrown into the midst of
the assemblage; they were soon put out, but "one cracker was kept by
the lecturer and placed among other Christian evidences." On returning
from the meeting to his lodgings, "a large stone was thrown, which
partially stunned Iconoclast, and cut his head slightly."
In April he should have lectured at Accrington, but the proprietor of
the hall was a publican, and the clergy and magistrates of the town
had so worked upon his fears by threatening to refuse his license
at the next Sessions that he drew back from his agreement. No other
room was to be obtained; and as numbers of people had come from long
distances to hear my father, he got leave to address them from a
showman's waggon; but when the showman--notorious for his intemperance
all over the district--"found that Iconoclast approached spiritual
subjects less freely than himself," he, too, retracted his permission.
Not to waste his time altogether, however, Mr Bradlaugh attended a
meeting of the Accrington Mutual Improvement Society, at which, as it
happened, the subject of the essay for the evening was "Jesus Christ."
At Bolton the Concert Hall was engaged for his lectures on the 20th and
21st September; but when Mr Bradlaugh came from London to deliver the
lectures, he found the walls placarded with the announcement that the
lectures would not be permitted to take place. He brought an action
against the Bolton Concert Hall Company for £7 damages for breach of
contract, the £7 representing the expense to which he had been put.
The jury, however, after being absent a considerable time, gave a
verdict for the defendants. Needless to say that the closing of the
Concert Hall did not prevent Mr Bradlaugh from lecturing in Bolton.
Shortly afterwards the Unitarian Chapel, Moore Lane, was obtained, and
he delivered three lectures on successive evenings, instead of two, as
formerly announced.
At Halifax, in this year, his lectures produced the usual excitement.
The town missionary rushed into verse upon the subject of "Iconoclast
and the Devil," and issued his polite reflections in the form of
a handbill. The lectures also resulted in a set debate between
"Iconoclast" and the Rev. Mr. Matthias, which I shall notice later on.
The story goes that at one of my father's lectures Mr Matthias was
present, and wished to offer some opposition at the conclusion. His
friends sought to dissuade him, and even to hold him in his seat, but
the reverend gentleman was so much in earnest, and was so excited, that
he shook off the restraining hands, crying, "Unhand me, gentlemen. By
heaven, I'll make a ghost of him that lets me."
In Glasgow, that autumn, Mr Bradlaugh was threatened with prosecution
for blasphemy, with the result that his lectures at the Eclectic
Institute were better attended than they had been before. A little
later the Procurator Fiscal informed him that the prosecution was in
his hands, and that "in the course of law" he would have to answer for
his offence in Glasgow "against the Holy Christian religion." I cannot
find that the matter was carried beyond this, however, so I suppose the
Glasgow pietists contented themselves with empty threats.
* * * * *
Although thus actively engaged in the provinces during 1858 and 1859,
my father by no means neglected work in London. He lectured at various
halls on theological and political subjects, and took part in more
general public work. In the spring of 1858 he was elected President
of the London Secular Society in the place of Mr G. J. Holyoake,
and those who know anything of his unremitting labours as President
of the National Secular Society will comprehend that he was no mere
figure-head, or President in name only. Amongst other things, he
immediately set about issuing a series of tracts for distribution, of
which he himself wrote the first.
On May 16th Mr Bradlaugh spoke at the John Street Institution at the
celebration of Robert Owen's 88th and last birthday, and a little thing
happened then which he was always proud to recall. It was Mr Robert
Cooper's custom to read Mr Owen's papers to the public for him; but on
this particular evening he was himself in ill-health; and had already
exhausted his strength in addressing the meeting. Mr Owen had prepared
a discourse on the "Origin of Evil," which Mr Cooper commenced to read
as usual; but he being unable to continue, it fell to my father's lot
to take up the reading. This was the last paper of Mr Owen's read in
public, and almost the last public appearance of the aged reformer, who
died on the 17th of the following November.
In the provinces there was often considerable difficulty in the matter
of hiring halls or in keeping the proprietor to his contract after the
hall had been hired, but in London there was either less intolerance
or more indifference, and the trouble arose less frequently. On one
occasion, however, in March 1859, when Mr Bradlaugh was to have
lectured in the Saint Martin's Hall on "Louis Napoleon," he recalls
in his _Autobiography_ that "the Government--on a remonstrance by
Count Walewski as to language used at a previous meeting, at which I
had presided for Dr Bernard--interfered; the hall was garrisoned by
police, and the lecture prevented. Mr Hullah, the then proprietor,
being indemnified by the authorities, paid damages for his breach of
contract, to avoid a suit which I at once commenced against him."
* * * * *
In the winter of 1858 my father became editor of the _Investigator_,
originally edited by Robert Cooper, and he was full of enthusiasm and
belief in his ability to make the little paper a success. It had at
that time a circulation of 1250, and he estimated that it needed twice
that number to enable it to pay its printing and publishing expenses.
He commenced his conduct of the paper by a statement of his policy,
and by a trenchant letter to Louis Napoleon. From the former I take
the opening and concluding words as giving his first editorial
utterance:[24]--
[Footnote 24: _Investigator_, November 1st, 1858, p. 124.]
"We are investigators, and our policy is to ascertain facts and present
them to our readers in clear and distinct language. If we find a mind
bound round with Creeds and Bibles, we will select a sharp knife to
cut the bonds; if we find men prostrating themselves, without inquiry,
before idols, our policy is iconoclastic--we will destroy those
idols. If we find a rock in our path, we will break it; but we will
not quarrel with our brother who deems his proper work to be that of
polishing the fragments. We believe all the religions of the world
are founded on error, in the ignorance of natural causes and material
conditions, and we deem it our duty to endeavour to expose their
falsity. Our policy is therefore aggressive. We are, at present, of
opinion that there is much to do in the mere clod-crushing sphere, in
uprooting upas trees, hewing down creed-erected barriers between man
and man, and generally in negating the influence of the priest. Our
policy is of a humble character; we are content to be axebearers and
pioneers, cutting down this obstacle and clearing away that. We respect
the sower who delights in the positive work of scattering seed on the
ground, but we fear that the weeds destroy much of the fruit of his
labours....
"There is no middle ground between Theism and Atheism. The genuineness
and authenticity of the Scrip
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