Part 6 (1/2)
Merewether, the Tory, was declared elected with 2,171 votes. Mr.
Bradlaugh polled 1,766, having added another 133 voters to those who had polled for him in the previous February.
The violent abuse levelled against Mr. Bradlaugh by the Whigs, and the foul and wicked slanders circulated against him, had angered almost to madness those who knew and loved him, and when it was found that the unscrupulous Whig devices had succeeded in turning the election against him, the fury broke out into open violence. As Mr. Bradlaugh was sitting well-nigh exhausted in the hotel, the landlord rushed in, crying to him to go out and try to stop the people, or there would be murder done at the ”Palmerston”, Mr. Fowler's head-quarters; the crowd was charging the door, and the windows were being broken, with showers of stones. Weary as he was, Mr. Bradlaugh sprang to his feet and swiftly made his way to the rescue of those who had defeated him. Flinging himself before the door, he drove the crowd back, scolded them into quietness and dispersed them.
But at nine o'clock he had to leave the town to catch the mail for Queenstown, where he was to join the steamer for America, and after he had left, the riot he had quelled broke out afresh. The soldiers were called out, the Riot Act was read, stones flew freely, heads and windows were broken, but no very serious harm was done. The ”Palmerston” and the printing office of the _Mercury_, the Whig organ, were the princ.i.p.al sufferers, windows and doors vanis.h.i.+ng somewhat completely.
In this same month of October I find I noted in the _National Reformer_ that it was rumored ”that on hearing that the Prince of Wales had succeeded the Earl of Ripon as Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of England, Mr. Bradlaugh immediately sent in his resignation”. ”The report”, I added demurely, ”seems likely to be a true one”. I had not much doubt of the fact, having seen the cancelled certificate.
My second lecture was delivered on September 27th, during the election struggle, at Mr. Moncure D. Conway's Chapel in St. Paul's Road, Camden Town, and was on ”The true basis of morality.”. The lecture was re-delivered a few weeks later at a Unitarian chapel, where the minister was the Rev. Peter Dean, and gave, I was afterwards told, great offence to some of the congregation, especially to Miss Frances Power Cobbe, who declared that she would have left the chapel had not the speaker been a woman. The ground of complaint was that the suggested ”basis” was Utilitarian and human instead of Intuitional and Theistic. Published as a pamphlet, the lecture has reached its seventh thousand.
In October I had a severe attack of congestion of the lungs, and soon after my recovery I left Norwood to settle in London. I found that my work required that I should be nearer head-quarters, and I arranged to rent part of a house--19, Westbourne Park Terrace, Bayswater--two lady friends taking the remainder. The arrangement proved a very comfortable one, and it continued until my improved means enabled me, in 1876, to take a house of my own.
In January, 1875, I made up my mind to lecture regularly, and in the _National Reformer_ for January 17th I find the announcement that ”Mrs.
Annie Besant (Ajax) will lecture at South Place Chapel, Finsbury, on 'Civil and religious liberty'”, Mr. Conway took the chair at this first identification of ”Ajax” with myself, and sent a very kindly notice of the lecture to the _Cincinnati Commercial_. Mr. Charles Watts wrote a report in the _National Reformer_ of January 24th. Dr. Maurice Davies also wrote a very favorable article in a London journal, but unfortunately he knew Mr. Walter Besant, who persuaded him to suppress my name, so that although the notice appeared it did me no service. My struggle to gain my livelihood was for some time rendered considerably more difficult by this kind of ungenerous and underhand antagonism. A woman's road to the earning of her own living, especially when she is weighted with the care of a young child, is always fairly th.o.r.n.y at the outset, and does not need to be rendered yet more difficult by secret attempts to injure, on the part of those who trust that suffering and poverty may avail to bend pride to submission.
My next lecture was given in the Theatre Royal, Northampton, and in the _National Reformer_ of February 14th appears for the first time my list of lecturing engagements, so that in February next I shall complete my first decade of lecturing for the Freethought and Republican Cause.
Never, since first I stood on the Freethought platform, have I felt one hour's regret for the resolution taken in solitude in January, 1875, to devote to that sacred Cause every power of brain and tongue that I possessed. Not lightly was that resolution taken, for I know no task of weightier responsibility than that of standing forth as teacher, and swaying thousands of hearers year after year. But I pledged my word then to the Cause I loved that no effort on my part should be wanting to render myself worthy of the privilege of service which I took; that I would read, and study, and would train every faculty that I had; that I would polish my language, discipline my thought, widen my knowledge; and this, at least, I may say, that if I have written and spoken much I have studied and thought more, and that at least I have not given to my mistress, Liberty, that ”which hath cost me nothing”.
A queer incident occurred on February 17th. I had been invited by the Dialectical Society to read a paper, and selected for subject ”The existence of G.o.d”. The Dialectical Society had for some years held their meetings in a room in Adam Street rented from the Social Science a.s.sociation. When the members gathered as usual on this 17th February, the door was found closed, and they were informed that Ajax's paper had been too much for the Social Science nerves, and that entrance to the ordinary meeting-place was henceforth denied. We found refuge in the Charing Cross Hotel, where we speculated merrily on the eccentricities of religious charity.
On February 12th, I started on my first lecturing tour in the provinces.
After lecturing at Birkenhead on the evening of that day, I started by the night mail for Glasgow. Some races--dog races, I think--had been going on, and very unpleasant were many of the pa.s.sengers waiting on the platform. Some Birkenhead friends had secured me a compartment, and watched over me till the train began to move. Then, after we had fairly started, the door was flung open by a porter and a man was thrust in who half tumbled on to the seat. As he slowly recovered, he stood up, and as his money rolled out of his hand on to the floor and he gazed vaguely at it, I saw, to my horror, that he was drunk. The position was pleasant, for the train was an express and was not timed to stop for a considerable time. My odious fellow-pa.s.senger spent some time on the floor hunting for his scattered coins. Then he slowly gathered himself up, and presently became conscious of my presence. He studied me for some time and then proposed to shut the window. I a.s.sented quietly, not wanting to discuss a trifle, and feeling in deadly terror. Alone at night in an express, with a man not drunk enough to be helpless but too drunk to be controlled.
Never, before or since, have I felt so thoroughly frightened, but I sat there quiet and unmoved, only grasping a penknife in my pocket, with a desperate resolve to use my feeble weapon as soon as the need arose. The man had risen again to his feet and had come over to me, when a jarring noise was heard and the train began to slacken.
”What is that?” stammered my drunken companion.
”They are putting on the brakes to stop the train,” I said very slowly and distinctly, though a very pa.s.sion of relief made it hard to say quietly the measured words.
The man sat down stupidly, staring at me, and in a minute or two more the train pulled up at a station. It had been stopped by signal. In a moment I was at the window, calling the guard. I rapidly explained to him that I was travelling alone, that a half-drunken man was with me, and I begged him to put me into another carriage. With the usual kindliness of a railway official, the guard at once moved my baggage and myself into an empty compartment, into which he locked me, and he kept a friendly watch over me at every station at which we stopped until he landed me safely at Glasgow.
At Glasgow a room had been taken for me at a Temperance Hotel, and it seemed to me a new and lonely sort of thing to be ”on my own account” in a strange city in a strange hotel. By the way, why are Temperance Hotels so often lacking in cleanliness? Surely abstinence from wine and superfluity of ”matter in the wrong place” need not necessarily be correlated in hotel-life, and yet my experience leads me to look for the twain together. Here and there I have been to Temperance Hotels in which water is used for other purposes than that of drinking, but these are, I regret to say, the exceptions to a melancholy rule.
From Glasgow I went north to Aberdeen, and from Aberdeen home again to London. A long weary journey that was, in a third-cla.s.s carriage in the cold month of February, but the labor had in it a joy that outpaid all physical discomfort, and the feeling that I had found my work in the world gave a new happiness to my life.
I reported my doings to the chief of our party in America, and found them only half approved. ”You should have waited till I returned, and at least I could have saved you some discomforts,” he wrote; but the discomforts troubled me little, and I think I rather preferred the independent launch out into lecturing work, trusting only to my own courage and ability to win my way. So far as health was concerned, the lecturing acted as a tonic. My chest had always been a little delicate, and when I consulted a doctor on the possibility of my lecturing he answered: ”It will either kill you or cure you”. It has entirely cured the lung weakness, and I have grown strong and vigorous instead of being frail and delicate as of old.
On February 28th I delivered my first lecture at the Hall of Science, London, and was received with that warmth of greeting which Freethinkers are ever willing to extend to one who sacrifices aught to join their ranks. From that day to this that hearty welcome at our central London hall has never failed me, and the love and courage wherewith Freethinkers have ever stood by me have overpaid a thousandfold any poor services I have been fortunate enough to render to the common cause.
It would be wearisome to go step by step over the ten years' journeys and lectures; I will only select, here and there, incidents ill.u.s.trative of the whole.
Some folk say that the lives of Freethought lecturers are easy, and that their lecturing tours are lucrative in the extreme. On one occasion I spent eight days in the north lecturing daily, with three lectures on the two Sundays, and made a deficit of 11s. on the journey! I do not pretend that such a thing would happen now, but I fancy that every Freethought lecturer could tell of a similar experience in the early days of ”winning his way”.
There is no better field for Freethought and Radical work than Northumberland and Durham; the miners there are as a rule shrewd and hard-headed men, and very cordial is the greeting given by them to those whom they have reason to trust. At Seghill and at Bedlington I have slept in their cottages and have been welcomed to their tables, and I remember one evening at Seghill, after a lecture, that my host invited about a dozen miners to supper to meet me; the talk ran on politics, and I soon found that my companions knew more of English politics and had a far shrewder notion of political methods than I had found among the ordinary ”diners-out” in ”society”. They were of the ”uneducated” cla.s.s despised by ”gentlemen” and had not the vote, but politically they were far better educated than their social superiors, and were far better fitted to discharge the duties of citizens.h.i.+p.
On May 16th I attended, for the first time, the Annual Conference called by the National Secular Society. It was held at Manchester, in the Society's rooms in Grosvenor Street, and it is interesting and encouraging to note how the Society has grown and strengthened since that small meeting held nearly ten years ago. Mr. Bradlaugh was elected President; Messrs. A. Trevelyan, T. Slater, C. Watts, C.C. Cattell, R.A.
Cooper, P.A.V. Le Lubez, N. Ridgway, G.W. Foote, G.H. Reddalls, and Mrs.
Besant Vice Presidents. Messrs. Watts and Standring were elected as Secretary and a.s.sistant-Secretary--both offices were then honorary, for the Society was too poor to pay the holders--and Mr. Le Lubez Treasurer.
The result of the Conference was soon seen in the energy infused into the Freethought propaganda, and from that time to this the Society has increased in numbers and in influence, until that which was scarcely more than a skeleton has become a living power in the land on the side of all social and political reforms. The Council for 1875 consisted of but thirty-nine members, including President, Vice-Presidents, and Secretary, and of these only nine were available as a Central Executive. Let Freethinkers compare this meagre list with the present, and then let them ”thank” man ”and take courage”.