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.