A FREEMASON.
As Mr Bradlaugh was very much tied to London after 1862 on account of
his business first in a solicitor's office, and then in the city, he
was unable for a few years to lecture so frequently in the country.
Saturdays and Sundays were almost his only opportunities for provincial
speaking, but these he utilised to the fullest extent that the claims
of his London friends would permit. Quite a large proportion of his
lectures were given for the pecuniary benefit of some person or cause
in need of help. Very often, too, during this period his health gave
way. City work for his livelihood, writing, lecturing, and debating
for his opinions' sake, rushes to France, Italy, or Germany, and
night travelling before the days when long railway journeys were
made easy--were a heavy tax on even his strength. And in addition to
this, which I might call the general routine of his life, he had the
occasional duty of defending his rights in the Law Courts against both
Government and private individuals, and the anxiety of a Parliamentary
candidature.
Amongst those lectures given away was one in August 1862 on
"Freemasonry," under the auspices of the Reformed Rite of Memphis, for
the benefit of the family of a deceased brother Mason. In November of
the same year he, as Orator of the Grand Lodge _des Philadelphes_,
waited upon the Lord Mayor with two others as a deputation from their
Lodge to present £14 5s. to the fund of the distressed operatives
in Lancashire. Of this sum £9 was a donation made in the name of
Garibaldi, and the further £5 5s. by the Lodge of which Garibaldi
was a member, as they proudly put it. I have made a special note of
these early appearances of Mr Bradlaugh in his Masonic capacity,
because his having been a Freemason has often been called in question,
although I have before me some documents which ought to convince even
the most incredulous. The first informs "all whom it may concern ...
that our Brother Charles Bradlaugh, born in Hackney (England), who
has signed his name in the margin hereof, was regularly received into
Freemasonry and admitted to the third degree in the Grand Lodge of
the Philadelphs." This certificate is dated from London the 9th of
March 1859, and is very much stamped and signed with eleven signatures
(exclusive of Mr Bradlaugh's), with a seal attached to it by a blue
ribbon. His sponsor for this initiation was his dear and venerated
friend Simon Bernard.[73] The second document in my possession, also
signed with a dozen or more signatures, is a "_diplôme de Maître_"
(diploma of Master) granted by the Grand Orient of France upon the
demand of the "R -- L -- La Persévérante Amitié or -- de Paris."
This diploma is dated the 15th May 1862. The third is a much later
document, and is to the following effect:--
"Sur la demande presentée par la R. L. Union et Persévérance o[Symbol:
therefore] Paris l'effet d'obtenir un diplôme de Maître pour le F.
Charles Bradlaugh né à Londres le 26 7bre, 1833, demeurant à Londres
membre reçu d'honneur. Le Grand Orient a delivré au F. Charles
Bradlaugh le présent diplôme de Maître.
"Donné a l'O -- de Paris le 4 Novembre 1884 (E. V.)"
[Footnote 73: Towards the end of November 1862 death claimed him
who had been to my father "friend, tutor, brother." When the exile
was buried, Mr Bradlaugh wrote that "the proscribed of all the
Nationalities of Europe mustered round his coffin to do him honour.
Italy, Germany, Russia, Poland, Hungary, and France were numerously
represented; and long ranks of the best and bravest of banished men
trod in sadness in the rear of the funeral hearse." By the open
grave at Kilburn, "amongst the hundreds of intellectual looking men
here might be seen most noticeable the bearded figure of that most
omniscient of political writers, Alexander Herzen; here the stalwart
frame of the escaped Bakunin; here the saddened features of an old
Englishman [Thomas Allsop] who had borne part with him in his political
struggles, and who had loved the dead man with the fullest friendliness
of his most honest nature." At the grave side spoke M. Talandier; my
father spoke, also Mr G. J. Holyoake, M. Gustave Jourdain, and then
M. Felix Pyat, whose fiery sentences were followed by the dull and
mournful echo of the earth falling upon the coffin lid.]
It is signed by M. Cousin, Président du Conseil de l'Ordre, the
Secretary, officers of the R. L. Union et Persévérance, and others.
Mr Bradlaugh belonged also to an English lodge affiliated to the Grand
Lodge of England. He was received at Tottenham at the special request
of the Lodge in the early part of the sixties, I believe, but I possess
none of the usual certificates: these he returned to his Lodge when
the Prince of Wales was made Past Grand Master. When it was announced
that the lodges of England were about to honour the Prince of Wales
"with a dignity he had done nothing to earn," Mr Bradlaugh addressed
to him "a letter from a French, Italian, and English Freemason."
This letter was published in the _National Reformer_, and afterwards
reissued in pamphlet form. It was read by his Mother Lodge, _La Loge
des Philadelphes_, and gave such unqualified satisfaction that an
address of approval was sent him from the Lodge. The pamphlet had a
very extensive circulation, and went through several editions.
In March 1874 my father made a fine speech at the annual banquet at
the _Loge des Philadelphes_. It fell to him to speak to the toast, the
"loyal" toast of the Lodge, "To the Oppressed of all Nations." The
oppressed of Italy, of Spain, of France, of England, of Germany, were
each separately remembered, and then he carried the toast on "To the
oppressed of all nations: to the women everywhere; to the mothers,
who with freer brains would nurse less credulous sons; to the wives,
who with fuller thoughts would be higher companions through life's
journeyings; to the sisters and daughters, who with greater right might
work out higher duty, and with fuller training do more useful work; to
woman, our teacher as well as nurse; our guide as well as child-bearer;
our counsellor as well as drudge. To the oppressed of all nations: to
those who are oppressed the most in that they know it least; to the
ignorant and contented under wrong, who make oppression possible by
the passiveness, the inertness of their endurance. To the memories of
the oppressed in the past, whose graves--if faggot and lime have left
a body to bury--are without mark save on the monuments of memory, more
enduring than marble, erected in such temples by truer toast-givers
than myself. To these we drink, sadly and gratefully; to the oppressed
of the present--to those that struggle that they may win; to those that
yet are still, that they may struggle; to the future, that in it there
may be no need to drink this toast."
At this time when English Freemasons chose to cast doubts upon the
reality of Mr Bradlaugh's membership, Freemasons on the other side of
the Atlantic welcomed him to their Lodges.
While visiting Boston, Mr Bradlaugh was by special invitation of the
Columbian and Adelphi Lodges present at their Masonic festivals. The
last occasion should almost be looked upon as historic, as far as the
annals of Freemasonry are concerned, since it was a special festival
in honour of the installation of Joshua B. Smith as Junior Warden of
the Adelphi Lodge, South Boston, the first coloured Freemason elected
to hold office in any regular Lodge. Eight years before[74] the St
Andrew's Lodge had made Mr Smith and six other coloured men Freemasons,
with the idea that they should establish a coloured men's Lodge, but
the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts would not issue the warrant. In the
interval Joshua B. Smith, already a Justice of the Peace, was elected
to the Senate, and joined the Adelphi Lodge, which now took this
opportunity of showing him honour.
[Footnote 74: This was in December 1874.]
Mr Bradlaugh himself always liked to remember that he was a "Free and
accepted mason," and the outward and visible sign of that is to be
found in the fact that he almost invariably selected the Masonic Boys'
School as the charity to be benefited by any money paid as damages for
libelling his personal character.