FAMILY AFFAIRS.
When our home was broken up in May 1870, and my father went to live
by himself in those two little rooms in Turner Street, he was very
downcast and lonely. Apart from the many weighty reasons he had to
make him heavy-hearted, he felt the separation from his children,
young though we were, much more than might be imagined or than we
indeed quite realised ourselves at the time. He felt it for his own
sake, but even more he felt it for ours. We had been away from him but
little more than two weeks--weeks crowded with worry and work--when he
wrote us a little letter, which I shall always keep amongst my dearest
treasures, so much does it seem to convey a sense of his fatherly
love for us, and his fatherly anxiety for our lives in the difficult
circumstances in which we were placed. The letter is written in French
and very legibly, the foreign language making a sort of excuse for the
letter. He writes:--
"MY DEAR LITTLE DAUGHTERS,--I have a notion to write you from
time to time in French, because by that means more than by any other I
shall make you learn the language. Unfortunately for your instruction,
my own knowledge of this beautiful tongue is very limited, but I hope
that you will correct me each time you find mistakes. I want to know
every thought, every act of your lives, because, as you will be too
long out of my sight, I would keep you very close to my heart, and I
want to watch in thought the steps I cannot see each day with my own
eyes.--À vous, mes petites bien aimées,
C. BRADLAUGH."
Our brother's death drew us yet nearer to him, and while we were at
Midhurst he wrote to us constantly, scolding us if we delayed too long
in answering his little letters. As soon as he was able, he took a
third room at Turner Street, and sent for each of us by turns to spend
a month with him, to write for him; but as he was unwilling to separate
my sister and me for long together this was by no means a regular
arrangement.
After he became acquainted with Madame de Brimont, she soon expressed
a desire to know us. I have said that she was a staunch friend to my
father; to my sister and to me she was goodness itself. She asked my
father to let her find a school for us in Paris, and as he had always
been very anxious for us to know French, he let himself be persuaded,
in spite of sundry misgivings about the extra expense. A school was
found, and to Paris my father took us at the end of September 1872. We
went a few days before the beginning of the school-term and stayed with
him at his old hotel in the Rue Vivienne--now demolished to make room
for the extension of the _Bibliothéque_. We were very proud to be with
him, and proud of course to be for the first time in Paris; we lunched
or dined at Madame de Brimont's, and our leisure moments were filled
up by most delightful drives outside Paris, or walks along the Champs
Elysées or the Boulevards. Before entering school, we three went one
day with Madame de Brimont to make acquaintance with the Directress of
the establishment and to look over the building. The two ladies walked
on first, chatting of the school arrangements and so on, whilst we
behind admired, but could not imitate, the deliberate calmness with
which they trod the highly polished parquet floors. My sister and I,
as we slipped about and frantically caught at each other for support,
thought we never should be able to walk steadily on these waxed floors.
Before we left, Madame la Directrice asked what was our religion. Mr
Bradlaugh, inwardly expecting difficulties, answered, "None, Madame."
Madame's "Ah! Monsieur, that saves trouble," brought a smile of
surprise and amusement to my father's face. Seeing this, the Directress
went on: "You know, Monsieur, I have young ladies here of various
religions, but they are principally Roman Catholic, Jewish, and Greek
Church; it is sometimes difficult to make their different religious
duties fit in with the studies."
We were very happy at this school; there were good masters, and we had
plenty of work to do. On Thursday afternoons, the "at home" day for the
school, Madame de Brimont visited us, and our Saturday afternoons and
Sundays were spent with her. Unfortunately, I was never very strong,
and during the winter I fell ill. At Christmas my father came quite
unexpectedly to fetch us home for the holidays. My sister went back
in the course of a week or two, but the doctor would not allow me to
return. The details of that journey home, and the sad story told at the
end, remain vividly in my memory. We had been surprised at receiving
my father's letter to say we were to go home, a letter followed almost
immediately by my father himself. It was two or three days before
Christmas; he had travelled at night, and coming to us in the morning,
gave us just a few hours to get ready, and in the afternoon he came
to fetch us away. He seemed depressed and preoccupied, and though he
made us plenty of gay speeches, we were conscious that his mood was not
gay. We left Paris that night, and well do I remember what great care
he took of me, the invalid, holding me in his arms a great part of the
way. As we drove to Turner Street from the station, in the gloomy dawn
of a dull December morning, I could not help noticing, in spite of my
own pain and weariness, how grey and haggard his face looked. We passed
the day in London, and in the evening he took us to Midhurst, where we
were all to spend Christmas.
After the first excitement of our home-coming had somewhat subsided,
my father got up from his chair, and throwing back his head with a
peculiar movement, said abruptly, "Well, Bob's in prison."
"My God!" exclaimed my grandfather, who invoked the Deity as
indifferently as if he had been a Christian.
My father was silent for some minutes, and then as, in a few short
sentences, he told the story, my sister and I realised how heavy had
been his care on the previous day whilst he had tried to make merry
with us.
William Robert Bradlaugh was twelve years younger than his brother
Charles, and was only seven years old at the time of their father's
death. He was educated at an Orphan Asylum, and on his leaving this
institution my father found situations for him, which, however, for one
reason or another, he did not keep. At one time, after he had been very
ill, I remember that he passed his time of convalescence at our house,
where he found all the kindness and comfort it was a brother's part to
bestow. To the distress of his relatives, and especially to the grief
of his mother, he took to excessive drinking. His mother he completely
neglected, even during the long illness which kept her to her room
before her death.
Surprise has often been expressed at the evident estrangement
between the brothers; and this has been especially the case with
religious persons after they have listened to, or heard of, the public
protestations of religion and love for my father which have fallen from
the Christian, protestations which the Atheist has received in silence.
He, who so well knew the worth of these phrases, preferred to let
himself be misunderstood by his silence rather than utter the miserable
truth.
The story my father had to tell us that Christmas Eve was that his
brother Robert (he was always called by his second name) had been
arrested on the charge of embezzling various small sums from his
employer. During the next few days, while he was under remand, he wrote
from the House of Detention, thanking my father for his kindness to his
wife, protesting his innocence, and expressing himself as "perfectly
happy and contented," knowing he could clear himself from all charges,
and asking my father's help in his defence. At the final examination
in the Police Court the case was sent up for trial at the Middlesex
Sessions, and at his brother's request my father instructed a solicitor
to appear for him. Mrs W. R. Bradlaugh warmly expressed her gratitude
to him for his kindness, hoping that some day she might be able to
repay him; "Were it not for you," she said, "I do not know what I
should do." Her husband, released on bail, protested that he would
neither see nor speak to his brother until he had proved his innocence.
On the 8th of January my father wrote his sister, Mrs Norman, promising
to allow his brother's wife a small weekly sum in the event of Robert's
conviction, adding that they had already had £12, 10s. from him in
six weeks. He was, as we know, himself so heavily involved in money
difficulties that the smallest unforeseen expense made a serious
addition to him; despite this, a week later he sent more money, and
promised to pay the solicitor's costs. More, he vowed he would not do,
"either for name or for money's sake." He felt the disgrace keenly,
and considered moreover that his brother had no moral claim upon
him, "for" as he wrote his sister, "when he was in full work, and I
in distress, he did not even help me to keep his mother, who loved
him so well." At the Middlesex Sessions a sentence of six months'
imprisonment was passed, at the end of which Robert once more wrote his
brother, thanking him for the kindness he had shown to his wife, and
acknowledging his indebtedness to the extent of £30, which he talked
about repaying on some future occasion. At the same time he assured my
father that his feelings should not again be harrowed by any misconduct
on his (Robert's) part: henceforth his living should be honestly
obtained, or he would starve.
My father sent his brother some more money. Then, of course, came other
applications, coupled at length with the request that the money should
be sent direct, and not, as was my father's custom, through his sister,
Mrs Norman. But my father would not consent to this. He told his
sister of Robert's demand, adding that if she would take charge of the
money he would send what he was able; if she would not, he would send
nothing. My aunt was perplexed; she did not know what to do. Although
she had had her sister-in-law and the child at her house during
Robert's absence, she had not seen her since his return, and she felt
that she did not want to force her brother Robert to receive further
kindness through her hands. However, she at last consented to continue
to act as intermediary; consequently every penny that Mr Bradlaugh sent
his brother passed through her hands.
Just before my father went to America, in the autumn of 1874, Robert
(who, a few years later, alleged that in 1872 his brother cast him off)
suggested that he should go to the States with him, and be introduced
by him as a young man whom he had known for some time; but it is hardly
necessary to say that my father did not acquiesce in this proposal. In
the following year, while still receiving pecuniary assistance from
his brother, Mr W. R. Bradlaugh attended some of Moody and Sankey's
meetings, and there professed "conversion," although, as he was brought
up and educated in the tenets of the Church of England, and was never
at any time a Freethinker, it is difficult to understand from what
he was converted. One day my Aunt Lizzie was somewhat surprised at
receiving a visit from him. He had been to her house only a day or two
before to receive a sovereign which my father had sent at his request,
and she was not expecting to see him again so soon. He walked into the
house, triumphantly exclaiming that he had got "another berth," at the
same time showing her a sheet of the _Christian Herald_ in connection
with which he had been given employment.
From that day until my father's death his brother never ceased to try
and annoy him--always, of course, under the cloak of religion and
love. He would send him religious books--the last came at the New
Year of 1891. "This is from my beautiful brother," said my father, as
he dropped it into the wastepaper basket. He sometimes lectured in the
same town, on the same date as my father, and the hall engaged for his
lectures would perhaps be quite close to the one in which Mr Bradlaugh
was speaking. He would be announced, maybe, merely as "Mr Bradlaugh,"
or even as "the brother of Charles Bradlaugh," or "the brother of the
Member for Northampton," and would very likely entreat his audience
to unite with him in prayer for his "brother Charles Bradlaugh." He
had named his son "Charles," and in a letter written to his brother in
1880, he had recourse to the following unmanly taunt: "I want not to
trade upon your name; it has never helped me, it dies with yourself,
and is to be perpetuated by the son of one whom you at present hate."
My father's own son, who also bore his name and of whom he had been so
proud, had then been dead ten years.
Mr W. R. Bradlaugh did not confine himself to these annoyances--which,
after all, were petty, and even if they irritated at the time, could
be easily endured--but he has been responsible for various false and
injurious statements concerning my father's personal character. Some of
these were circulated during his lifetime, but he remained silent with
every provocation to speak. Even in a "private and confidential" letter
to the editor of a friendly paper which had carelessly quoted some
extremely malicious falsehoods alleged to have been uttered by Mr W. R.
Bradlaugh, my father only said that, "being under great obligation" to
him, his brother tried to injure him.
This is the second time in this book that I have been compelled to
reveal a story of sorrow and disgrace that I would have given much
to have kept hidden, but justice to my father demands that the truth
should be known. If the telling it should bring the smallest injury to
a man who, twenty years ago, erred and expiated his error according to
the laws of our country, it will give me the deepest pain and regret.
Counting surely on my father's silence, however, he chose to pursue a
course of conduct which has obliged me to tell the truth concerning
their estrangement. Out of regard for his brother, my father might
knowingly and deliberately suffer himself to be misunderstood, and
his silence to be unfavourably construed, but it is not for me, his
faithful daughter and biographer, to allow the misunderstanding to
continue.