FIRST VISIT TO AMERICA.
My father had many times been asked to go to America on a lecturing
tour, but it was not until 1873 that he finally consented to do so.
Then indeed he went, as he frankly said, in the hope of earning a
little money, for there was so much that he wanted to be doing at home
that, but for the ever-increasing pressure of debt, he would not have
felt able to give the time for such a purpose. He visited America
three times--in three consecutive winters--but although his lecturing
met with enormous success, and he won friends amongst "all sorts and
conditions of men," yet his fortunes received a check, of more or
less severity, on each occasion. On every one of his visits something
untoward happened; whether it took the form of an American money panic,
an English election, or a serious illness.
These obstacles, unexpected and unavoidable, were over and above those
prepared for him by the pious of various sects, from the Roman Catholic
to the Unitarian, in the attempts to prejudice American opinion against
him. As soon as it was fairly realised that Charles Bradlaugh was
going lecturing in the States, the ubiquitous "London Correspondent"
seemed to think it his duty to prepare the minds of his Boston or
other American readers for the advent of their expected visitor, and
each depicted him according to his fancy. The subjoined extracts will
demonstrate not only the kindliness and veracity of the writers, but
also the choice and elegant language in which they expressed their
sentiments:--
I.--"You have heard of Mr Bradlaugh. Mr Bradlaugh is a creature six
feet high, twenty inches broad, and about twelve thousand feet of
impudence. He keeps a den in a hole-in-the-wall here, dignified by the
title of the 'Hall of Science,' in which he holds forth Sunday after
Sunday to a mob of ruffians whose sole hope after death is immediate
annihilation.... The _Pilot_, if it can do nothing else, can warn our
people from laying hands upon this uneducated ruffian--a trooper in a
cavalry regiment, a policeman, a bailiff's cud, a vagabond, and now a
speculator in the easy infidelity of the States."[179]
[Footnote 179: _Boston Pilot_, August 2nd, 1873.]
II.--In England "practical politicians among the advanced liberal
party avoid him as honest men avoid a felon, as virtuous women avoid a
prostitute."[180]
[Footnote 180: _Boston Advertiser_ (editorial), September (18-20) 1873.]
On the 6th of September he left Liverpool for his first journey across
the Atlantic by the Cunard steamship the _Scotia_, which arrived at
New York on the 17th--a long passage, as it seems in these days when
vessels make the journey in little more than half that time. He had
been told of the insulting paragraphs so industriously circulated about
himself, and he had so much at stake, that as the _Scotia_ neared
New York he felt oppressed with anxieties and nervousness as to what
was in store for him in this yet untried land. From the very outset,
however, he met with cheery welcome and friendly greeting. When he
landed he presented his customs declaration in the usual way to the
chief collector in order to get his baggage opened, but the collector
surprised and pleased him by saying, "Mr Bradlaugh, we know you here,
and the least we can do is to pass you through comfortably"--and he was
passed through comfortably, for without more ado the chalk "sesame"
was scrawled upon his portmanteau and rugs. He had barely established
himself in his hotel when representatives from several New York
journals came to interview him, and his arrival was advertised by the
press to such an extent that within seven days of landing he had seen
close upon three hundred newspaper notices of himself.[181]
[Footnote 181: We have a fairly full record of these visits to the
States in the weekly letters my father sent to the _National Reformer_,
in addition to numerous newspaper reports and private correspondence.
The weekly letters to the _National Reformer_ gave much information as
to labour questions in the various places visited by Mr Bradlaugh, and
this was at the time of the utmost value, and greatly appreciated by
his readers.]
On the Saturday after his arrival he was invited to dine at the Lotos
Club, where he received the warmest and most hospitable welcome, the
Directory afterwards voting him the privileges of the Club during his
stay in New York. A few days later he was asked to a reception given by
the Lotos to Wilkie Collins. The guests were received by the President,
Whitelaw Reid, and amongst them were Dr Ludwig Büchner and Bret Harte.
Mr Bradlaugh was called upon to speak, and I gather that he made a
very favourable impression. O'Donovan Rossa called upon him soon after
his arrival, and thanked him for his work for Ireland, and showed him
several small courtesies. On Sunday the 28th he was received by the New
York Positivists and welcomed in extremely kind terms by the President
of the Society. The religious journals were greatly irritated at the
attention paid to Mr Bradlaugh, and did not neglect to show it, one
even refusing to insert the advertisement of his lectures sent by the
advertising agency.
Misfortune met him within a few days of his landing in the shape
of a financial panic of unusual severity, which, commencing in New
York, spread through the States. Speaking of this panic in one of his
earliest letters home, he says: "I entered the house of Henry Clews &
Co., about five minutes after Jay Cooke and Co. had stopped payment.
Then the excitement was not so great; people seemed stupefied with the
incredible news, as Jay Cooke was a name like Baring and Rothschild.
Later every one seemed to grow delirious, and crowds gathered round the
doors of several banks, clamouring for admittance, the inside of each
bank being already filled with anxious and angry people waiting to cash
cheques, and doubting while they waited. On Friday things got worse,
and the sight on Friday night, in the hall and reading room and smoking
room of the Fifth Avenue Hotel, was something to remember. There was a
dense mass of men, packed together--Jay Gould, Vanderbilt, Clews, and
hundreds of others who had commenced the week with enormous fortunes,
some entirely ruined in the last two days, and others not knowing
whether or not bankruptcy awaited them in the morning. The _élite_ of
New York as seen in that seething crowd did not show to advantage; the
Money Devil had gripped their entrails and disfigured their faces. On
Saturday the President of the Republic arrived at the hotel in which I
was staying, and then staircases, hall, corridors, smoking and reading
rooms were besieged, and outside, in the streets, were carriages and
uneasy waiters to gather scraps of news or comfort. I guess that
very few went to church on Sunday, September 21st. On Sunday evening
President Grant left for Washington, but the multitude did not decrease
until midnight came. Each one who had seen or who had spoken to the
President was waylaid, buttonholed, and became the centre of an eager
group of questioners. The trouble was so intense that the bankers,
brokers, and railway contractors actually forgot whether they were
well or ill dressed." These financial troubles greatly affected all
lecturing engagements, as one might easily imagine, and Mr Bradlaugh
in particular found his difficulties considerably increased by the
suicide of his agent, whose affairs had become considerably involved in
consequence of the panic.
His first lecture was given in the Steinway Hall at New York, on
October 3rd. Considering the home troubles, the audience was a good
one, one which he himself felt to be very remarkable. Amongst those
present were many members of the Lotos Club, including their President,
Whitelaw Reid, and D. J. Croly, "Jenny June," Colonel Olcott, General
Kilpatrick, Andrew Jackson Davis, Theodore Tilton, Mrs Victoria
Woodhull, O'Donovan Rossa, the Rev. O. B. Frothingham, Colonel Hay,
Bret Harte, and Mr Andrews were also amongst his listeners. My father
had been feeling very nervous about this first lecture. When he arrived
in New York he was asked how long he expected to remain in America. "If
I fail at Steinway Hall on October 3rd, I shall take the next steamer
for England," was the reply. But there was no question of failure;
he met with an immediate and wonderful success; his audience came to
criticise and remained to applaud. In the papers of the following
day his speech was greatly praised, and he himself pronounced one of
"the greatest of living orators." The Brindley episode,[182] which by
covering him with ridicule might have done him serious injury, was, by
his coolness and quick wit, turned into a decided advantage. On the day
after his lecture he had numerous kindly callers and congratulations.
Amongst those who called was Mrs Victoria Woodhull, and Mr Bradlaugh's
impressions of this much-talked-of lady are not without a certain
interest. When Mrs Woodhull called he was talking to Stephen Pearl
Andrews, the author of a learned book entitled "The Basic Outlines
of Universology," and, "while chatting with Mr Andrews," said my
father, "a slightly built lady entered, who was presented to me as Mrs
Victoria Woodhull, the present President of the American Spiritualists,
and advocate of very advanced doctrines on social questions. The
energy and enthusiasm manifested by this lady in our extremely brief
conversation were marvellous; her eyes brightened, her whole face
lit up, and she seemed all life. It would have been impossible to
have brought together two persons more exactly opposite than Victoria
Woodhull and Stephen Pearl Andrews--one all fire, the other all quiet
thought; the one intent on active out-door war, the other content to
work almost isolated in his closet on a huge book, which few can read
and fewer still will care to read. Mrs Woodhull is evidently made for
sharp strife of tongue and pen. Her face lights up with a beauty which
does not belong to it ordinarily, but which gilds it as she speaks.
Mr Andrews uses his pen only to note down the record of his thought,
without the slightest regard to the never-ceasing strife around him.
His forehead is marked with the furrows hard thinking has ploughed upon
it. Many people here speak very bitterly against Victoria Woodhull; at
present I prefer to take sides with none. It is enough to say that she
is most certainly a marvellously audacious woman." Before he quitted
New York for the New England States the Lotos Club gave him another
dinner, at which he met Petroleum V. Nasby and Colonel John Hay.
[Footnote 182: See p. 160.]
In Boston, despite all the prejudices excited against him by the Boston
papers, Mr Bradlaugh met with a really splendid reception. His first
meeting was presided over by Wendell Phillips, who introduced him as
"a man who, Sir Charles Dilke says, does the thinking for more minds,
has more influence, than any other man in England;"[183] and who
himself compared him with Samuel Adams, "the eloquent agitator, the
most statesmanlike mind God lent New England in 1776." Boston people
remarked that the audience was a curious one, unusual to the regular
lyceum lectures. It included many cultivated people, many scholarly and
solid men, many accomplished and delicate women, but in addition to
these, who were customary attendants at lecture courses, there was an
unusually large number of young men present, and more remarkable still
was the large attendance of working men, the whole forming a "strangely
composite" but wonderfully sympathetic audience. On the platform were
Charles Sumner, who, at the close of the address, spoke words of warm
encouragement to my father; William Lloyd Garrison, who cheered him
repeatedly; and other prominent Boston men.
[Footnote 183: This saying, attributed to Sir Charles Dilke, was given
on the authority of Mr Jenkins, author of "Ginx's Baby," who had lately
been in Boston.]
The next day, with Wendell Phillips and George Julian Harney as guides,
he visited the different places of interest in Boston, including
Theodore Parker's house, where he was deeply affected by the reverent
care Mrs Parker bestowed on the rooms formerly occupied by her husband,
and by the evident worship in which she held every memory of him. Mrs
Parker gave him photographs of Theodore Parker and of the library; with
these in his hand, he said, "I hurried away, almost too much moved to
thank the widow for her gentle courtesy."
A large part of his first Sunday in Boston was passed with Charles
Sumner in his rooms at the Coolidge House. They had a very interesting
talk together on the politics of the hour and future possibilities, and
also on matters connected with the Abolition struggle. Mr Bradlaugh
felt a deep admiration for Sumner, and Sumner, in his turn, was most
kind to my father and warm in his praises.
He was invited by Dr Loring, President of the Massachusetts Senate,
to a dinner at the Massachusetts Club, given to Charles Sumner, to
congratulate him on his supposed recovery to health--congratulations
which proved, alas! all too premature. At this dinner he met Henry
Wilson, Vice-President of the United States, and Joshua B. Smith--born
a slave, then a Senator--besides other distinguished men. Every one was
kind to him: Henry Wilson gave him a pressing invitation to Washington;
Sumner bade him disregard the unfair attacks made upon him. When his
health was proposed, and they all rose to their feet to give him three
hearty cheers of greeting, he felt amply repaid for the pain he had
suffered from those coarse attacks, bred by bigotry, which had alike
preceded and pursued him from the Old World to the New. He dined with
Sumner on other occasions, and receptions were given him in Boston, to
which most of the leading men were invited. In fact, such honours and
hospitalities were heaped upon him that, as one journal remarked, he
seemed to have persuaded some people at least "that there are others
besides Satan who are not so black as they are painted."
He naturally became a prey to the usual autograph-hunter. The "Theodore
Parker Fraternity" determined to utilise the demand for his signature
by procuring a supply for their "Fair," and Wendell Phillips undertook
to beg them, which he did in the following letter:--
"23rd October '73.
"DEAR SIR,--The 'Theodore Parker Fraternity'--all the Church
he allowed--hold a Fair, beginning October 27. At Mrs Parker's table
she sells autographs--and wants some of yours. Now please write
your name on the enclosed cards--a motto or sentiment also if you
choose--and re-mail them to me, then I'll thank you, and earn their
thanks also--and forgive you that you gave Mrs Sargent a photograph of
yourself and forgot me!
"I hope you find crowds everywhere as cordial as those you gathered
here--and where, as at Cambridge, if you don't happen on a crowd, I
trust you may have one such hearer as you had there--Henry James,
equal to about 1800 common folk--who was wholly carried away.--
Yours,
WENDELL PHILLIPS.
"Mr C. Bradlaugh."
Wendell Philips also presided at Mr Bradlaugh's second lecture in
Boston, and again the audience was said to include some of the
brightest intellects in New England. Amongst the visitors who came the
next day to congratulate him on his success was William Lloyd Garrison,
who, like Sumner, was one of my father's "great men." These Boston
lectures produced an even greater sensation, and a revulsion of feeling
in his favour more complete, than those delivered in New York.
After lecturing in the New England States, where I gather that many of
the lectures originally contemplated had to be cut out in consequence
of the distress occasioned by the financial panic, Mr Bradlaugh went
west. He visited amongst other places Buffalo, Cincinnati (where the
Roman Catholic Archbishop Purcell was amongst his auditors), St Louis,
and Kansas, and at each place the newspapers waged fierce warfare
after his departure. He reached Kansas in December, two days after
the suspension of the chief bank in that city, and here he met with
a somewhat serious accident. In passing along one of the inclines of
the city, he slipped backwards on the frozen ground, and throwing out
his right hand to save his back, he tore a piece out of the palm,
and deeply gashed his wrist. [184] He was unable to get the wound
properly dressed in Kansas, and as he had to be continually travelling
and lecturing in the severe cold (about 6°), the injury was greatly
aggravated, and it was many months before the wound was properly healed
and without pain. While lecturing he suffered intensely, and when,
as sometimes happened, some gesture or movement would set the wound
bleeding afresh, it was, in addition, extremely inconvenient. The pain,
at times exceedingly acute, rendered him abnormally irritable, and he
afterwards told us one or two amusing stories of his trials and his
temper at this time. At one place amongst his audience were a young
lady, an elderly lady, whom he set down as the maiden aunt of the
younger, and a young gentlemen, whom he assumed to be the young lady's
lover. The young people kept up a continual flow of conversation,
until, almost frantic with pain from his wound (which was also bleeding
so freely that he was obliged to keep his hand raised all the evening),
he stopped short in his lecture, and turning to the young people said,
amidst profound silence, "If that young lady and young gentleman prefer
their conversation to my lecture, I should be greatly obliged if they
would continue it outside." The "aunt," he told us, looked daggers at
the poor girl, and the culprits themselves did not dare to so much as
exchange another glance during the rest of the evening; they looked so
uncomfortable that he felt quite sorry for them, and repented of his
irritability. At another place, where it was exceedingly cold, the man
in charge of the stoves took the opportunity to thrust in huge logs
with a great noise whenever he was unusually pathetic. He says that he
bore with this as Job could not have borne with it had he been tempted
to lecture there, but at last even his patience was exhausted, and he
thundered out "words of affectionate remonstrance, which effectually
prevented any more wood being used that evening."
[Footnote 184: The _Kansas City Times_ gave this amusing description
of the accident:--"Kansas City is not a smooth city. Its greatest
pride is its thousand hills, precipices, and bluffs. And the main
characteristics of its inhabitants are their lofty airs, loud tone,
and agility. This style is natural; it is acquired by hopping and
skipping from the top of one side-walk, across a chasm or ravine, to
the end of the "cut" or bluff, a limited distance, or across the street
to a ledge or plank, which offers a temporary relief from acrobatic
exercise. Bradlaugh is unused to Kansas City side-walks, and never
having practised tight-rope dancing, or walking upon an inclined plane
of forty-five degrees, found himself somewhat surprised on Thursday
morning. He had just left the Broadway, or Coates House, in company
with General Lamborn, of the Kansas Pacific, and was about to cross
Tenth Street, when he suddenly found himself falling; his feet slid
down the inclined plane called a crossing, which was covered with ice,
and he fell. Mr Bradlaugh is a large, heavy man, and had a great fear
of falling upon the edge of the pavement. He threw out his right hand,
and the full weight of his body came down upon his wrist. His hand
unfortunately struck upon the edge of some sharp substance, probably
the edge of the side-walk or curbing, the keen knife-like edge of which
tore through the palm of his hand, inflicting a serious wound, reaching
beyond the wrist, creating a painful but not dangerous hurt.... It is
a merciful providence that the life of this great and good man was
saved."]
Shortly after this he was at Chicago, and was amazed to see how
the city had recovered from the recent fire; the spectacle of the
magnificent buildings seemed like reopening a page from "Aladdin and
his Wonderful Lamp." Just before entering the lecture hall he saw a
face he hardly recognised. "It was one I had not seen for a quarter
of a century," he said. "'Don't you know me, Mr Bradlaugh?' was the
greeting, and the voice seemed more familiar than the face. My memory
went back to the days when food was short, and when I shared the
scanty meal with the questioner, her mother, and her sister at Warner
Place; but twenty-five years had sufficiently blotted the memory and
blurred the page to confuse me in the recognition. Half-hesitatingly,
I said, 'I am not quite sure; I think it is Hypatia.' I was wrong,
however; it was her sister Theophila. And thus, after so long a time,
I was again brought face to face with the daughters of one to whom the
English freethought party in great measure owe the free press and free
platforms we use to-day." He only stayed in Chicago one night, and had
but a short interview with his old friends; yet even that brief glimpse
of them brought him a throb of pain, "for," he said, "I could not help
wondering whether, thirty years after my death, my own daughters might
be in a strange land so entirely overlooked" as these ladies were.
From Chicago he went to Kalamazoo, and there the news of the death of
his lecture-agent compelled his instant return to New York. He was very
feverish and unwell at this time; his general health suffering from the
effects of the wound in his hand, which had now become greatly swollen
and inflamed, and caused him acute pain. The last days of the year
found him once more in Boston, and they were made ever memorable to
him by his first meeting with Ralph Waldo Emerson at a reception given
by Mrs Sargent. As soon as he was able to use a pen--although writing
was for some long time a matter of pain and difficulty--he himself
described his meeting with Emerson, the hero of his boyhood's days.
"On Wednesday, December 31st," he wrote, "I had my first interview with
Ralph Waldo Emerson, at a reception given to him by Mrs Sargent at
her residence in Chestnut Street. The rooms were filled by a company
of probably the most chosen amongst New England's illustrious men
and women, gathered to give greeting to 'the sage of Concord.'...
My hostess gratified me soon after my arrival by searching me out
amongst the crowd with the welcome words, 'Mr Emerson is specially
inquiring for you.' I soon found myself face to face with a kind,
truthful-looking man, reminding me somewhat in his countenance of the
late Robert Owen. After a few words of introductory converse, I was
assigned a chair, which had been specially preserved for me, next to
Mr Emerson. The afternoon will always be memorable to me. Ralph Waldo
Emerson commenced by quietly and unaffectedly reading in a clear,
measured voice his new poem on 'The Tea-party Centennial.' His manner
was so gentle that he seemed only reading it to one person, and yet his
voice was so distinct that it filled the room with its lowest tones.
When Mr Emerson ceased reading, a little to my surprise, and much
to my delight, I was called upon to speak. Twenty-six years before,
when too poor to buy the book, I had copied out parts of the famous
lecture on 'Self-Reliance,' and now I stood in the presence of the
great preacher, at least an example of a self-reliant man. After my
tribute of respectful and earnestly thankful words to Emerson as one
of the world's teachers, I could not refrain from using the spirit of
his lines to ground a comparison between the public opinion of Boston
in 1773 and 1873. Mr Emerson smiled an almost fatherly approbation
of my very short speech; but, what the _Traveller_ terms my 'kindly,
courteous, but frank rebuke of the spirit of the age,' called forth
quite a lively debate, which was opened by Wendell Phillips, who was
followed by Henry Wilson, by the Rev. Mr Alger, and Dr Bartol, then by
Mr Alcott, and last, but by no means least, by a notable woman, Julia
Ward Howe. Mrs Howe strongly recalled to me the cold, intellectual
face of Archbishop Manning, but she manifested feeling as well as
intellect in her brief address. Wendell Philips spoke a second time,
and to my immense delight, for it gave me a better opportunity of
judging the greatest orator in New England. I fully expected that Mr
Emerson, who had listened with marked attention and evident interest
to the conflicting statements, would give some opinion; but as the
oracle remained silent, I was obliged to be content with his pleasant
personal words of promise to seek me out for another meeting before my
departure for England."
On the same night Mr Bradlaugh lectured to a brilliant and crowded
audience in the Music Hall, and the next day the Vice-President of the
United States came to congratulate him on his "continued successes," at
the same time presenting him with the first volume of his invaluable
work upon "The Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America." At Salem,
where my father lectured shortly afterwards, he was the guest of Dr
Loring, President of the Massachusetts Senate. Then at the special
request of the Rev. A. A. Miner, D.D.--who had heard him speak in
Boston--he addressed the students and officers of Tuft's College, and
found in them a rarely appreciative and enthusiastic audience. On the
journey back to Boston Dr Miner told him that he liked his students
to hear every man he thought a true man, whatever might be his views.
"Some denounce me as a bigot," he added, "and others regard me as a
heretic. I wish that when my young men leave me they may be carefully
trained to hear all opinions and to form their own."
Everywhere my father found good friends, both amongst the poor and
amongst the well-to-do; many old remembered faces, too, he met--poor
men who had left the Old World to tempt, and sometimes to win, better
fortune in the New. When he visited Niagara, the man who drove his
buggy turned out to be a Northampton man and a devoted admirer.
But all the kindness and all the friendliness shown him in America did
not weaken his fondness for his mother country and his determination
to serve it. He loved his own land, and the men and women there who
trusted him and worked with him. In the middle of January he wrote
home: "My heart now yearns for Europe; and when I have covered another
twenty thousand miles or so ... I shall pack up the remnants of my
shirts and come home." Little did he think as he wrote those words
that within the brief space of a fortnight he would be on the sea,
going back to England as fast as the _Java_ could take him. But such
was to be the final misfortune attending his first American lecturing
tour. As he was journeying towards Washington to lecture, and to pay
his promised visit to Henry Wilson in that city, a telegram from
Austin Holyoake reached him, telling him that Gladstone had dissolved
Parliament. He stopped short in his journey, and turned back to New
York in order to take the first vessel bound for home.
On his return to England he found that his lectures in the United
States were represented as having been a dead failure; and that he
himself had been mostly laughed at and ridiculed, statements exactly
the reverse of truth. That his lectures brought him no money profit was
the consequence, not of his unpopularity, but of the terrible financial
panic that took place almost as soon as he arrived in the States.
Then just as he was beginning to recoup the losses owing to this, he
was summoned back by the dissolution of Parliament; and this final
catastrophe brought him home with pockets almost as light as when he
started; and worse than all, with a tremendous burden of liabilities
incurred through broken engagements.