V.

The spring ripened into summer in uneventful fashion, so far as I was

concerned, the smooth current of my life flowing on untroubled, hard

reading and merry play filling the happy days. I learned later that two

or three offers of marriage reached my mother for me; but she answered to

each: "She is too young. I will not have her troubled." Of love-dreams I

had absolutely none, partly, I expect, from the absence of fiery novels

from my reading, partly because my whole dream-tendencies were absorbed

by religion, and all my fancies ran towards a "religious life". I longed

to spend my time in worshipping Jesus, and was, as far as my inner life

was concerned, absorbed in that passionate love of "the Savior" which,

among emotional Catholics, really is the human passion of love

transferred to an ideal--for women to Jesus, for men to the Virgin Mary.

In order to show that I am not here exaggerating, I subjoin a few of the

prayers in which I found daily delight, and I do this in order to show

how an emotional girl may be attracted by these so-called devotional

exercises.

"O crucified Love, raise in me fresh ardors of love and consolation, that

it may henceforth be the greatest torment I can endure ever to offend

Thee; that it may be my greatest delight to please Thee."

"Let the remembrance of Thy death, O Lord Jesu, make me to desire and

pant after Thee, that I may delight in Thy gracious presence."

"O most sweet Jesu Christ, I, unworthy sinner, yet redeemed by Thy

precious blood.... Thine I am and will be, in life and in death."

"O Jesu, beloved, fairer than the sons of men, draw me after Thee with

the cords of Thy love."

"Blessed are Thou, O most merciful God, who didst vouchsafe to espouse me

to the heavenly Bridegroom in the waters of baptism, and hast imparted

Thy body and blood as a new gift of espousal and the meet consummation of

Thy love."

"O most sweet Lord Jesu, transfix the affections of my inmost soul with

that most joyous and most healthful wound of Thy love, with true, serene,

most holy, apostolic charity; that my soul may ever languish and melt

with entire love and longing for Thee. Let it desire Thee and faint for

Thy courts; long to be dissolved and be with Thee."

"Oh, that I could embrace Thee with that most burning love of angels."

"Let Him kiss me with the kisses of His mouth; for Thy love is better

than wine. Draw me, we will run after Thee. The king hath brought me into

his chambers.... Let my soul, O Lord, feel the sweetness of Thy presence.

May it taste how sweet Thou art.... May the sweet and burning power of

Thy love, I beseech Thee, absorb my soul."

To my dear mother this type of religious thought was revolting. But then,

she was a woman who had been a wife and a devoted one, while I was a

child awaking into womanhood, with emotions and passions dawning and not

understood, emotions and passions which craved satisfaction, and found it

in this "Ideal Man". Thousands of girls in England are to-day in exactly

this mental phase, and it is a phase full of danger. In America it is

avoided by a frank, open, unsentimental companionship between boys and

girls, between young men and young women. In England, where this wisely

free comradeship is regarded as "improper", the perfectly harmless and

natural sexual feeling is either dwarfed or forced, and so we have

"prudishness" and "fastness". The sweeter and more loving natures become

prudes; the more shallow as well as the more high-spirited and merry

natures become flirts. Often, as in my own case, the merry side finds its

satisfaction in amusements that demand active physical exercise, while

the loving side finds its joy in religious expansion, in which the

idealised figure of Jesus becomes the object of passion, and the life of

the nun becomes the ideal life, as being dedicated to that one devotion.

To the girl, of course, this devotion is all that is most holy, most

noble, most pure. But analysing it now, after it has long been a thing of

the past, I cannot but regard it as a mere natural outlet for the dawning

feelings of womanhood, certain to be the more intense and earnest as the

nature is deep and loving.

One very practical and mischievous result of this religious feeling is

the idealisation of all clergymen, as being the special messengers of,

and the special means of communication with, the "Most High". The priest

is surrounded by the halo of Deity. The power that holds the keys of

heaven and of hell becomes the object of reverence and of awe. Far more

lofty than any title bestowed by earthly monarch is that patent of

nobility straight from the hand of the "King of kings", which seems to

give to the mortal something of the authority of the immortal, to crown

the head of the priest with the diadem which belongs to those who are

"kings and priests unto God". Swayed by these feelings, the position of a

clergyman's wife seems second only to that of the nun, and has therefore

a wonderful attractiveness, an attractiveness in which the particular

clergyman affected plays a very subordinate part; it is the "sacred

office", the nearness to "holy things", the consecration involved, which

seem to make the wife a nearer worshipper than those who do not partake

in the immediate "services of the altar"--it is all these that shed a

glamor over the clerical life which attracts most those who are most apt

to self-devotion, most swayed by imagination. I know how incomprehensible

this will seem to many of my readers, but it is a fact none the less, and

the saddest pity of it is that the glamor is most over those whose brains

are quick and responsive to all forms of noble emotions, all suggestions

of personal self-sacrifice; and if such later rise to the higher emotions

whose shadows have attracted them, and to that higher self-sacrifice

whose whispers reached them in their early youth, then the false

prophet's veil is raised, and the life is either wrecked, or through

storm-wind and surge of battling billows, with loss of mast and sail, is

steered by firm hand into the port of a higher creed.

My mother, Minnie, and I passed the summer holidays at St. Leonards, and

many a merry gallop had we over our favorite fields, I on a favorite

black mare, Gipsy Queen, as full of life and spirits as I was myself, who

danced gaily over ditch and hedge, thinking little of my weight, for I

rode barely eight stone. At the end of those, our last free summer

holidays, we returned as usual to Harrow, and shortly afterwards I went

to Switzerland with some dear friends of ours named Roberts.

Everyone about Manchester will remember Mr. Roberts, the solicitor, the

"poor man's lawyer". Close friend of Ernest Jones, and hand-in-hand with

him through all his struggles, Mr. Roberts was always ready to fight a

poor man's battle for him without fee, and to champion any worker

unfairly dealt with. He worked hard in the agitation which saved women

from working in the mines, and I have heard him tell how he had seen them

toiling, naked to the waist, with short petticoats barely reaching to

their knees, rough, foul-tongued, brutalised out of all womanly decency

and grace; and how he had seen little children working there too, babies

of three and four set to watch a door, and falling asleep at their work

to be roused by curse and kick to the unfair toil. The old man's eye

would begin to flash and his voice to rise as he told of these horrors,

and then his face would soften as he added that, after it was all over

and the slavery was put an end to, as he went through a coal-district the

women standing at their doors would lift up their children to see "Lawyer

Roberts" go by, and would bid "God bless him" for what he had done. This

dear old man was my first tutor in Radicalism, and I was an apt pupil. I

had taken no interest in politics, but had unconsciously reflected more

or less the decorous Whiggism which had always surrounded me. I regarded

"the poor" as folk to be educated, looked after, charitably dealt with,

and always treated with most perfect courtesy, the courtesy being due

from me, as a lady, to all equally, whether they were rich or poor. But

to Mr. Roberts "the poor" were the working-bees, the wealth producers,

with a right to self-rule, not to looking after, with a right to justice,

not to charity, and he preached his doctrines to me, in season and out of

season. "What do you think of John Bright?" he demanded of me one day. "I

have never thought of him at all," I answered lightly. "Isn't he a rather

rough sort of man, who goes about making rows?" "There, I thought so," he

broke out fiercely. "That's just what they say. I believe some of you

fine ladies would not go to heaven if you had to rub shoulders with John

Bright, the noblest man God ever gave to the cause of the poor." And then

he launched out into stories of John Bright's work and John Bright's

eloquence, and showed me the changes that work and eloquence had made in

the daily lives of the people.

With Mr. Roberts, his wife, and two daughters, I went to Switzerland as

the autumn drew near. It would be of little interest to tell how we went

to Chamounix and worshipped Mont Blanc, how we crossed the Mer de Glace

and the Mauvais Pas, how we visited the Monastery of St. Bernard (I

losing my heart to the beautiful dogs), how we went by steamer down the

lake of Thun, how we gazed at the Jungfrau and saw the exquisite

Staubbach, how we visited Lausanne, and Berne, and Geneva, how we stood

beside the wounded Lion, and shuddered in the dungeon of Chillon, how we

walked distances we never should have attempted in England, how we

younger ones lost ourselves on a Sunday afternoon, after ascending a

mountain, and returned footsore and weary, to meet a party going out to

seek us with lanterns and ropes. All these things have been so often

described that I will not add one more description to the list, nor dwell

on that strange feeling of awe, of wonder, of delight, that everyone must

have felt, when the glory of the peaks clad in "everlasting snow" is for

the first time seen against the azure sky on the horizon, and you whisper

to yourself, half breathless: "The Alps! The Alps!"

During that autumn I became engaged to the Rev. Frank Besant, giving up

with a sigh of regret my dreams of the "religious life", and substituting

for them the work which would have to be done as the wife of a priest,

laboring ever in the church and among the poor. A queer view, some people

may think, for a girl to take of married life, but it was the natural

result of my living the life of the Early Church, of my enthusiasm for

religious work. To me a priest was a half-angelic creature, whose whole

life was consecrated to heaven; all that was deepest and truest in my

nature chafed against my useless days, longed for work, yearned to devote

itself, as I had read women saints had done, to the service of the church

and the poor, to the battling against sin and misery. "You will have more

opportunity for doing good as a clergyman's wife than as anything else,"

was one of the pleas urged on my reluctance. My ignorance of all that

marriage meant was as profound as though I had been a child of four, and

my knowledge of the world was absolutely _nil_. My darling mother meant

all that was happiest for me when she shielded me from all knowledge of

sorrow and of sin, when she guarded me from the smallest idea of the

marriage relation, keeping me ignorant as a baby till I left her home a

wife. But looking back now on all, I deliberately say that no more fatal

blunder can be made than to train a girl to womanhood in ignorance of all

life's duties and burdens, and then to let her face them for the first

time away from all the old associations, the old helps, the old refuge on

the mother's breast. That "perfect innocence" maybe very beautiful, but

it is a perilous possession, and Eve should have the knowledge of good

and of evil ere she wanders forth from the paradise of a mother's love.

When a word is never spoken to a girl that is not a caress; when

necessary rebuke comes in tone of tenderest reproach; when "You have

grieved me" has been the heaviest penalty for a youthful fault; when no

anxiety has ever been allowed to trouble the young heart--then, when the

hothouse flower is transplanted, and rough winds blow on it, it droops

and fades.

The spring and summer of 1867 passed over with little of incident, save

one. We quitted Harrow, and the wrench was great. My brother had left

school, and had gone to Cambridge; the master, who had lived with us for

so long, had married and had gone to a house of his own; my mother

thought that as she was growing older, the burden of management was

becoming too heavy, and she desired to seek an easier life. She had saved

money enough to pay for my brother's college career, and she determined

to invest the rest of her savings in a house in St. Leonard's, where she

might live for part of the year, letting the house during the season. She

accordingly took and furnished a house in Warrior Square, and we moved

thither, saying farewell to the dear Old Vicarage, and the friends loved

for so many happy years.

At the end of the summer, my mother and I went down to Manchester, to pay

a long visit to the Roberts's; a very pleasant time we passed there, a

large part of mine being spent on horseback, either leaping over a bar in

the meadow, or scouring the country far and wide. A grave break, however,

came in our mirth. The Fenian troubles were then at their height. On

September 11th, Colonel Kelly and Captain Deasy, two Fenian leaders, were

arrested in Manchester, and the Irish population was at once thrown into

a terrible ferment. On the 18th, the police van containing them was

returning from the Court to the County Gaol at Salford, and as it reached

the railway arch which crosses the Hyde Road at Bellevue, a man sprang

out, shot one of the horses, and thus stopped the van. In a moment it was

surrounded by a small band, armed with revolvers and with crowbars, and

the crowbars were wrenching at the locked door. A reinforcement of police

was approaching, and there was no time to be lost. The rescuers called to

Brett, a sergeant of police who was in charge inside the van, to pass the

keys out, and, on his refusal, there was a cry: "Blow off the lock!". The

muzzle of a revolver was placed against the lock, and the revolver was

discharged. Unhappily, poor Brett had stooped down to try and see through

the keyhole what was going on outside, and the bullet, fired to blow open

the lock, entered his head, and he fell dying on the floor. The rescuers

rushed in, and one Allen, a lad of seventeen, opened the doors of the

compartments in which were Kelly and Deasy, and hurriedly pulled them

out. Two or three of the band, gathering round them, carried them off

across the fields to a place of safety, while the rest gallantly threw

themselves between their rescued friends and the strong body of police

which charged down after the fugitives. With their revolvers pointed,

they kept back the police, until they saw that the two Fenian leaders

were beyond all chance of capture, and then they scattered, flying in all

directions. Young William Allen, whose one thought had been for his

chiefs, was the earliest victim. As he fled, he raised his hand and fired

his revolver straight in the air; he had been ready to use it in defence

of others, he would not shed blood for himself. Disarmed by his own act,

he was set upon by the police, brutally struck down, kicked and stoned by

his pursuers, and then, bruised and bleeding, he was dragged off to gaol,

to meet there some of his comrades in much the same plight. The whole

city of Manchester went mad over the story, and the fiercest

race-passions at once blazed out into flame; it became dangerous for an

Irish workman to be alone in a group of Englishmen, for an Englishman to

venture into the Irish quarter of the city. The friends of the arrested

Irishmen went straight to "Lawyer Roberts", and begged his aid, and he

threw himself heart and soul into their defence. He soon found that the

man who had fired the fatal shot was safe out of the way, having left

Manchester at once, and he trusted that it would at least be possible to

save his clients from the death-penalty. A Special Commission was issued,

with Mr. Justice Blackburn at its head. "They are going to send that

hanging judge," groaned Mr. Roberts when he heard it, and we felt there

was small chance of escape for the prisoners. He struggled hard to have

the _venue_ of the trial changed, protesting that in the state of

excitement in which Manchester was, there was no chance of obtaining an

impartial jury. But the cry for blood and for revenge was ringing through

the air, and of fairness and impartiality there was no chance. On the

25th of October, the prisoners were actually brought up before the

magistrates _in irons_, and Mr. Ernest Jones, the counsel briefed to

defend them, after a vain protest against the monstrous outrage, threw

down his brief and quitted the Court. The trial was hurried on, and on

October 29th, Allen, Larkin, Gould (O'Brien), Maguire, and Condon, stood

before their judges.

We drove up to the court; the streets were barricaded; soldiers were

under arms; every approach was crowded by surging throngs. At last, our

carriage was stopped in the midst of excited Irishmen, and fists were

shaken in the window, curses levelled at the "d----d English who were

going to see the boys murdered". For a moment things were uncomfortable,

for we were five women of helpless type. Then I bethought myself that we

were unknown, and, like the saucy girl I was, I leant forward and touched

the nearest fist. "Friends, these are Mr. Roberts' wife and daughters."

"Roberts! Lawyer Roberts! God bless Roberts. Let his carriage through."

And all the scowling faces became smile-wreathen, and cheers sounded out

for curses, and a road was cleared for us to the steps.

Very sad was that trial. On the first day Mr. Roberts got himself into

trouble which threatened to be serious. He had briefed Mr. Digby Seymour,

Q.C. as leader, with Mr. Ernest Jones, for the defence, and he did not

think that the jurymen proposed were challenged as they should be. We

knew that many whose names were called were men who had proclaimed their

hostility to the Irish, and despite the wrath of Judge Blackburn, Mr.

Roberts would jump up and challenge them. In vain he threatened to commit

the sturdy solicitor. "These men's lives are at stake, my lord," he said

indignantly. At last the officers of the court were sharply told: "Remove

that man," but as they advanced reluctantly--for all poor men loved and

honored him--Judge Blackburn changed his mind and let him remain. At last

the jury was empanelled, containing one man who had loudly proclaimed

that he "didn't care what the evidence was, he would hang every d----d

Irishman of the lot". In fact, the verdict was a foregone conclusion. The

most disreputable evidence was admitted; the suppositions of women of

lowest character were accepted as conclusive; the _alibi_ for Maguire--

clearly proved, and afterwards accepted by the Crown, a free pardon being

issued on the strength of it--was rejected with dogged obstinacy; how

premeditated was the result may be guessed from the fact that I saw--with

what shuddering horror may be estimated--some official in the room behind

the judges' chairs, quietly preparing the black caps before the verdict

had been given. The verdict of "Guilty" was repeated in each of the five

cases, and the prisoners were asked by the presiding judge if they had

anything to say why sentence should not be passed on them. Allen spoke

briefly and bravely; he had not fired a shot, but he had helped to free

Kelly and Deasy; he was willing to die for Ireland. The others followed

in turn, Maguire protesting his innocence, and Condon declaring also that

he was not present (he also was reprieved). Then the sentence of death

was passed, and "God save Ireland"! rang out in five clear voices in

answer from the dock.

We had a sad scene that night; the young girl to whom poor Allen was

engaged was heartbroken at her lover's doom, and bitter were her cries to

"save my William!". No protests, no pleas, however, availed to mitigate

the doom, and on November 23rd, Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien were hanged

outside Salford gaol. Had they striven for freedom in Italy, England

would have honored them as heroes; here she buried them as common

murderers in quicklime in the prison yard.

I have found, with a keen sense of pleasure, that Mr. Bradlaugh and

myself were in 1867 to some extent co-workers, although we knew not of

each other's existence, and although he was doing much, and I only giving

such poor sympathy as a young girl might, who was only just awakening to

the duty of political work. I read in the _National Reformer_ for

November 24, 1867, that in the preceding week, he was pleading on

Clerkenwell Green for these men's lives:

"According to the evidence at the trial, Deasy and Kelly were illegally

arrested. They had been arrested for vagrancy of which no evidence was

given, and apparently remanded for felony without a shadow of

justification. He had yet to learn that in England the same state of

things existed as in Ireland; he had yet to learn that an illegal arrest

was sufficient ground to detain any of the citizens of any country in the

prisons of this one. If he were illegally held, he was justified in using

enough force to procure his release. Wearing a policeman's coat gave no

authority when the officer exceeded his jurisdiction. He had argued this

before Lord Chief Justice Erle in the Court of Common Pleas, and that

learned judge did not venture to contradict the argument which he

submitted. There was another reason why they should spare these men,

although he hardly expected the Government to listen, because the

Government sent down one of the judges who was predetermined to convict

the prisoners; it was that the offence was purely a political one. The

death of Brett was a sad mischance, but no one who read the evidence

could regard the killing of Brett as an intentional murder. Legally, it

was murder; morally, it was homicide in the rescue of a political

captive. If it were a question of the rescue of the political captives of

Varignano, or of political captives in Bourbon, in Naples, or in Poland,

or in Paris, even earls might be found so to argue. Wherein is our sister

Ireland less than these? In executing these men, they would throw down

the gauntlet for terrible reprisals. It was a grave and solemn question.

It had been said by a previous speaker that they were prepared to go to

any lengths to save these Irishmen. They were not. He wished they were.

If they were, if the men of England, from one end to the other, were

prepared to say, "These men shall not be executed," they would not be. He

was afraid they had not pluck enough for that. Their moral courage was

not equal to their physical strength. Therefore he would not say that

they were prepared to do so. They must plead _ad misericordiam_. He

appealed to the press, which represented the power of England; to that

press which in its panic-stricken moments had done much harm, and which

ought now to save these four doomed men. If the press demanded it, no

Government would be mad enough to resist. The memory of the blood which

was shed in 1798 rose up like a bloody ghost against them to-day. He only

feared that what they said upon the subject might do the poor men more

harm than good. If it were not so, he would coin words that should speak

in words of fire. As it was, he could only say to the Government: You are

strong to-day; you hold these men's lives in your hands; but if you want

to reconcile their country to you, if you want to win back Ireland, if

you want to make her children love you--then do not embitter their hearts

still more by taking the lives of these men. Temper your strength with

mercy; do not use the sword of justice like one of vengeance; for the day

may come when it shall be broken in your hands, and you yourselves

brained by the hilt of the weapon you have so wickedly wielded."

In October he had printed a plea for Ireland, strong and earnest,

asking:--

"Where is our boasted English freedom when you cross to Kingstown pier?

Where has it been for near two years? The Habeas Corpus Act suspended,

the gaols crowded, the steamers searched, spies listening at shebeen

shops for sedition, and the end of it a Fenian panic in England. Oh,

before it be too late, before more blood shall stain the pages of our

present history, before we exasperate and arouse bitter animosities, let

us try and do justice to our sister land. Abolish once and for all the

land laws, which in their iniquitous operation have ruined her peasantry.

Sweep away the leech-like Church which has sucked her vitality, and has

given her back no word even of comfort in her degradation. Turn her

barracks into flax mills, encourage a spirit of independence in her

citizens, restore to her people the protection of the law, so that they

may speak without fear of arrest, and beg them to plainly and boldly

state their grievances. Let a commission of the best and wisest amongst

Irishmen, with some of our highest English judges added, sit solemnly to

hear all complaints, and then let us honestly legislate, not for the

punishment of the discontented, but to remove the causes of the

discontent. It is not the Fenians who have depopulated Ireland's strength

and increased her misery. It is not the Fenians who have evicted tenants

by the score. It is not the Fenians who have checked cultivation. Those

who have caused the wrong at least should frame the remedy."