Annie Besant — 11 - AT WORK part 1

From this sketch of the inner sources of action let me turn to the actions themselves, and see how the outer life was led which fed itself at these springs.

I have said that the friendship between Mr. Bradlaugh and myself dated from our first meeting, and a few days after our talk in Turner Street he came down to see me at Norwood.

It was characteristic of the man that he refused my first invitation, and bade me to think well ere I asked him to my house.

He told me that he was so hated by English society that any friend of his would be certain to suffer, and that I should pay heavily for any friendship extended to him.

When, however, I wrote to him, repeating my invitation, and telling him that I had counted the cost, he came to see me.

His words came true; my friendship for him alienated from me even many professed Freethinkers, but the strength and the happiness of it outweighed a thousand times the loss it brought, and never has a shadow of regret touched me that I clasped hands with him in 1874, and won the noblest friend that woman ever had.

He never spoke to me a harsh word; where we differed, he never tried to override my judgment, nor force on me his views; we discussed all points of difference as equal friends; he guarded me from all suffering as far as friend might, and shared with me all the pain he could not turn aside; all the brightness of my stormy life came to me through him, from his tender thoughtfulness, his ever-ready sympathy, his generous love.

He was the most unselfish man I ever knew, and as patient as he was strong.

My quick, impulsive nature found in him the restful strength it needed, and learned from him the self-control it lacked.

He was the merriest of companions in our rare hours of relaxation; for many years he was wont to come to my house in the morning, after the hours always set aside by him for receiving poor men who wanted advice on legal and other matters--for he was a veritable poor man's lawyer, always ready to help and counsel--and, bringing his books and papers, he would sit writing, hour after hour, I equally busy with my own work, now and then, perhaps, exchanging a word, breaking off just for lunch and dinner, and working on again in the evening till about ten o'clock--he always went early to bed when at home--he would take himself off again to his lodgings, about three-quarters of a mile away.

Sometimes he would play cards for an hour, euchre being our favourite game.

But while we were mostly busy and grave, we would make holiday sometimes, and then he was like a boy, brimming over with mirth, full of quaint turns of thought and speech; all the country round London has for me bright memories of our wanderings--Richmond, where we tramped across the park, and sat under its mighty trees;

Windsor, with its groves of bracken; Kew, where we had tea in a funny little room, with watercress _ad libitum_; Hampton Court, with its dishevelled beauties; Maidenhead and Taplow, where the river was the attraction; and, above all, Broxbourne, where he delighted to spend the day with his fishing-rod, wandering along the river, of which he knew every eddy.

For he was a great fisherman, and he taught me all the mysteries of the craft, mirthfully disdainful of my dislike of the fish when I had caught them.

And in those days he would talk of all his hopes of the future, of his work, of his duty to the thousands who looked to him for guidance, of the time when he would sit in Parliament as member for Northampton, and help to pass into laws the projects of reform for which he was battling with pen and tongue.

How often he would voice his love of England, his admiration of her Parliament, his pride in her history.

Keenly alive to the blots upon it in her sinful wars of conquest, in the cruel wrongs inflicted upon subject peoples, he was yet an Englishman to the heart's core, but feeling above all the Englishman's duty, as one of a race that had gripped power and held it, to understand the needs of those he ruled, and to do justice willingly, since compulsion to justice there was none.

His service to India in the latest years of his life was no suddenly accepted task.

He had spoken for her, pleaded for her, for many a long year, through press and on platform, and his spurs as member for India were won long ere he was member of Parliament.

A place on the staff of the _National Reformer_ was offered me by Mr. Bradlaugh a few days after our first meeting, and the small weekly salary thus earned--it was only a guinea, for national reformers are always poor--was a very welcome addition to my resources.

My first contribution appeared in the number for August 30, 1874, over the signature of "Ajax," and I wrote in it regularly until Mr. Bradlaugh died; from 1877 until his death I sub-edited it, so as to free him from all the technical trouble and the weary reading of copy, and for part of this period was also co-editor.

I wrote at first under a _nom de guerre_, because the work I was doing for Mr. Scott would have been prejudiced had my name appeared in the columns of the terrible _National Reformer_, and until this work--commenced and paid for--was concluded I did not feel at liberty to use my own name.

Afterwards, I signed my _National Reformer_ articles, and the tracts written for Mr. Scott appeared anonymously.

The name was suggested by the famous statue of "Ajax Crying for Light," a cast of which may be seen in the centre walk by any visitor to the Crystal Palace, Sydenham.

The cry through the darkness for light, even though light should bring destruction, was one that awoke the keenest sympathy of response from my heart: "If our fate be death Give light, and let us die!"

To see, to know, to understand, even though the seeing blind, though the knowledge sadden, though the understanding shatter the dearest hopes--such has ever been the craving of the upward-striving mind in man.

Some regard it as a weakness, as a folly, but I am sure that it exists most strongly in some of the noblest of our race; that from the lips of those who have done most in lifting the burden of ignorance from the overstrained and bowed shoulders of a stumbling world has gone out most often into the empty darkness the pleading, impassioned cry: "Give light!"

The light may come with a blinding flash, but it is light none the less, and we can see.

And now the time had come when I was to use that gift of speech which I had discovered in Sibsey Church that I possessed, and to use it to move hearts and brains all over the English land.

In 1874, tentatively, and in 1875 definitely, I took up this keen weapon, and have used it ever since.

My first attempt was at a garden party, in a brief informal debate, and I found that words came readily and smoothly: the second in a discussion at the Liberal Social Union on the opening of museums and art galleries on Sunday.

My first lecture was given at the Co-operative Institute, 55, Castle Street, Oxford Street, on August 25, 1874. Mr. Greening--then, I think, the secretary--had invited me to read a paper before the society, and had left me the choice of the subject.

I resolved that my first public lecture should be on behalf of my own sex, so I selected for my theme, "The Political Status of Women," and wrote thereon a paper.

But it was a very nervous person who presented herself at the Co-operative Institute on that August evening.

When a visit to the dentist is made, and one stands on the steps outside, desiring to run away ere the neat little boy in buttons opens the door and beams on one with a smile of compassionate superiority and implike triumph, then the world seems dark and life is as a huge blunder.

But all such feelings are poor and weak as compared with the sinking of the heart and the trembling of the knees which seize upon the unhappy lecturer as he advances towards his first audience, and as before his eyes rises a ghastly vision of a tongue-tied would-be lecturer, facing rows of listening faces, listening to--silence.

But to my surprise all this miserable feeling vanished the moment I was on my feet and was looking at the faces before me.

I felt no tremor of nervousness from the first word to the last, and as I heard my own voice ring out over the attentive listeners I was conscious of power and of pleasure, not of fear.

And from that day to this my experience has been the same; before a lecture I am horribly nervous, wishing myself at the ends of the earth, heart beating violently, and sometimes overcome by deadly sickness.

Once on my feet, I feel perfectly at my ease, ruler of the crowd, master of myself.

I often jeer at myself mentally as I feel myself throbbing and fearful, knowing that when I stand up I shall be all right, and yet I cannot conquer the physical terror and trembling, illusory as I know them to be.

People often say to me, "You look too ill to go on the platform."

And I smile feebly and say I am all right, and I often fancy that the more miserably nervous I am in the ante-room, the better I speak when once on the platform.

My second lecture was delivered on September 27th, at Mr. Moncure D. Conway's Chapel, in St. Paul's Road, Camden Town, and redelivered a few weeks later at a Unitarian Chapel, where the Rev. Peter Dean was minister.

This was on the "True Basis of Morality," and was later printed as a pamphlet, which attained a wide circulation.

This was all I did in the way of speaking in 1874, but I took silent part in an electioneering struggle at Northampton, where a seat for the House of Commons had fallen vacant by the death of Mr. Charles Gilpin.

Mr. Bradlaugh had contested the borough as a Radical in 1868, obtaining 1,086 votes, and again in February, 1874, when he received 1,653; of these no less than 1,060 were plumpers, while his four opponents had only 113, 64, 21 and 12 plumpers respectively; this band formed the compact and personally loyal following which was to win the seat for its chief in 1880, after twelve years of steady struggle, and to return him over and over again to Parliament during the long contest which followed his election, and which ended in his final triumph.

They never wavered in their allegiance to "our Charlie," but stood by him through evil report and good report, when he was outcast as when he was triumphant, loving him with a deep, passionate devotion, as honourable to them as it was precious to him.

I have seen him cry like a child at evidences of their love for him, he whose courage no danger could daunt, and who was never seen to blench before hatred nor change his stern immobility in the face of his foes.

Iron to enmity, he was soft as a woman to kindness; unbending as steel to pressure, he was ductile as wax to love.

John Stuart Mill had the insight in 1868 to see his value, and the courage to recognise it.

He strongly supported his candidature, and sent a donation to his election expenses.

In his "Autobiography" he wrote (pp. 311, 312):-- "He had the support of the working classes; having heard him speak I knew him to be a man of ability, and he had proved that he was the reverse of a demagogue by placing himself in strong opposition to the prevailing opinion of the Democratic party on two such important subjects as Malthusianism and Proportional Representation.

Men of this sort, who, while sharing the democratic feeling of the working classes, judge political questions for themselves, and have the courage to assert their individual convictions against popular opposition, were needed, as it seemed to me, in Parliament; and I did not think that Mr. Bradlaugh's anti-religious opinions (even though he had been intemperate in the expression of them) ought to exclude him."

It has been said that Mr. Mill's support of Mr. Bradlaugh's candidature at Northampton cost him his own seat at Westminster, and so bitter was bigotry at that time that the statement is very likely to be true.

On this, Mr. Mill himself said: "It was the right thing to do, and if the election were yet to take place, I would do it again."

At this election of September, 1874--the second in the year, for the general election had taken place in the February, and Mr. Bradlaugh had been put up and defeated during his absence in America--I went down to Northampton to report electioneering incidents for the _National Reformer_, and spent some days there in the whirl of the struggle.

The Whig party was more bitter against Mr. Bradlaugh than was the Tory.

Strenuous efforts were made to procure a Liberal candidate, who would be able at least to prevent Mr. Bradlaugh's return, and, by dividing the Liberal and Radical party, should let in a Tory rather than the detested Radical.

Messrs. Bell and James and Dr. Pearce came on the scene only to disappear.

Mr. Jacob Bright and Mr. Arnold Morley were vainly suggested.

Mr. Ayrton's name was whispered.

Major Lumley was recommended by Mr. Bernal Osborne.

Dr. Kenealy proclaimed himself ready to come to the rescue of the Whigs.

Mr. Tillett, of Norwich, Mr. Cox, of Belper, were invited, but neither would consent to oppose a good Radical who had fought two elections at Northampton and had been the chosen of the Radical workers for six years.

At last Mr. William Fowler, a banker, accepted the task of handing over the representation of a Liberal and Radical borough to a Tory, and duly succeeded in giving the seat to Mr. Mereweather, a very reputable Tory lawyer.

Mr. Bradlaugh polled 1,766, thus adding another 133 voters to those who had polled for him in the previous February.

That election gave me my first experience of anything in the nature of rioting.

The violent abuse levelled against Mr. Bradlaugh by the Whigs, and the foul and wicked slanders circulated against him, assailing his private life and family relations, had angered almost to madness those who knew and loved him; and when it was found that the unscrupulous Whig devices had triumphed, had turned the election against him, and given over the borough to a Tory, the fury broke out into open violence.

One illustration may be given as a type of these cruel slanders.

It was known that Mr. Bradlaugh was separated from his wife, and it was alleged that being an Atheist, and, (therefore!

) an opponent of marriage, he had deserted his wife and children, and left them to the workhouse.

The cause of the separation was known to very few, for Mr. Bradlaugh was chivalrously honourable to women, and he would not shield his own good name at the cost of that of the wife of his youth and the mother of his children.

But since his death his only remaining child has, in devotion to her father's memory, stated the melancholy truth: that Mrs. Bradlaugh gave way to drink; that for long years he bore with her and did all that man could do to save her; that finally, hopeless of cure, he broke up his home, and placed his wife in the care of her parents in the country, leaving her daughters with her, while he worked for their support.

No man could have acted more generously and wisely under these cruel circumstances than he did, but it was, perhaps, going to an extreme of Quixotism, that he concealed the real state of the case, and let the public blame him as it would.

His Northampton followers did not know the facts, but they knew him as an upright, noble man, and these brutal attacks on his personal character drove them wild.

Stray fights had taken place during the election over these slanders, and, defeated by such foul weapons, the people lost control of their passions.

As Mr. Bradlaugh was sitting well-nigh exhausted in the hotel, after the declaration of the poll, the landlord rushed in, crying to him to go out and try to stop the people, or there would be murder done at the "Palmerston," Mr. Fowler's headquarters; the crowd was charging the door, and the windows were being broken with showers of stones.

Weary as he was, Mr. Bradlaugh sprang to his feet, and swiftly made his way to the rescue of those who had maligned and defeated him.

Flinging himself before the doorway, from which the door had just been battered down, he knocked down one or two of the most violent, drove the crowd back, argued and scolded them into quietness, and finally dispersed them.

But at nine o'clock he had to leave Northampton to catch the mail steamer for America at Queenstown, and after he had left, word went round that he had gone, and the riot he had quelled broke out afresh.

The Riot Act was at last read, the soldiers were called out, stones flew freely, heads and windows were broken, but no very serious harm was done.

The "Palmerston" and the printing-office of the _Mercury_, the Whig organ, were the principal sufferers; doors and windows disappearing somewhat completely.

The day after the election I returned home, and soon after fell ill with a severe attack of congestion of the lungs.

Soon after my recovery I left Norwood and settled in a house in Westbourne Terrace, Bayswater, where I remained till 1876. In the following January (1875), after much thought and self-analysis, I resolved to give myself wholly to propagandist work, as a Freethinker and a Social Reformer, and to use my tongue as well as my pen in the struggle.

I counted the cost ere I determined on this step, for I knew that it would not only outrage the feelings of such new friends as I had already made, but would be likely to imperil my custody of my little girl.

I knew that an Atheist was outside the law, obnoxious to its penalties, but deprived of its protection, and that the step I contemplated might carry me into conflicts in which everything might be lost and nothing could be gained.

But the desire to spread liberty and truer thought among men, to war against bigotry and superstition, to make the world freer and better than I found it--all this impelled me with a force that would not be denied.

I

seemed to hear the voice of Truth ringing over the battlefield: "Who will go?

Who will speak for me?"

And I sprang forward with passionate enthusiasm, with resolute cry: "Here am I, send me!"

Nor have I ever regretted for one hour that resolution, come to in solitude, carried out amid the surging life of men, to devote to that sacred cause every power of brain and tongue that I possessed.

Very solemn to me is the responsibility of the public teacher, standing forth in Press and on platform to partly mould the thought of his time, swaying thousands of readers and hearers year after year.

No weighter responsibility can any take, no more sacred charge.

The written and the spoken word start forces none may measure, set working brain after brain, influence numbers unknown to the forthgiver of the word, work for good or for evil all down the stream of time.

Feeling the greatness of the career, the solemnity of the duty, I pledged my word then to the cause I loved that no effort on my part should be wanted to render myself worthy of the privilege of service that I took; that I would read and study, and would train every faculty that I had; that I would polish my language, discipline my thought, widen my knowledge; and this, at least, I may say, that if I have written and spoken much, I have studied and thought more, and that I have not given to my mistress Truth that "which hath cost me nothing."

This same year (1875) that saw me launched on the world as a public advocate of Freethought, saw also the founding of the Theosophical Society to which my Freethought was to lead me.

I have often since thought with pleasure that at the very time I began lecturing in England, H. P.

Blavatsky was at work in the United States, preparing the foundation on which in November, 1875, the Theosophical Society was to be raised.

And with deeper pleasure yet have I found her writing of what she called the noble work against superstition done by Charles Bradlaugh and myself, rendering the propaganda of Theosophy far more practicable and safer than it would otherwise have been.

The fight soon began, and with some queer little skirmishes.

I was a member of the "Liberal Social Union," and one night a discussion arose as to the admissibility of Atheists to the Society.

Dr. Zerffi declared that he would not remain a member if avowed Atheists were admitted.

I promptly declared that I was an Atheist, and that the basis of the union was liberty of opinion.

The result was that I found myself cold-shouldered, and those that had been warmly cordial to me merely as a non-Christian looked askance at me when I had avowed that my scepticism had advanced beyond their "limits of religious thought."

The Liberal Social Union soon knew me no more, but in the wider field of work open before me, the narrow-mindedness of this petty clique troubled me not at all.

I started my definite lecturing work at South Place Chapel in January, 1875, Mr. Moncure D. Conway presiding for me, and I find in the _National Reformer_ for January 17th, the announcement that "Mrs. Annie Besant ('Ajax') will lecture at South Place Chapel, Finsbury, on 'Civil and Religious Liberty.'

" Thus I threw off my pseudonym, and rode into the field of battle with uplifted visor.

The identification led to an odd little exhibition of bigotry.

I had been invited by the Dialectical Society to read a paper, and had selected for subject, "The Existence of God."

(It may be noted, in passing, that young students and speakers always select the most tremendous subjects for their discourses.

One advances in modesty as one advances in knowledge, and after eighteen years of platform work, I am far more dubious than I was at their beginning as to my power of dealing in any sense adequately with the problems of life.

) The Dialectical Society had for some years held their meetings in a room in Adam Street, rented from the Social Science Association.

When the members gathered as usual on February 17th, the door was found to be locked, and they had to gather on the stairs; they found that "Ajax's" as yet undelivered paper was too much for Social Science nerves, and that entrance to their ordinary meeting-room was then and thenceforth denied them.

So they, with "Ajax," found refuge at the Charing Cross Hotel, and speculated merrily on the eccentricities of religious bigotry.

On February 12th I started on my first provincial lecturing tour, and after speaking at Birkenhead that evening went on by the night mail to Glasgow.

Some races--dog races--I think, had been going on, and very unpleasant were many of the passengers waiting on the platform.

Some Birkenhead friends had secured me a compartment, and watched over me till the train began to move.

Then, after we had fairly started, the door was flung open by a porter, and a man was thrust in who half tumbled on to the seat.

As he slowly recovered he stood up, and as his money rolled out of his hand on to the floor, and he gazed vaguely at it, I saw to my horror that he was drunk.

The position was not pleasant, for the train was an express, and was not timed to stop for a considerable time.

My odious fellow-passenger spent some time on the floor, hunting after his scattered coins; then he slowly gathered himself up and presently became conscious of my presence.

He studied me for some time, and then proposed to shut the window.

I assented quietly, not wanting to discuss a trifle and feeling in deadly terror--alone at night in an express with a man not drunk enough to be helpless, but too drunk to be controlled.

Never before nor since have I felt so thoroughly frightened.

I can see him still, swaying as he stood, with eyes bleared and pendulous lips--but I sat there quiet and outwardly unmoved, as is always my impulse in danger till I see some way of escape, only grasping a penknife in my pocket, with a desperate resolve to use my feeble weapon as soon as the need arose.

The man came towards me with a fatuous leer, when a jarring noise was heard and the train began to slacken.

"What is that?"

stammered my drunken companion.

"They are putting on the brakes to stop the train," I answered very slowly and distinctly, though a very passion of relief made it hard to say quietly the measured words.

The man sat down stupidly, staring at me, and in a minute or two the train pulled up at a station--it had been stopped by signal.

My immobility was gone.

In a moment I was at the window, called the guard, and explained rapidly that I was a woman travelling alone, and that a half-drunken man was in the carriage.

With the usual kindness of a railway official, he at once moved me and my baggage into another compartment, into which he locked me, and he kept a friendly watch over me at every station at which we stopped until he landed me safely at Glasgow.

At Glasgow a room had been taken for me at a temperance hotel, and it seemed to me so new and lonely a thing to be "all on my own account" in a strange hotel in a strange city, that I wanted to sit down and cry.

This feeling, to which I was too proud to yield, was probably partly due to the extreme greyness and grubbiness of my surroundings.

Things are better now, but in those days temperance hotels were for the most part lacking in cleanliness.

Abstinence from alcohol and a superfluity of "matter in the wrong place" do not seem necessary correlatives, yet I rarely went to a temperance hotel in which water was liberally used for other purposes than that of drinking.

From Glasgow I went north to Aberdeen, where I found a very stern and critical audience.

Not a sound broke the stillness as I walked up the hall; not a sound as I ascended the platform and faced the people; the canny Scot was not going to applaud a stranger at sight; he was going to see what she was like first.

In grim silence they listened; I could not move them; they were granite like their own granite city, and I felt I would like to take off my head and throw it at them, if only to break that hard wall.

After about twenty minutes, a fortunate phrase drew a hiss from some child of the Covenanters.

I made a quick retort, there was a burst of cheering, and the granite vanished.

Never after that did I have to complain of the coldness of an Aberdeen audience.

Back to London from Aberdeen, and a long, weary journey it was, in a third-class carriage in the cold month of February; but the labour had in it a joy that outpaid all physical discomfort, and the feeling that I had found my work in the world gave a new happiness to life.