Books: Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9
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Elbert Hubbard >> Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9
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The baby girl grew into beautiful womanhood. She is now a grandmother
with children grown, and true to tradition, as became the daughter of
her father, she made herself notorious for the many and famous for the
few, by heading an appeal to Parliament in favor of woman suffrage.
For the same cause comes Mrs. Cobden-Sanderson, daughter of Richard
Cobden, and spends four months in jail for insisting that her
political preferences shall be officially recorded. We do move that
precious slow!
* * * * *
Bright now took up the big business of the Anti-Corn-Law League, and
devoted himself to the issue, even to neglecting his private affairs.
The "League" had headquarters in Manchester, and Bright was its practical
head. Cobden was then making a tour of the provinces, speaking in
schoolhouses, townhalls and marketplaces, endeavoring to show the
folly of maintaining a tax on food. The idea was then conceived of
Cobden and Bright traveling together, going into the enemy's country,
and offering to debate the issue with all comers. The challenge aroused
the people, and wherever the orators went, they spoke to the capacity
of the hall. Cobden opened the debate, started the question in a
half-hour speech, and then the meeting was thrown open for the
opposition. Occasionally a man replied, often a clergyman of local
oratorical reputation being put forward by the landlords.
Bright then finished him and polished him off in a way that made any
further opposition impossible. Bright had certain well-defined ideas
about the clergy that took with the people, and a braver man never
stood on a platform. Here is a taste of his quality:
The declaration of the Church as by law established, makes me say
that I believe that the Establishment has been the means of
increasing individual piety and national prosperity. But
individually I would ask, how comes it that England is now, as
regards a vast proportion of her population, ignorant and
irreligious--how is it that while the Church has had the King for
its head and governor, the two Houses of Parliament to support it,
and the whole influence of the aristocracy and landed gentry of the
country to boot (with the advantage of being educated at Oxford and
Cambridge, from which Dissenters have been shut out)--that while the
Church has had millions upon millions to work upon, drawn not only
from her own party, but from the property of Dissenters-I ask how
comes it that England is neither a sober nor a moral country, and
that vice in every shape rears its horrid front? Does it not prove
that there is a radical error in the system? By the union of the
people of England advantages of no trifling amount have lately been
gained: the barrier of the Test Acts has been broken down; the
system of parliamentary corruption has been stormed with success;
and I trust the time is not far distant when the consciences of men
will be no longer shackled by the restrictions of the civil power,
when religious liberty will take the place of toleration, and when
men will wonder that a monopoly ever existed which ordained State
priests sole venders of the lore that works salvation.
The farmers were in opposition to the League, being told by the
landlords that if breadstuffs were allowed to come into the United
Kingdom free, the tillers of the soil would be made bankrupt.
Cobden was a ready speaker, and his knowledge of history and economics
commanded respect, but Bright's oratory went to their hearts. Bright
had a touch of the true Methodist fervor which won the hearer without
making too much of a demand on his intellect.
Shortly after Cobden and Bright made their alliance, Cobden ran for
Parliament and was elected. "The one thing that formed the pivotal
point, and won the farmers, as well as the men of Manchester, was the
oratory of John Bright," said Gladstone. The term "Manchester men" was
flung at Cobden and Bright, and stuck. It meant that they were merely
manufacturers, neither scholars nor gentlemen. Bright had modified the
severity of the Quaker costume, but wore the soft, gray colors with
hat to match, "because," said his enemies, "it is so effective."
Cobden being now in the House of Commons, Bright called himself
"Secretary of the Exterior," and often fought the good fight alone,
speaking on an average three nights a week, and the rest of the time
attending to his business.
Two years after Cobden's election, Bright was obliged to purchase a
suit of solemn black and a chimney-pot hat, for he, too, had been
chosen a member of the House of Commons.
"Another Manchester man--I do declare, you know, it will be a
convention of bagmen, yet!" remarked Sir Robert Peel, as he adjusted
his monocle. Peel, however, grew to have a very wholesome respect for
the Manchester men. They could neither be bribed, bought nor bullied.
They had money enough to free them from temptation, and they could
think on their feet. They were in the minority, but it was a minority
that could not be snubbed nor subdued.
The total repeal of the Corn Laws came in Eighteen Hundred Forty-nine,
but not until both Cobden and Bright had been threatened with criminal
proceedings for inciting revolution. However, the ministry backed
down, the new era came, and proved to be one of peace and great
prosperity.
John Bright worked for humanity. To his voice, more than to any other,
Ireland owes her freedom from the "Establishment."
He struggled to free England from the clutch of the Established
Church, but admitted at last that it would require time to unloose the
grip of the clergy from their perquisites. Always and forever he
argued and voted against war, or any increase of armament, even when
he stood alone. And once he forfeited his seat for a term by going
against the popular cry for blood. John Bright is a good example of a
man with the study habit. Not only did he carry on a great private
business, and at the same time bear heavy burdens in the management of
his country's affairs, but he was always a student, always a learner,
and also always a teacher. Neither he nor Richard Cobden ever divorced
ethics from business, religion from work, nor life from education.
John Bright possessed a sterling honesty, a perennial good-cheer, and
always and forever a tender, sympathetic heart. These things seemed to
spring naturally, easily and gently from his nature; they were the
habits of his life. And having acquired good habits his judgment was
almost uniformly correct; his actions manly; his temper considerate;
his opinion right. Private business was to John Bright a public trust.
He, of all men, knew that the only way to help one's self is to help
others.
During our Civil War, John Bright sided with the North, and fired his
broadsides of scorn at the many in the House of Commons who hoped and
prayed that the United States would no longer be united.
In Eighteen Hundred Sixty-eight, under Gladstone as Premier, Bright
was chosen President of the Board of Trade, being the first Quaker to
hold a Cabinet office.
John Bright was a rich man, and his life proves what riches can do
when rightly used. That his example of absolute honesty and adherence
to principle sets him apart as a character luminous and unique is and
indictment of the times in which we live.
John Bright's energy, eloquence, purity of conduct, sincerity of
purpose, his freedom from petty quarrels, his unselfishness, his lofty
ideals, his noble discontent and prophetic outlook, have tinted the
entire zeitgeist, and are discovering for us that Utopia is here now,
if we will but have it so.
BRADLAUGH
The Right Honorable Baronet has said there has been no word of
recantation. The Right Honorable Baronet speaks truth. There has
been no recantation, neither will there be. You have no right to ask
me for any recantation. You have no right to ask me for anything. If
I am legally disqualified, lay the case before the courts. When you
ask me to make a statement, you are guilty of impertinence to me, of
treason to the traditions of this House, and of impeachment of the
liberties of the people. I beg you now, do not plunge me into a
struggle I would shun. The law gives me no remedy if the House
decides against me. Do not mock at the constituencies. If you place
yourself above the law, you leave me no course save lawless
agitation, instead of reasonable pleading. It is easy to begin such
a strife, but none knows how it would end. You think I am an
obnoxious man, and that I have no one on my side. If that be so,
then the more reason that this House, grand in the strength of its
centuries of liberty, should have now that generosity in dealing
with one who tomorrow may be forced into a struggle for public
opinion against it.
--_Bradlaugh to the House of Commons_
[Illustration: Bradlaugh]
Thomas Paine, Robert Ingersoll and Charles Bradlaugh form a trinity of
names inseparably linked. The memory of Paine was for many years
covered beneath the garbage of prevarication. In order to find the
man, we had to excavate for him. Happily, with the help of the
Reverend Moncure D. Conway, we found him.
Ingersoll's life lies open to us, and the honest, loving, and gentle
nature of the man is beyond dispute. The pious pedants who tried to
traduce him were self-indicted. No one now even thinks to answer
them. The man who said, "In a world where death is, there is no time
to hate," needs no defense. We smile. With Bradlaugh it is the same.
His biography in two volumes, by his daughter, is a very human
document. The work is worthy of comparison with that most excellent
book, the life of Huxley by his son.
The essence of good biography lies largely in indiscretion. This
loving daughter's tribute to her father tells things which some might
say do no honor to anybody. Quite true, but these are the
corroborating things which inform us that the book is truth.
Charles Bradlaugh performed for England the same service that Robert
Ingersoll did for America. Both presented the minority report. Through
their influence the Church was able to renounce the devil and all his
works.
These men were both born in the year Eighteen Hundred Thirty-three,
about a month apart. In many ways they were very much alike. In
physique they were heroic; both were lawyers; both were natural
orators.
Bradlaugh, however, began his radical career before he was of age,
while Ingersoll was nearly forty before he set aside diplomacy and
ceased wooing bronchitis.
Charles Bradlaugh was the first child of a worthy clerk married to a
housemaid. His father never earned more than two guineas a week. All
these parents ever did for their son was to supply him with physical
life, and teach him by antithesis. No trace can be found that he in
any mental characteristic resembled either. Parents are evidently
people who are used for a purpose by a Something.
Bradlaugh's parents were wedded to the established order, and never
doubted the literal inspiration of the Scriptures. They also believed
in the divine origin of the prayer-book, a measure of credulity which,
although commendable, is, I believe, not required. These parents were
severe, exacting, imperious--not bad nor exactly cruel--simply
"consistent." They believed that man was a worm of the dust, and stood
by the traditions. They believed in the dogma of total depravity and
lived up to it.
A bundle of old clothes sent yearly from a rich cousin in Kent was an
epoch. Sugar in the house was out of the question, and once when the
rich cousin in Kent, who was an omnibus-inspector, sent a pound of
brown sugar in the pocket of an old coat, the sweets suddenly
vanished. Charles was accused and stubbornly denied the theft. He was
then punished with the handy strap for both the denial and the
larceny. Later, it turned out that a little girl next door stole the
sugar, and when Charles refused to inform on her, she informed on
herself. Then the boy was again whipped because he had not informed on
the girl. Charles got all of the disgrace and none of the sugar.
Charles was sent to a "ragged school," and became, at the mature age
of ten, so exact a penman that he almost rivaled his father, who could
write the Lord's Prayer on the back of a postage-stamp. At this
school, beside getting an education, Charles got pedagogic scars on
his body which ten years later, when he enlisted in the army, were
noted in the physical description.
The daughter of Bradlaugh has in her possession a beautiful motto from
Scripture done into antique text by the lad for his mother when the
boy was nine years old. All around the motto are flying birds penned
in pure Spencerian. The motto is this: "Then said Joab, I may not
tarry long with thee. And he took three darts in his hand and thrust
them through the heart of Absalom while he was yet alive in the midst
of the oak. And ten young men of Joab's smote Absalom and slew him."
This was before the art of working mottoes with worsted in perforated
cardboard had been perfected.
When ten years of age Charles was taken from school and hired out as
an office-boy at five shillings a week, the money being paid to the
father and duly used for the support of the family. It is good to see,
though, that at that early day the expense-account was made to serve
its legitimate use. When the boy had bundles to deliver and was given
money for 'bus-fare, he walked and kept the fare. The bridge-toll was
a half-penny, and by climbing aboard of a wagon this was saved. To be
back on time he would run. He became an expert in catching on 'buses
and riding on the axle of cabs, well out of reach of the driver's
whip. With the money so saved he bought penny tracts on politics,
history and religion. One day he was sent to deliver a bundle to Mark
Marsden, a writer and publisher. Charles did not know the man, but in
his hand, all unconsciously, he carried a tract written by Marsden.
Nothing interests an author like a copy of his own amusing works.
Marsden gave the boy two pats on the head, a bun, a half-crown and
three penny pamphlets on political economy.
Charles went away stepping high, but his tongue was so paralyzed with
surprise and joy that he forgot to thank the man. Twenty years after
he remembered the transaction vividly--it was the first real human
kindness that had ever come his way. He told of it, standing on the
same platform with Marsden and speaking to two thousand people.
Marsden had forgotten the incident--happy Marsden, who gave out love
and joy as he journeyed and made no notes. This little story proves
two things: That authors are not wholly bad, and that kindness to a
boy is a good investment. Boys grow to be men--at least some do, and I
trust it will not be denied that all men were once boys. Bradlaugh, to
the day of his death, was always kind to boys. He realized that with
them he was dealing with soul-stuff, and that Destiny awaited just
around the corner.
When Charles was fourteen years old he had gravitated to the cashier's
desk, and his pay was twelve shillings a week.
He was large for his age, and the life of the streets had sharpened
his wits, so he was old for his years. He was studious and very
religious, as children struggling with adolescence often are. Sundays
were sacred to church, morning and evening, and the spare hours were
given over to reading the lives of the martyrs. Only on weekdays did
he read history or political tracts. In Sunday School he was a very
promising teacher.
Then comes in one, the Reverend J. G. Packer, incumbent of Saint
Peter's, who lives in history only because he entered into a quarrel
with this boy.
Young Bradlaugh was preparing for confirmation; he could say the
catechism backward and forward, and he also knew Bible history from
Genesis to Revelation. But he could not reconcile certain portions of
Bible history with our belief in an all-loving, all-wise and ever-just
God. So he wrote to his pastor a long and respectful letter in precise
and exact Spencerian, asking for light.
Now, the Reverend J. G. Packer regarded interrogation as proof of
depravity, and straightway sent the letter to the boy's father. At the
same time he suspended the youth for three months from Sunday School,
denouncing him before the school as atheistical, all this in the
interests of discipline. These tactics of coercion were the rule a
hundred years ago, and the Reverend J. G. Packer had simply lost his
reckoning as to longitude and time. There was a violent scene between
father and son, and the boy being too big to chastise was simply
handed a few pages of Billingsgate.
At this time Bonner's Fields was a great place for open-air meetings.
The custom of public speaking in London parks still continues, and on
any pleasant Sunday afternoon one can hear all kinds of orthodox and
heretical vagaries defended on the turf. Young Bradlaugh took to the
open-air meetings, and lifted up his voice in praise, feeling the
usual stimulus and joyous uplift that goes with martyrdom. After his
own orthodox service was over, he sought out the opposition and tried
to silence the infidels in debate. One of these infidels, in pity for
the boy's innocence and ignorance, loaned him a copy of Paine's "Age
of Reason." Up to this time he had never heard of Paine. Now he began
to study him, and he began by reading his life. From this he gleaned
the fact that Paine had suffered for conscience sake and had been
driven out of England, just as he, himself, had been driven out of the
church.
The three months' suspension having expired, young Bradlaugh was
invited to come back into the fold. But he did not come. He had been
learning things. Paine and persecution had sharpened his mind. I do
not believe that Packer drove Bradlaugh into atheism, but I do believe
that he hastened the process by about twenty years. Bradlaugh did not
have the quality of mind that could ever have been encysted by
orthodoxy.
Boyhood was being left behind. He had joined a Free-thinkers' Club,
which met at a coffeehouse kept by Mrs. Richard Carlile, who had come
up to London, alone, from the country, and published a little magazine
devoted to the rights of woman. She had kept up the fight for freedom
for a score of years. Poverty and calumny could not subdue her. She
was bordering on fifty, and spoke in the parks, to all and any who
would listen, scorning to take up a collection. Her private character
was beyond reproach. Indeed, her namesake, Tammas the Titan, who
spelled his name in a different way, speaks of her as one "insultingly
virtuous." And so the Reverend J.G. Packer discovered that young
Bradlaugh was "loitering at the coffeehouse of that Jezebel, the
Carlile woman." Straightway he wrote a letter to young Bradlaugh,
giving him three days in which to return to the church, renouncing all
infidel beliefs, or his employers would be informed of his habits, in
which case his cashiership would be taken from him.
This letter was evidently the joint work of the boy's parents and the
busy and unctuous clergyman. The only trouble was that their plan
worked too well. The boy, believing that it meant the loss of his
position, was desperate. He waited until two days had expired, and
then on the morning of the third boldly resigned his position, and
taking his scanty effects left home forever. Thus began that lifelong
fight for freedom which ended only with his death.
* * * * *
And so we find Charles Bradlaugh absolutely severed from his parents.
He used to walk up and down past the home that was once his, but his
sisters were forbidden, on pain of being turned into the streets, to
speak to him.
That he suffered terribly, there is no doubt; but that a fine,
sustaining pride was his, is equally true. Sorrow is never quite all
sorrow, and most funerals carry with them a dash of consoling
satisfaction for the mourners.
Young Bradlaugh now began to concentrate on his books--he felt sure
that he had a mission. He became a waiter at a coffeehouse, then a
clerk, next a salesman; but the reputation of being an infidel follow
him, and he could not disprove the charge. In fact, I do not think he
tried to, for on Sundays he was at Hyde Park lecturing on temperance
and saying unsavory things about the clergy on account of their
indifference concerning the real needs of the people.
A teetotaler in England then was almost as much of a curiosity as in
the days of Franklin. Young Bradlaugh seemed to possess all the
heresies. He became a vegetarian, rented a room for three shillings a
week, and boarded himself on sixpence a day. Cooking is a matter of
approbation and emulation, and he who cooketh unto himself alone is on
the road to dyspepsia.
This long, lanky youth, intent on reforming the world in the matter of
food, drink and theological diet, was six feet two, and weighed
exactly ninety-nine pounds in the shade. He wore a chimney-pot hat, a
tight-fitting, long, black coat, and lavender spats. Fasting and study
had given him a visage like the ghost in "Hamlet," and gotten him
where no man would hire him.
Then it was that hunger forced him into a recruiting-office, no doubt
aided by the specious argument that he wanted to teach temperance to
Tommy Atkins. The recruiting-officer gazed at the apparition and sent
for a surgeon. This surgeon sent for another, and both went over the
skeleton, tapping, listening, prodding and counting. "All he needs is
food and work," said surgeon Number One, giving the subject a final
poke with his pudgy forefinger.
So Private Bradlaugh was sworn in, and that night shipped to Dublin,
where uniforms were to be provided. Very naturally, the chimney-pot
hat did not survive the voyage, the rim being smashed down around his
neck for a 'kerchief. The clerical coat also soon looked the worse for
wear; and a copy of Euclid as well as books by David Hume served for
footballs.
It was hard, but all a part of life, and young Bradlaugh took his
lesson. We know this because in just six months his regiment was
stationed near the storied village of Donnybrook, and Bradlaugh was
one of sixteen selected to attend the Fair. This committee did not got
to the Fair armed with feather dusters.
Bradlaugh now weighed one hundred sixty, and had proved his prowess
with the shillalah. It was the unwritten law at Donnybrook that no
soldiers should be allowed to attend the Fair. The managers, however,
still continued to sell tickets to soldiers, yet to keep the
enterprise from being wiped out of existence, only sixteen soldiers
from each regiment were allowed to attend on any single day.
Bradlaugh's reach and height saved him, and the motto, "Wherever you
see a head, hit it," did not disturb him, since his headpiece was well
above high-water mark.
Regular food, regular work and regular sleep did Bradlaugh a world of
good. He never much believed in war, but the idea of the Government
giving her male citizens a little compulsory physical training always
appealed to him.
Three years of soldier life did not supply Bradlaugh any bad habits,
and whether he influenced Tommy Atkins in following the straight and
narrow path is still a problem.
On pleasant Sundays it was the rule that the regiment should be
marched to church. On one occasion a certain clergyman had excused
himself from explaining a passage of Scripture on the ground that
soldiers could not understand it, anyway. This brought a letter from
Private Bradlaugh, wherein he explained that particular passage to the
pastor, and also revealed the fact that a soldier might know quite as
much as a preacher.
The next Sunday, when the clergyman referred to the letter and in
scathing tones rebuked the sender, three hundred soldiers unhooked
their sabers and dropped them on the stone floor. The din broke up
the service. Very shortly after, as punishment, the regiment was sent
to a barracks in a region that lacked religious advantages.
In the absence of a chaplain Private Bradlaugh was allowed each Sunday
to address the men "on some moral theme."
This continued until complaint was made to the home office, when there
came a curt order forbidding "any public talk by Private Bradlaugh or
others on the subject of politics or religion."
Bradlaugh's three years of army life held back his mental processes
and allowed his body to develop. On the other hand, he had been exiled
from society, so he idealized things, seeing them with the eye of
imagination rather than beholding them as they actually were.
Sometimes this is well, and sometimes not. When Charles Bradlaugh,
aged twenty, married Susannah Hooper, some people said it was a
"lovely wedding." Miss Hooper had social station, while Bradlaugh only
had prospects. The bride was handsome, vivacious, witty, pink and
twenty-one.
Never was a man more beset by unkind Fate than Bradlaugh. His wife's
intellect was merely a surface indication; she cared nothing for his
ideals, and all of his love for truth was for her a mockery. She
sought to lead him into conventional lines, to have him renounce his
peculiar views and join the church. His fond dreams of educating her
slid into disarrangement, and inside of a year he found himself
mentally absolutely alone. Five years went by and three children had
been born to them.
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