The Battle of The Press

Mrs. Robinson mentioned Friday for my first visit, and I inadvertently agreed to go, where I shall have the pleasure of being introduced to other members and Owenites. Let me be wherever I may, my heart is always with you. I never am so happy as when with you, and allow me, again and again, to assure you of my love, friendship, and esteem. My hope is, Richard, that you will survive me, after twenty years' engagement, that you will receive my last sigh, that my latest breath will be received on your affectionate bosom; the firm reliance that I have on your honor and character gives strength to my love. I feel that you are the best man in the world, and I the most favored woman. I want my lecture for this evening, to study. When may I expect the one for Sunday? You are really worked to death, and I am ashamed of myself. What can I send you, love?"

"Pardon for my neglect. I have been busily engaged in reading the discourse for last Sunday evening, which has afforded me infinite pleasure. I really think, love, it is superior to any of the former ones, and much regret that I had not an opportunity of delivering it. How beautifully sentimental in all its passages. I am pleased beyond measure. The paragraph, particularly, commencing with 'Let me again and again impress upon your minds that there can be no error in a well-spent life', I admire. I am glad to hear of your good health and spirits. May they always remain tranquil. Copeland is waiting with the newspapers, and I must not detain him. Must I visit you to-morrow? I hope so; if not, I will ask Mrs. Smith to accompany me in a walk to-morrow afternoon. My heart is aching."

Carlile wanted Isis to become a philosophical lover, and had written her something to that effect, which called forth the following letter: —

"Why, my dear, this very paragraph alone is sufficient to turn the argument in my favor. You say that you should have by right given me on the first onset five or seven years of hard study in philosophy; and then again you say, perhaps had you done so, I should ere this have run away, you not being so situated as to be able to lock me up, or I should have died. Does not that prove that there is nothing charming about philosophy; or why fear me? I am enamored with love. I love with all my heart, with all my mind, and with all my soul, and with all my strength. I very soon found out the beauties of love; I have experienced the delightful sensation that love produces. I have felt its power; I have received its cheering influence, and have drank deep draughts from the fountain of love. In vain have I been endeavoring to find out the charms of this divine philosophy. The charms of love presented themselves immediately to my view. But no, like the glorious Constitution of England, its charms are lost, are hidden, and the more you become acquainted with either the more anxious are you to run away from both. Such is the impression that remains still upon the mind. And your letter, believe me, has advocated the cause of love more ardently than even mine did, for one word in favor of philosophy you have bestowed twenty in favor of love. 'Tis true, indeed, the first sheet of paper was entirely occupied with the subject of love. The commencement of the second sheet, says, 'How charming is divine philosophy, not dull and crabbed. It is the perfection of love, and to this I want to bring you.' Then again you fall into full strain and sing the praises and glories of love. I confess myself that I have never been a philosopher, because I saw nothing in it to admire. I saw everything in love, and I want to become a scientific lover – not a philosopher, but an unequalled lover, a paragon of perfection, of constancy, and of faithful love – pure, uncontaminated, unsophisticated, unmixed, natural love. Love sincere and true wants not the aid of philosophy; does not want any restraint and will not bear it, it cannot long exist in thraldom. It must be free as the air we breathe. It will not be told that it must love thus far and no further. No, no, that will never do. I do not say that it is to be indulged in to the injury of other duties or claims; that it is to satiate itself. No, that would be a mere carnal passion, an animal propensity, and a profanation to call it love. It is not the love I feel, not the kind of love that I am pleading the cause of: I want a love, virtuous and pure, but still unbounded. When we talk of moderate love, philosophical love, etc., it amounts to nothing. There is no such a thing as a moderate true lover. Pray tell me how do you like a moderate reformer? 'Tis just the same. A Whig, a half and half sort of a Radical. Nay, the subject will not bear the comparison. I am an out and out Republican, an enemy to kings, priests and lords, and have not patience to hear anyone talk of being a politician when his head is stuffed up with superstition. And how in the name of wonder can you preach philosophy to me in my present situation, surrounded as I am by almost insurmountable difficulties? If I had only one very large one to overcome then I might listen with some degree of patience to-your preaching and entreaties. But then I have a thousand little troubles, real troubles, besides all my imaginary ones, and they are numberless. And I have one as huge as a mountain, our separation. Ah! none of your philosophy for me, I make no account of it, Diogenes (I don't know if I am correct in spelling the name, but you will understand to whom I allude). He might very comfortably preach philosophy he having nothing to do with the practice of it – no-cares, no troubles, no nothing upon his mind, and really he had nothing to engross his time but to roll an old tub about and write moral sentences and philosophy. I tell you what, Richard Carlile, I will make this agreement with you, that if you will consent to my going into the country and taking up my abode in some sequestered spot, far from the busy haunts of men, I will become all you wish me to be, quite a philosopher in petticoats; I will write pastorals. I shall then have no annoyances; I will even try to forget you for a time. I think a few years' study would make me perfect, quite inanimate. You say, 'imitate me'. I cannot, you're a man, and Richard Carlile. Can the ass ever inherit the strength of the horse? Can weakness ever become strength? Can woman become man? Can I change my nature? I respect, I admire, I esteem, I love where I find it impossible to imitate. You are an exception, and where you point out yourself as an example you do not give me fair play. We are now in the nineteenth century, and you cannot find me one dignified woman as an example. I only ask you for one. I shall enter more fully into this subject again, if I am allowed. I have not written well today. I was much pleased with your effusion of love. I will not accept you as a father, as an example. I am almost inclined to think that I am jealous of your superiority of character over mine, and am aiming at being a more jealous lover than you. Love is a delightful study; I feel and know it to be so, and shall never be less a lover than now. I find the passion to grow upon me, and I am not a wild-fire. You say let there be no more nonsense, and that you do not like that foolish kind of love, wild and romantic. It is not good nor lasting. Why, then, did you arouse, by your kindness, by your attention, by your example, by everything but precept, my affection to such a pitch of love? You have endeavored by every inducement that lay in your power to implant the seed of love in my bosom, and now, when you see the fruits, you are alarmed, you are distressed. What! did you not know human nature better than to expect patience? Ah, you may talk, you may preach, you may pretend, you may assume an angry appearance, you may threaten; but it will not do. Now pray tell me, if you can, I say mention but the name of one individual in whom the two passions have been encouraged, in whose heart philosophy and love have taken up their abode at one and the same time. I am young in philosophy, and yet you are angry because I am not a sage. You are angry and distressed because I have paid more regard to your example than to your preaching. I knew a priest once that said: 'Do not do as I do, but do as I say.' Now there was honesty. Well, well, you are, you may be a philosopher. I know that in every affair that concerns us in the way of business and in the generality of human affairs, that you are bold and honest, just, calm and patient under the most trying circumstances. Cool, courageous, and mild under disappointments and perplexities and difficulties, in fact that you are a philosopher in everything but love. You may smile and say I am mistaken. I tell you that I am right in my calculation, in my conjecture; come, come, be honest on this point, give your love a favorable answer. Yes, say, love me in your own way, that is, tenderly and affectionately; love me and never mind philosophy. You blame me. How in the name of heaven can you expect me to be reasonable in such a dilemma, between snow and heat, between two such extremes, and one is pulling me one way and the other is dragging me in an opposite direction? Decide, Richard Carlile, will you have your Isis, a wild, romantic, erring, loving, kind, affectionate creature, sometimes weak and making you a little angry at times, hoping, fearing, sincere, faithful, changeable, warmhearted, kind, generous, thoughtful but grateful, thankful for your kindness and sensible of your worth, say, will you have me a woman, or will you have me a philosopher? Whichever character you prefer, I will become that one. As a philosopher I will not smile, I will view every change with philosophic indifference and exclaim with Pope, 'Whatever is, is right'. My heart shall never be overburdened with care, my countenance never change, I will neither laugh nor cry, sorrow shall not make me weep, misfortune shall not affect me, and when I again behold you I shall be a stoic: no expression of love or of pleasure, no exhibition of feeling, no, no, that would be disgraceful, my character would suffer. Charming philosophy! No, love, I tell you again I cannot be both, that the two characters cannot be associated in the same person, and I defy you to point out one example – say 'Imitate this philosophical love, encouraging, admirable woman!' And should you do so, should you happen to have hit upon one female in the course of your deep reading and researches, I would immediately tell you that she had not a lover in prison, and if she had that she was not prohibited from occasionally beholding and conversing with him; and if she was, that she was not within a few days of being a mother, and if she was that she did not live at 62, Fleet Street; that she had not to fear a despicable Whig Government; that she did not fear for her lover's safety, and if she did, that her love did never equal mine; and if, after encountering all these perplexities she could boast calm fortitude and philosophical love and indifference, I do not envy, do not wish to be possessed of such feeling. Ah, Richard, have not wisdom, strength and power fled when love gains possession of the heart? Of what use was Solomon's wisdom or Samson's strength? Where then was philosophy? 'Tis nonsense to talk of both. Such a doctrine fails when it comes to be put in practice, and you know it only you want honesty, philosophy and love. You must be both. I will be both, but it must be when our child is born; it must be the hero; I still must remain what I am, a mere woman.

"Living in a retired, quiet spot of ground, having your mind at ease, your wants supplied, and your wishes gratified, that is the hour, then is the time to talk philosophically. I got into a little fit of love this morning. I begged Miss Philosophy to help me over it, but the cross old maiden lady used me very ill, just as you would fancy a cross old maiden lady treating a young, lovely girl of twenty, did this maid treat me. I thought of you, and then I was uneasy. I thought again philosophically; then by way of a little stimulant, I rummaged for that very ugly letter you sent me the week before we were separated. You must remember it. A 'to be burnt' letter you called it. It assisted my bit of philosophy most wonderfully. Do you remember the contents of that letter? Oh, this letter has assisted my philosophy most wonderfully. I almost think that if I received a note for admission in the compter to-morrow morning, that I should have magnanimity of soul sufficient for a Seneca's wife. Now what say you? I will have you make a choice. No both. Must I practise love? I will adhere to either of the two characters but not to both. I shall spoil myself and be neither one nor the other. Make a choice, oh! make a choice. Pure nature's feeling for me, altho' I may err 'tis not of the heart; let me be thought weak and irresolute. I perhaps am so, but I never hoped to be called unfeeling. Must your Isis love you or must she not? that is the question; or must she assume an indifference that she does not feel: a cold, calculating, philosophical, dignified indifference? Come, make a choice; oh, make a choice; philosophy or love?"

CHAPTER III. LETTERS TO "ISIS"

A little later comes this letter of Maria, the younger sister of "Isis". It was written because of two open letters which appeared in the Isis, the publication of that name. We neither criticise nor defend these letters, they were no doubt outlined by Carlile in his usual habit of publicity and with the best of intentions, but there is also no doubt that they startled and wounded the feelings of the family deeply. In those days to have your name in the paper was a disgrace, unless under the heading of Births, Marriages or Deaths.

"1832. Her sister Maria to the Editress of the Isis.

"My Dear Eliza, —

"'Isis,' I suppose I am to call you, since you have renounced your Christian name, and taken one instead which I can find only in the heathen mythology. I have received both your letters, and indeed in a form which I should least of all have expected, and least of all wished for any member of our reputable and respectable, but always retiring and obscure family. You are the first one that ever had the ambition to appear before the public, and I must confess that that ambition, extraordinary as it is, appears under circumstances that raise it above all suspicion of the influences which are the ordinary incentives to ambition. It cannot be any ordinary pursuit of riches, nor any very particular regard to reputation that has placed my sister in a situation of such peculiar attachment to an individual whom the law of his country has-placed in a gaol.

"But as I am no philosopher, as you profess to be, and therefore unable to judge of things (as you would) save as they really are, I am obliged to confine my judgment to the nature of things as they appear to be, and as the judgments of society are necessarily governed by appearances, we surely claim too much from society when we expect its good opinions and its bestowal of confidence, without paying the compliment of our attention and regard to appearances. An authority which you ever respected, and which our dear departed father would have us both to respect through life, has counselled us: Whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there is any praise think on these things. And this, I presume, would have been no counsel to regulate young women's deportment in society, even though she had come to discover that the faith in which her father lived in virtue, and died in hope, was a mere being, held bound or tied fast to a system, a dogma, a ceremony, a discipline. But at the distance to which you have pleased to remove yourself from us, a distance I fear greater than miles can measure, we, your religious family, have no means of judging of your conduct but by report, and it is with an aching heart that I find that the frightful corroboration of your own report against yourself. In your first letter, which I read in print in the Isis No. 34, purporting to be edited by a lady, and that lady to be my sister Eliza, you are pleased to expose to the world what certainly the world could have as little curiosity to know as I had inclination to discover, and it is hardly making me amends to publish at the same time the uncalled for acknowledgment that you were a young woman when I, you say (and I thank you, madam, for the advertisement), who am calculating on some early settlement for future life, 'was yet a child'. I am willing to give you as much honor as you would wish for the advantage you have over me in the point of age, though there is a sort of heroism in the extraordinary virtue of a young lady telling the world that she is in the view of thirty, which other young ladies of the same age would feel more disposed to admire than to imitate. But that advantage of quite sufficiently advanced age, on the score of which you are fully authorised to be the instructress, example, and guide of your sister at one and twenty, like all other advantages, involves a corresponding accountability, and gives the world a right to expect and to understand that a lady of such an age does not play with language with the unwary simplicity of a 'Miss in her teens', nor bandy sentences of a construction which may bear meanings to other minds of which her own was unconscious. The composition of a woman of thirty will never be interpreted according to the simplicity of a girl of fifteen. In the stationary and the staid condition in which our father left us, and left us with his best wishes and prayers that we might continue steadfast even to the end, you will not wonder that I should have consulted our minister, the Rev. H. T., in this great calamity, to me, of receiving two letters in print of such a nature as those in Nos. 34 and 35 of the Isis. I thank you for the admission that our minister (for so he was once, and I hope he will be again, both yours and mine) is an amiable man, and that you know he is amiable. Your good opinion of him to that extent would not have been lessened could you but have witnessed with what a generosity of soul he received and read the new sort of questions which a wandering member of his congregation had propounded to him. A sort of questioning, indeed, from which the character of Mr. T.'s suggestive influence is written as with a sunbeam. You bid me examines his motives. Well, my dear sister, well, the advice which you give to me is transcendently well. It is a wise, a discreet, a becoming caution in us young women to examine men's motives, especially ere we take them into such places in our confidence as none but a father could or ought to be. I have examined his motives, and to do so effectually I took the plan of doing so rationally, that is, I contented myself with examining those of his motives which came within my extent of power to examine, without going beyond my powers to examine, and which could be known to God only; and as far as humanity, I could find no motive for the advice I received from him of a less holy character than the motives which would have governed the counsels of a dying parent. Eliza, our minister was moved with sorrow for the inferior repute into which your conduct has brought our respectable family. What could be the corrupt motive for bringing upon us so much sorrow? For though you might choose to maintain that your conduct was that of an angel, you could not deny it was of evil repute, and to have been of a family of good repute and to see it fallen and cast down into most vile suspicion, and however your philosophy may enable you to set it at defiance, is to my feelings a very great calamity. For though you are very clever and have become so all of a sudden, yet I, your poor sister, feeling only as common people feel, and thinking only, I confess, as I have been taught to think, cannot help thinking what would our father have said? Would Eliza have turned Pagan had he lived? You say that the purity of my mind would revolt at the first idea of idolatry, as you have done. But how came you not to revolt at the last idea of idolatry, or having revolted at the first, to come at last to such a peace with that you first revolted at as to renounce your Christian name for that of an Egyptian idol; and not content with taking the name of Isis, to take her character too, and let all the world see that Isis could do nothing without her Osiris – 'her friend, her comforter, her priest, her saviour and her God'? They are your own words, my sister, and I pray God to forgive you their import, whatever it may be. I hope I do not understand them. You ask me in your first letter 'Will the Rev. Mr. T. bear a 'critical question?' Alack, my dear Eliza, what is it but my sister's love and duty that hinders her from putting a critical question to you? But with a sister's love and a sister's prayer I commend the question to your own bosom, which I long to press to mine; and I bid you adieu, not in the new-fangled meaning which no one ever heard of before, but in the sense of its common acceptance to God. And to God I commend you with the utmost sincerity of soul, as no fear of infidel rebuke shall ever hinder me from saying, 'through Jesus Christ our Lord '.

"Maria Sharples."

This not unworthy letter of itself throws no discredit on the writer, but the postscript attached to it carries a sting which undoes the very good impression the letter itself makes, which in justice to the writer, as well as to the recipient, is withheld, as it only shows that the religious ossification of the heart had set in even at the premature age of 21. Another curious circumstance in regard to this sister's letter is, that it is in the Rev. Robert Taylor's handwriting. The only explanation for this is that Isis may have sent it to Carlile, and he in turn sent it to Taylor, in prison, for his perusal, as their daily correspondence shows them to be in the habit of doing, i.e. exchanging everything that may have been of interest at the moment. Taylor must have copied it, with what object we are at a loss to discover. We find it in a collection of Taylor's own letters.

We left Carlile and Isis exchanging confidence and making arrangement for a permanent and mutually satisfactory partnership of marriage as well as of business. It was not, however, thought wise to make a public declaration of their union till Carlile's term of imprisonment had expired.

Richard Carlile to Isis.

"What shall I do to be saved? was never more earnestly felt than a feeling of mine at present which says: 'what shall I do to restore happiness to her whom I love and whom I have wounded?' As I began an intended long letter just now, Mrs. and Miss Henderson came about six o'clock. They waited until eight for Master Cooper, and left thinking he would not come. They had not left above a quarter of an hour before he and his father came. I wish you would come to breakfast with me to-morrow and have my atonement for the injury I have done you. I cannot write more to-night as my messenger whistles his visit."

"I did, love, indignantly say to Mr. League, do you think Miss Sharples is hiding herself? She is at my house, at her own house, indeed. I told him that his conduct was insolent and unbecoming him, that it was persecution, of which I had encountered enough to know how to deal with it, and that I should deal with it; I did not spare him, but treated him as he was – a low scoundrel. I shall write and tell him that you will visit me as usual to-morrow, and that he will refuse you admission at his peril. Mr. Paine and I are friends. I think it was the whispering of something of the kind that alarmed Mr. Paine and made him uneasy. I am very hungry waiting for my dinner. You shall have the receipts. I think you had better print 250 more Gauntlets. There is no other way of increasing the circulation than to meet all demands. This ten pound note must go to the landlord. I shall have another from Edinburgh in a day or two. Copeland is gone to the East for me. Cannot David get the paper from Shelding and Hodges?"

"If you were to complain to me of an insult from Richard, I should forbid him the house; but, love, I do not think it lessens you, but think it very much heightens the public view of your standing with me to see my boys about you. It shows that your ground is moral and good. If Mrs. Carlile did not feel this, she would never consent to the boys sleeping there or being there, and there is no more danger of your being undermined in my love, esteem, affection, and good opinion by any member of my family than there is of my taking back Mrs-Carlile, than which I had rather shorten my life. Such are my feelings on the subject, that I shall never shrink from meeting Mrs. Carlile anywhere in your company, nor from meeting the boys, nor from proposing to take either of the boys out with us, or to ask them to dine. In every respect I shall treat you as if there were no other Mrs. Carlile, and as if you were my lawful as well as my good wife. I fear nothing about you but your own temper, you own susceptibilities, which, though in some degree admirable, are very apt to be carried beyond the verge of reason and justice for the moment. I will always endeavor to set you a good example to rise above you in character and temper and goodness if I can. From me you shall never receive injustice, from no one will I bear it patiently. Now, love, I pray you, if you have written me any unpleasant letter to throw it in the fire. It will only spoil my working and make me unhappy. Why should you do it?