Charles Bradlaugh: a Record of His Life and Work, Volume 1 (of 2)

II. – In England "practical politicians among the advanced liberal party avoid him as honest men avoid a felon, as virtuous women avoid a prostitute."180

On the 6th of September he left Liverpool for his first journey across the Atlantic by the Cunard steamship the Scotia, which arrived at New York on the 17th – a long passage, as it seems in these days when vessels make the journey in little more than half that time. He had been told of the insulting paragraphs so industriously circulated about himself, and he had so much at stake, that as the Scotia neared New York he felt oppressed with anxieties and nervousness as to what was in store for him in this yet untried land. From the very outset, however, he met with cheery welcome and friendly greeting. When he landed he presented his customs declaration in the usual way to the chief collector in order to get his baggage opened, but the collector surprised and pleased him by saying, "Mr Bradlaugh, we know you here, and the least we can do is to pass you through comfortably" – and he was passed through comfortably, for without more ado the chalk "sesame" was scrawled upon his portmanteau and rugs. He had barely established himself in his hotel when representatives from several New York journals came to interview him, and his arrival was advertised by the press to such an extent that within seven days of landing he had seen close upon three hundred newspaper notices of himself.181

On the Saturday after his arrival he was invited to dine at the Lotos Club, where he received the warmest and most hospitable welcome, the Directory afterwards voting him the privileges of the Club during his stay in New York. A few days later he was asked to a reception given by the Lotos to Wilkie Collins. The guests were received by the President, Whitelaw Reid, and amongst them were Dr Ludwig Büchner and Bret Harte. Mr Bradlaugh was called upon to speak, and I gather that he made a very favourable impression. O'Donovan Rossa called upon him soon after his arrival, and thanked him for his work for Ireland, and showed him several small courtesies. On Sunday the 28th he was received by the New York Positivists and welcomed in extremely kind terms by the President of the Society. The religious journals were greatly irritated at the attention paid to Mr Bradlaugh, and did not neglect to show it, one even refusing to insert the advertisement of his lectures sent by the advertising agency.

Misfortune met him within a few days of his landing in the shape of a financial panic of unusual severity, which, commencing in New York, spread through the States. Speaking of this panic in one of his earliest letters home, he says: "I entered the house of Henry Clews & Co., about five minutes after Jay Cooke and Co. had stopped payment. Then the excitement was not so great; people seemed stupefied with the incredible news, as Jay Cooke was a name like Baring and Rothschild. Later every one seemed to grow delirious, and crowds gathered round the doors of several banks, clamouring for admittance, the inside of each bank being already filled with anxious and angry people waiting to cash cheques, and doubting while they waited. On Friday things got worse, and the sight on Friday night, in the hall and reading room and smoking room of the Fifth Avenue Hotel, was something to remember. There was a dense mass of men, packed together – Jay Gould, Vanderbilt, Clews, and hundreds of others who had commenced the week with enormous fortunes, some entirely ruined in the last two days, and others not knowing whether or not bankruptcy awaited them in the morning. The élite of New York as seen in that seething crowd did not show to advantage; the Money Devil had gripped their entrails and disfigured their faces. On Saturday the President of the Republic arrived at the hotel in which I was staying, and then staircases, hall, corridors, smoking and reading rooms were besieged, and outside, in the streets, were carriages and uneasy waiters to gather scraps of news or comfort. I guess that very few went to church on Sunday, September 21st. On Sunday evening President Grant left for Washington, but the multitude did not decrease until midnight came. Each one who had seen or who had spoken to the President was waylaid, buttonholed, and became the centre of an eager group of questioners. The trouble was so intense that the bankers, brokers, and railway contractors actually forgot whether they were well or ill dressed." These financial troubles greatly affected all lecturing engagements, as one might easily imagine, and Mr Bradlaugh in particular found his difficulties considerably increased by the suicide of his agent, whose affairs had become considerably involved in consequence of the panic.

His first lecture was given in the Steinway Hall at New York, on October 3rd. Considering the home troubles, the audience was a good one, one which he himself felt to be very remarkable. Amongst those present were many members of the Lotos Club, including their President, Whitelaw Reid, and D. J. Croly, "Jenny June," Colonel Olcott, General Kilpatrick, Andrew Jackson Davis, Theodore Tilton, Mrs Victoria Woodhull, O'Donovan Rossa, the Rev. O. B. Frothingham, Colonel Hay, Bret Harte, and Mr Andrews were also amongst his listeners. My father had been feeling very nervous about this first lecture. When he arrived in New York he was asked how long he expected to remain in America. "If I fail at Steinway Hall on October 3rd, I shall take the next steamer for England," was the reply. But there was no question of failure; he met with an immediate and wonderful success; his audience came to criticise and remained to applaud. In the papers of the following day his speech was greatly praised, and he himself pronounced one of "the greatest of living orators." The Brindley episode,182 which by covering him with ridicule might have done him serious injury, was, by his coolness and quick wit, turned into a decided advantage. On the day after his lecture he had numerous kindly callers and congratulations. Amongst those who called was Mrs Victoria Woodhull, and Mr Bradlaugh's impressions of this much-talked-of lady are not without a certain interest. When Mrs Woodhull called he was talking to Stephen Pearl Andrews, the author of a learned book entitled "The Basic Outlines of Universology," and, "while chatting with Mr Andrews," said my father, "a slightly built lady entered, who was presented to me as Mrs Victoria Woodhull, the present President of the American Spiritualists, and advocate of very advanced doctrines on social questions. The energy and enthusiasm manifested by this lady in our extremely brief conversation were marvellous; her eyes brightened, her whole face lit up, and she seemed all life. It would have been impossible to have brought together two persons more exactly opposite than Victoria Woodhull and Stephen Pearl Andrews – one all fire, the other all quiet thought; the one intent on active out-door war, the other content to work almost isolated in his closet on a huge book, which few can read and fewer still will care to read. Mrs Woodhull is evidently made for sharp strife of tongue and pen. Her face lights up with a beauty which does not belong to it ordinarily, but which gilds it as she speaks. Mr Andrews uses his pen only to note down the record of his thought, without the slightest regard to the never-ceasing strife around him. His forehead is marked with the furrows hard thinking has ploughed upon it. Many people here speak very bitterly against Victoria Woodhull; at present I prefer to take sides with none. It is enough to say that she is most certainly a marvellously audacious woman." Before he quitted New York for the New England States the Lotos Club gave him another dinner, at which he met Petroleum V. Nasby and Colonel John Hay.

In Boston, despite all the prejudices excited against him by the Boston papers, Mr Bradlaugh met with a really splendid reception. His first meeting was presided over by Wendell Phillips, who introduced him as "a man who, Sir Charles Dilke says, does the thinking for more minds, has more influence, than any other man in England;"183 and who himself compared him with Samuel Adams, "the eloquent agitator, the most statesmanlike mind God lent New England in 1776." Boston people remarked that the audience was a curious one, unusual to the regular lyceum lectures. It included many cultivated people, many scholarly and solid men, many accomplished and delicate women, but in addition to these, who were customary attendants at lecture courses, there was an unusually large number of young men present, and more remarkable still was the large attendance of working men, the whole forming a "strangely composite" but wonderfully sympathetic audience. On the platform were Charles Sumner, who, at the close of the address, spoke words of warm encouragement to my father; William Lloyd Garrison, who cheered him repeatedly; and other prominent Boston men.

The next day, with Wendell Phillips and George Julian Harney as guides, he visited the different places of interest in Boston, including Theodore Parker's house, where he was deeply affected by the reverent care Mrs Parker bestowed on the rooms formerly occupied by her husband, and by the evident worship in which she held every memory of him. Mrs Parker gave him photographs of Theodore Parker and of the library; with these in his hand, he said, "I hurried away, almost too much moved to thank the widow for her gentle courtesy."

A large part of his first Sunday in Boston was passed with Charles Sumner in his rooms at the Coolidge House. They had a very interesting talk together on the politics of the hour and future possibilities, and also on matters connected with the Abolition struggle. Mr Bradlaugh felt a deep admiration for Sumner, and Sumner, in his turn, was most kind to my father and warm in his praises.

He was invited by Dr Loring, President of the Massachusetts Senate, to a dinner at the Massachusetts Club, given to Charles Sumner, to congratulate him on his supposed recovery to health – congratulations which proved, alas! all too premature. At this dinner he met Henry Wilson, Vice-President of the United States, and Joshua B. Smith – born a slave, then a Senator – besides other distinguished men. Every one was kind to him: Henry Wilson gave him a pressing invitation to Washington; Sumner bade him disregard the unfair attacks made upon him. When his health was proposed, and they all rose to their feet to give him three hearty cheers of greeting, he felt amply repaid for the pain he had suffered from those coarse attacks, bred by bigotry, which had alike preceded and pursued him from the Old World to the New. He dined with Sumner on other occasions, and receptions were given him in Boston, to which most of the leading men were invited. In fact, such honours and hospitalities were heaped upon him that, as one journal remarked, he seemed to have persuaded some people at least "that there are others besides Satan who are not so black as they are painted."

He naturally became a prey to the usual autograph-hunter. The "Theodore Parker Fraternity" determined to utilise the demand for his signature by procuring a supply for their "Fair," and Wendell Phillips undertook to beg them, which he did in the following letter: —

"23rd October '73.

"Dear Sir, – The 'Theodore Parker Fraternity' – all the Church he allowed – hold a Fair, beginning October 27. At Mrs Parker's table she sells autographs – and wants some of yours. Now please write your name on the enclosed cards – a motto or sentiment also if you choose – and re-mail them to me, then I'll thank you, and earn their thanks also – and forgive you that you gave Mrs Sargent a photograph of yourself and forgot me!

"I hope you find crowds everywhere as cordial as those you gathered here – and where, as at Cambridge, if you don't happen on a crowd, I trust you may have one such hearer as you had there – Henry James, equal to about 1800 common folk – who was wholly carried away. —

Yours,Wendell Phillips

"Mr C. Bradlaugh."

Wendell Philips also presided at Mr Bradlaugh's second lecture in Boston, and again the audience was said to include some of the brightest intellects in New England. Amongst the visitors who came the next day to congratulate him on his success was William Lloyd Garrison, who, like Sumner, was one of my father's "great men." These Boston lectures produced an even greater sensation, and a revulsion of feeling in his favour more complete, than those delivered in New York.

After lecturing in the New England States, where I gather that many of the lectures originally contemplated had to be cut out in consequence of the distress occasioned by the financial panic, Mr Bradlaugh went west. He visited amongst other places Buffalo, Cincinnati (where the Roman Catholic Archbishop Purcell was amongst his auditors), St Louis, and Kansas, and at each place the newspapers waged fierce warfare after his departure. He reached Kansas in December, two days after the suspension of the chief bank in that city, and here he met with a somewhat serious accident. In passing along one of the inclines of the city, he slipped backwards on the frozen ground, and throwing out his right hand to save his back, he tore a piece out of the palm, and deeply gashed his wrist.184 He was unable to get the wound properly dressed in Kansas, and as he had to be continually travelling and lecturing in the severe cold (about 6°), the injury was greatly aggravated, and it was many months before the wound was properly healed and without pain. While lecturing he suffered intensely, and when, as sometimes happened, some gesture or movement would set the wound bleeding afresh, it was, in addition, extremely inconvenient. The pain, at times exceedingly acute, rendered him abnormally irritable, and he afterwards told us one or two amusing stories of his trials and his temper at this time. At one place amongst his audience were a young lady, an elderly lady, whom he set down as the maiden aunt of the younger, and a young gentlemen, whom he assumed to be the young lady's lover. The young people kept up a continual flow of conversation, until, almost frantic with pain from his wound (which was also bleeding so freely that he was obliged to keep his hand raised all the evening), he stopped short in his lecture, and turning to the young people said, amidst profound silence, "If that young lady and young gentleman prefer their conversation to my lecture, I should be greatly obliged if they would continue it outside." The "aunt," he told us, looked daggers at the poor girl, and the culprits themselves did not dare to so much as exchange another glance during the rest of the evening; they looked so uncomfortable that he felt quite sorry for them, and repented of his irritability. At another place, where it was exceedingly cold, the man in charge of the stoves took the opportunity to thrust in huge logs with a great noise whenever he was unusually pathetic. He says that he bore with this as Job could not have borne with it had he been tempted to lecture there, but at last even his patience was exhausted, and he thundered out "words of affectionate remonstrance, which effectually prevented any more wood being used that evening."

Shortly after this he was at Chicago, and was amazed to see how the city had recovered from the recent fire; the spectacle of the magnificent buildings seemed like reopening a page from "Aladdin and his Wonderful Lamp." Just before entering the lecture hall he saw a face he hardly recognised. "It was one I had not seen for a quarter of a century," he said. "'Don't you know me, Mr Bradlaugh?' was the greeting, and the voice seemed more familiar than the face. My memory went back to the days when food was short, and when I shared the scanty meal with the questioner, her mother, and her sister at Warner Place; but twenty-five years had sufficiently blotted the memory and blurred the page to confuse me in the recognition. Half-hesitatingly, I said, 'I am not quite sure; I think it is Hypatia.' I was wrong, however; it was her sister Theophila. And thus, after so long a time, I was again brought face to face with the daughters of one to whom the English freethought party in great measure owe the free press and free platforms we use to-day." He only stayed in Chicago one night, and had but a short interview with his old friends; yet even that brief glimpse of them brought him a throb of pain, "for," he said, "I could not help wondering whether, thirty years after my death, my own daughters might be in a strange land so entirely overlooked" as these ladies were.

From Chicago he went to Kalamazoo, and there the news of the death of his lecture-agent compelled his instant return to New York. He was very feverish and unwell at this time; his general health suffering from the effects of the wound in his hand, which had now become greatly swollen and inflamed, and caused him acute pain. The last days of the year found him once more in Boston, and they were made ever memorable to him by his first meeting with Ralph Waldo Emerson at a reception given by Mrs Sargent. As soon as he was able to use a pen – although writing was for some long time a matter of pain and difficulty – he himself described his meeting with Emerson, the hero of his boyhood's days.

"On Wednesday, December 31st," he wrote, "I had my first interview with Ralph Waldo Emerson, at a reception given to him by Mrs Sargent at her residence in Chestnut Street. The rooms were filled by a company of probably the most chosen amongst New England's illustrious men and women, gathered to give greeting to 'the sage of Concord.'… My hostess gratified me soon after my arrival by searching me out amongst the crowd with the welcome words, 'Mr Emerson is specially inquiring for you.' I soon found myself face to face with a kind, truthful-looking man, reminding me somewhat in his countenance of the late Robert Owen. After a few words of introductory converse, I was assigned a chair, which had been specially preserved for me, next to Mr Emerson. The afternoon will always be memorable to me. Ralph Waldo Emerson commenced by quietly and unaffectedly reading in a clear, measured voice his new poem on 'The Tea-party Centennial.' His manner was so gentle that he seemed only reading it to one person, and yet his voice was so distinct that it filled the room with its lowest tones. When Mr Emerson ceased reading, a little to my surprise, and much to my delight, I was called upon to speak. Twenty-six years before, when too poor to buy the book, I had copied out parts of the famous lecture on 'Self-Reliance,' and now I stood in the presence of the great preacher, at least an example of a self-reliant man. After my tribute of respectful and earnestly thankful words to Emerson as one of the world's teachers, I could not refrain from using the spirit of his lines to ground a comparison between the public opinion of Boston in 1773 and 1873. Mr Emerson smiled an almost fatherly approbation of my very short speech; but, what the Traveller terms my 'kindly, courteous, but frank rebuke of the spirit of the age,' called forth quite a lively debate, which was opened by Wendell Phillips, who was followed by Henry Wilson, by the Rev. Mr Alger, and Dr Bartol, then by Mr Alcott, and last, but by no means least, by a notable woman, Julia Ward Howe. Mrs Howe strongly recalled to me the cold, intellectual face of Archbishop Manning, but she manifested feeling as well as intellect in her brief address. Wendell Philips spoke a second time, and to my immense delight, for it gave me a better opportunity of judging the greatest orator in New England. I fully expected that Mr Emerson, who had listened with marked attention and evident interest to the conflicting statements, would give some opinion; but as the oracle remained silent, I was obliged to be content with his pleasant personal words of promise to seek me out for another meeting before my departure for England."

On the same night Mr Bradlaugh lectured to a brilliant and crowded audience in the Music Hall, and the next day the Vice-President of the United States came to congratulate him on his "continued successes," at the same time presenting him with the first volume of his invaluable work upon "The Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America." At Salem, where my father lectured shortly afterwards, he was the guest of Dr Loring, President of the Massachusetts Senate. Then at the special request of the Rev. A. A. Miner, D.D. – who had heard him speak in Boston – he addressed the students and officers of Tuft's College, and found in them a rarely appreciative and enthusiastic audience. On the journey back to Boston Dr Miner told him that he liked his students to hear every man he thought a true man, whatever might be his views. "Some denounce me as a bigot," he added, "and others regard me as a heretic. I wish that when my young men leave me they may be carefully trained to hear all opinions and to form their own."

Everywhere my father found good friends, both amongst the poor and amongst the well-to-do; many old remembered faces, too, he met – poor men who had left the Old World to tempt, and sometimes to win, better fortune in the New. When he visited Niagara, the man who drove his buggy turned out to be a Northampton man and a devoted admirer.

But all the kindness and all the friendliness shown him in America did not weaken his fondness for his mother country and his determination to serve it. He loved his own land, and the men and women there who trusted him and worked with him. In the middle of January he wrote home: "My heart now yearns for Europe; and when I have covered another twenty thousand miles or so … I shall pack up the remnants of my shirts and come home." Little did he think as he wrote those words that within the brief space of a fortnight he would be on the sea, going back to England as fast as the Java could take him. But such was to be the final misfortune attending his first American lecturing tour. As he was journeying towards Washington to lecture, and to pay his promised visit to Henry Wilson in that city, a telegram from Austin Holyoake reached him, telling him that Gladstone had dissolved Parliament. He stopped short in his journey, and turned back to New York in order to take the first vessel bound for home.

On his return to England he found that his lectures in the United States were represented as having been a dead failure; and that he himself had been mostly laughed at and ridiculed, statements exactly the reverse of truth. That his lectures brought him no money profit was the consequence, not of his unpopularity, but of the terrible financial panic that took place almost as soon as he arrived in the States. Then just as he was beginning to recoup the losses owing to this, he was summoned back by the dissolution of Parliament; and this final catastrophe brought him home with pockets almost as light as when he started; and worse than all, with a tremendous burden of liabilities incurred through broken engagements.

CHAPTER XXXIX

TWO NORTHAMPTON ELECTIONS, 1874

In the spring of 1873 there was much talk of a dissolution of Parliament, and everywhere the constituencies were making ready for the general election – the first under the Ballot Act. In reviewing the candidatures Mr Bradlaugh said he hoped to see re-elected "Jacob Bright, as representing the women's question; Sir Charles Dilke for his outspoken Radicalism; George Dixon for his great services in the education movement; Henry Fawcett for his advanced Radicalism, and his knowledge of India; Charles Gilpin for his courage in striving to abolish capital punishment; C. Wren Hoskyns for his views on the land; Vernon Harcourt, despite his personal ambition, for his manly advocacy of popular rights; Edward Miall for his disestablishment advocacy; Anthony John Mundella and Duncan M'Laren for their useful support to their betters; Dr Playfair for his brains; Samuel Plimsoll for his shipping impeachment; Henry Richard for his services as a peace advocate; Peter Rylands for his endeavours to revive Joseph Hume's memory; Peter Alfred Taylor for his crusade against the game laws; and William M'Cullagh Torrens for knowledge of India and general utility." He did not agree with all these, but "they have work to do," he said, "and they try to do it." He added: "I shall be rather glad to see Samuel Morley again returned for Bristol. Personally, I do not know Mr Morley, but I believe him to be a good honest reformer as far as he goes, and after his own fashion." Amongst the new members he hoped to see sitting in the House were Mr Burt185 (mentioned first of all), Mr Arch, Mr Odger, and Captain Maxse.