Kitabı oku: «Charles Bradlaugh: a Record of His Life and Work, Volume 1 (of 2)», sayfa 24

The libel endeavoured to connect Mr Bradlaugh with Broadhead (of the Sheffield trade outrages), and with the misdeeds of which Mr Montagu Leverson had been guilty two years after my father quitted his office. It was published on August 15th, and was read by Mr Bradlaugh on the 19th. He at once telegraphed a demand for an apology, and on the same day received a letter from the proprietor saying that the editor, who was then absent, would be requested to offer a suitable apology. This the editor showed no inclination to do, and some correspondence ensued. Ultimately the Razor people agreed to publish a statement of facts if Mr Bradlaugh would draw it up and send it to them. This he did, but the statement did not appear, and, tired of these proceedings, in October he issued a writ against them. The case came on in December, at the nisi prius sittings at the Guildhall, before Mr Justice Blackburn and a common jury. Mr Bradlaugh did not conduct his own case, but Mr Digby Seymour, Q.C., and Mr Day appeared on his behalf, while the defendant Mr Brooks was represented by Mr O'Malley, Q.C., and Mr Griffiths.

No attempt was made to justify the libel, nor was any apology offered, although Mr Digby Seymour intimated the willingness of his client to accept it even at that late hour. Mr Bradlaugh was the only witness (the defence called no evidence whatever) other than those required for formal proofs; and, having no case, the counsel for the defence endeavoured to excite the prejudices of the jury by cross-examining him as to his theological opinions. The method pursued by Mr O'Malley was so gross that, lest I seem to do him an injustice, I will quote the exact words of the report of his cross-examination. After asking a number of questions about Broadhead and trades unions, Mr O'Malley asked:

"Do you believe in the existence of a God?"

C. Bradlaugh: I decline to answer that question, because, according to the present laws of this country I might by so doing render myself liable to prosecution.

Mr O'M.: Have you not said, "There is no God"?

C.B.: No; on the contrary, I have repeatedly said and written that an atheist does not say "There is no God."

Mr O'M.: Have you not made statements in public against the existence of God?

C.B.: I decline to answer that question.

Mr O'M.: Did you not once at a public lecture take out your watch and defy the Deity, if he had any existence, to strike you dead in a certain number of minutes?

C.B.: Never; such a suggestion is utterly unjustifiable.

Mr Justice Blackburn: If any issues in the action depended on this course of proceeding, Mr O'Malley, I should not object, but I cannot see that these questions have any relevance to the matter before us.

Mr O'M.: I think I shall be able to show by a few questions more the importance of the plaintiff's answers. Are you (to plaintiff) a writer in the National Reformer? And have you written under the name of "Iconoclast"?

C.B.: I decline to answer these questions, because prosecutions for penalties are at present pending against the National Reformer at the instance of the late Government.

Mr O'M.: Did you write this passage, which appeared in the National Reformer: "There is a great big monkey," etc. [fable already referred to on p. 233].

C.B., after some hesitation: I might refuse to answer this question on the same ground I have refused to answer the other questions. I prefer, however, to answer, and I say that passage did appear in a paper with which I was connected, but was not written by me. It was part of a translation of a German fable, and was copied nearly two years ago into the Saturday Review without the context. If the context were read with it, the meaning of the passage would be entirely different It related as much to Hinduism as to Christianity. I wrote a reply to the Saturday Review at the time.¹²⁷

Mr O'M.: Did you ever take legal proceedings against the Saturday Review for publishing this article?

C.B.: No; I considered it a criticism on my opinions, and answered it by other articles in other papers. I should never sue a journal for an attack on my opinions.

Mr O'M.: Do you believe in the truth of the Christian religion?

C.B.: I decline to answer, because it is a prosecutable offence for a man to deny the truth of Christianity after he had been brought up in its tenets.

The defence, as I have said, called no witnesses; but Mr O'Malley was a host in himself, and as far as the jury were concerned, the "eloquence" of his address more than made up for the weakness of his case. He said that from Mr Bradlaugh's refusals to answer his questions, "it is fair to assume that he has no character to be injured by such a criticism as this," meaning by that that an Atheist had no character to be injured when his principles were likened to those of such a man as Broadhead, a "self-confessed assassin," and his morality to that of a man compelled to flee the country on a charge of fraud. Mr O'Malley went on to say that while it would have been better if the article had not appeared, "it was nonsense to talk of it as injury to the notorious character of such a man. The smallest amount of damages would be sufficient to set up the character of that 'noble' man. He asked the jury, as Christian men, to refrain from giving their endorsement to that man Bradlaugh, to that man Bradlaugh, to that man Bradlaugh."

In the course of his summing up, Mr Justice Blackburn said that "all in Court must have been disgusted with some of the questions which had been put in cross-examination." That all were not disgusted was soon apparent, for, after a short consultation, the jury, feeling bound to respond to this appeal to their Christianity, returned a verdict for the plaintiff indeed, but with one farthing damages.

My father was deeply hurt at the mockery of this verdict, and, overcome by a sense of helplessness in the face of such intolerance, he wrote these bitter words: —

"Outlaw Or Citizen? Which am I?

"When at Bolton I sued for damages occasioned by the breach of contract for the hire of the hall in which the lectures were to be delivered, I was non-suited by the County Court Judge on the ground that the lectures to be delivered were illegal (although there was, of course, no possible evidence of what I should have said). When I was illegally arrested at Devonport, confined in a damp cell for one night, and twice brought before the magistrates, an Exeter jury, although they in point of fact decided entirely in my favour, gave me one farthing damages; and Lord Chief Justice Erle, on appeal to the Court sitting in banco, laid down the doctrine that the imprisonment which prevented a man like myself from making known his views (although that imprisonment had been by the verdict of the jury utterly unjustifiable) was rather a benefit to the individual imprisoned than a wrong for which damages could be sought. When, at Wigan, the evidence of myself and a gentleman and his wife were all refused by the County Court Judge, on the ground of our being all well-known Secularists, I was legally robbed of nearly thirty pounds. When concerned about three years ago in another litigation, the statement of my opponent that I was 'Iconoclast, the Atheist,' sufficed to defeat me. When I sued as plaintiff last year in an action to which there was no defence [Bradlaugh v. De Rin] in the Court of Common Pleas, my evidence was objected to on account of my disbelief in the Scriptures. When on appeal on a point of law I tendered Mr Austin Holyoake as bail, he was refused because he was a well-known heretic, and could not therefore be allowed to be sworn. Now I am grossly libelled, the libel is not justified; the only cross-examination is on my opinions; and the counsel for the defendant, who actually admits that the libel ought never to have appeared, asked the jury to give me the smallest possible damages because I am an Atheist. The jury respond to his appeal to their religious prejudices, and I get one farthing damages. What am I to do? If when I am libelled I take no notice, the world believes the libel. If I sue I have to pay about one hundred pounds costs for the privilege, and gain the smallest coin the country knows as a recompense. Duelling is forbidden alike by my code of morals and the law of the country. If I horsewhip the libeller, I am punishable for assault. Am I outlaw or citizen – which? Answer me, you who boast your superiority; you whose religion makes you better than myself. What mockery to tell me that I live in a free country, when it is thus justice is dealt out to such as I am!

"Charles Bradlaugh."

In January (1869) Mr Bradlaugh prayed the Court to grant him a rule for a new trial, and Lord Chief Justice Cockburn observed that "no one could say that because a man was an Atheist (even assuming him to be one) anyone was entitled to say he was a murderer or a swindler. That, however, probably was not quite the way in which it was put to the jury; it was probably put rather in this way, that when a man had publicly put forth certain sentiments in certain language, it might be that his character was not such as deserved or required much vindication. As a general principle the damages in actions of tort, especially in actions for libel, were eminently for the jury." Mr Justice Mellor made some similar remarks, and Mr Justice Hannen having put some questions as to the refusal of the apology and the manner of the denial of the charge, the Lord Chief Justice granted the rule.

It never came to a new trial, however, for in the following November the defendant, Mr Brooks, withdrew the whole of the charges against Mr Bradlaugh and apologised for their publication, but his solicitor intimated that he was in no position to pay the costs. Therefore, although my father obtained the barren satisfaction of this tardy apology and the withdrawal of the charges, it cost him not less than £200. The Razor itself did not survive this litigation, for before the new year of 1869 had dawned it was already discontinued.

In accordance with the wishes of some Yorkshire friends, Mr Bradlaugh had promised to give two political lectures in Mirfield on the 18th and 19th November 1870. The Mirfield Town Hall was engaged for this purpose on the 21st of September, and the lectures announced were – "War: its Effect upon European Peoples, and an Appeal for Peace," and "England's Balance Sheet." The hall belonged to a Company, and when it was realised that their property was let to the wicked Atheist for the purpose of pleading the cause of peace in Europe, some of the directors objected, and objected so strongly, to the proposed desecration of their building that they determined to back out of the agreement under the pretence that the hall-keeper had no authority to let it, although, in fact, he had taken four guineas, money paid for the hire of the hall, and had given a receipt for it. Mr Bradlaugh persisted in his right to lecture, and on making inquiries learned that the hall-keeper had let the hall on former occasions without any objection on the part of the directors. In order to complicate matters the Directors let the hall for the dates assigned to Mr Bradlaugh to a party of Ethiopian serenaders.

As Mr Bradlaugh made no sign of yielding when the time arrived, the assistance of the police was summoned, and the hall was guarded, inside and out, by a body of constabulary numbering about thirty men, under a superintendent. The directors evidently loved war better than peace. Mr Bradlaugh reached Mirfield at about a quarter past six on the evening of the 18th, but, fearing a disturbance, he went straight to the Town Hall, at once and alone, although the meeting was not summoned until eight o'clock. Upon reaching the hall he found it prepared for a siege; in addition to its garrison of police, it was barricaded with huge baulks of timber. He held some conversation with the Superintendent of the Police, who was sufficiently polite, and the Chairman of the Board of Directors, a gentleman particularly prominent in his opposition to Mr Bradlaugh, and now present to watch over the premises in person. During the conversation a crowd of about four hundred people collected, but at my father's request they remained perfectly quiet and took no part in the proceedings. Mr Bradlaugh then endeavoured to open the door, but in addition to being strongly barricaded the handle was held by Mr Johnson (the Chairman), and another man, the former of whom boasted that he would spend a large sum to keep Bradlaugh out of Mirfield. Finding the force against him too great, my father, after a little struggle, gave up the attempt to enter.

He at once commenced an action against the Town Hall Company, but owing to various delays the suit was not tried until the summer of 1871. It then came on at the Leeds Assizes on August 7th, before Mr Justice Mellor and a special jury. Mr Bradlaugh conducted his own case, while Mr Digby Seymour, Q.C., and Mr Mellor appeared for the Hall Company. Mr Bradlaugh opened in "a very temperate speech" of "great clearness," and then called his witness, Mr Stead, to prove the hire of the hall. Mr Stead had to go through a preliminary confusing examination as to his fitness to make affirmation, although Mr Justice Mellor was as considerate as the obnoxious wording of the Evidence Amendment Act would allow. Objection being taken to certain questions Mr Bradlaugh wished to put to his witness, my father was obliged to go into the witness-box himself to prove the points. Of course Mr Digby Seymour could not forget the lesson in tactics learned a few months before from Mr O'Malley, and like his opponent in the Razor case – though happily with less coarseness – seized the opportunity thus offered to rouse the religious prejudices of the jury, although the sole question in dispute was the validity of a contract made by the servant of a Company on its behalf.

But relevant or irrelevant, by hook or by crook, the religious question was almost invariably dragged in against Mr Bradlaugh: and just as invariably a bad case was bolstered up by diverting the minds of the jury from the real merits of the case to a contemplation of the wickedness of Atheistic opinions. Hence, according to the usual procedure, Mr Digby Seymour began:

"You are the proprietor of the National Reformer, I think?"

Mr Bradlaugh: I decline to answer that question on the ground that it might make me liable to a criminal prosecution. I am threatened with one at the present moment.

Mr S.: Oh, you state that, do you?

Mr B.: Yes, I do.

Mr S.: I think you hold strong opinions on political subjects as well as on religion?

Mr B.: Well, I hold opinions some of which are similar to those held by Dean Stanley, Mr J. S. Mill, and others.

Mr. S.: Without putting it unfairly, you hold extreme opinions?

Mr B.: I hold opinions held by a great many of the first men in Europe.

Mr S.: And I suppose, as you have refused, I must not ask you any question as to the contents of this National Reformer (holding one in his hand). May I ask if you think Christianity has a ludicrous aspect?

Mr B.: You may ask, but I shall not answer the question.

Mr S.: Do you know a work called "The Ludicrous Aspects of Christianity"? Is it in your library?

Mr B.: It is not in my library.

Mr S.: Then you think that Christianity has a ludicrous aspect?

Mr B.: I cannot answer that.

Mr S.: At all events, under your eloquent handling, I believe Christianity has been made to assume ridiculous aspects?

Mr B.: I have never written such a pamphlet as you refer to, nor delivered lectures under such a title.

At this point the Judge interfered, and after pointing out that the lectures to be delivered at Mirfield were of a political character, warned Mr Seymour that such questions were unnecessary. "If they were to destroy Mr Bradlaugh's credit I should not object, but there is really no part of his evidence in dispute," he said.

As Mr Bradlaugh had not otherwise sufficient evidence of the lettings of the hall, he was obliged to call the hall-keeper himself. This man, Thomas Balme, was, as might be expected, a very unwilling witness, with a peculiarly defective memory. Having heard him, Mr Justice Mellor came to the conclusion that he really had no authority to let the hall, and that consequently the plaintiff must be non-suited.

Mr Bradlaugh decided to try for a new trial, and applied to Mr Justice Willes at Judges Chambers a few days later that judgment might be stayed until the fifth day of Michaelmas Term, in order to enable him to move the Court of Queen's Bench. Mr Thomas Chitty appeared for the defendants.

When Mr Justice Willes read the receipt, which ran as follows: "Mirfield Town Hall Company, Limited. Mr Charles Bradlaugh have taken the Hall for two nights, November 18th and 19th, for the sum of four guineas. Paid 21st of September 1870. Thomas Balme, Hall-keeper, liable to damages," – he said to Mr Bradlaugh, "I shall be very glad if you can make out that the law helps you, for I think your case a very hard one. (Turning to Mr Chitty) With such a receipt and memorandum as this, having paid my four guineas, I should most certainly expect to lecture. It is very hard for the plaintiff so be defeated by the mere statement of your own servant that he had no authority."

Mr Chitty opposed the application. "There is really no good ground shown for a new trial," he said. "Perhaps at this moment no legal ground," replied the Judge, "but a strong suggestion which I am inclined to listen to. This is an application by a plaintiff who will be stopped if I do not aid him, and the circumstances, not ordinary ones, are certainly in his favour."

In the end it was arranged that Mr Bradlaugh should have an opportunity to move, if he could pay £60 into Court within seven days, and on his side my father pledged himself not to trouble the Court unless he was quite satisfied that he could prove that Balme had let the hall on other occasions. I gather that he was unable to get sufficient evidence on this point, for he carried the case no further. The taxed costs of the Mirfield Town Hall Company amounted to £98 7s., and as Mr Bradlaugh was unable to pay this at once an attempt was made to enforce immediate judgment, but this failed, and it was ultimately arranged that Mr Bradlaugh should pay £10 per month. So here was another addition to debt to the load of an already over-weighted man. The debt incurred in the Devonport trial took him three and a half years to pay. Happily, his own expenditure in this (the Mirfield) case was covered by the subscriptions of his poor friends, and they also ultimately contributed £25 towards the costs of the Hall Company.

CHAPTER XXIX
PERSONAL

In our house the year 1870, which was to bring death and sorrow to so many homes, and rage and despair to so many hearts, opened cheerlessly indeed. The outlook for my father was dark and gloomy in the extreme. Overweighted with debt, he seemed to be sinking ever deeper and deeper in financial difficulties. The prosecution of the National Reformer, the De Rin and the Razor litigation, had each and all left him more or less deeply involved. The great panic of 1866 had dealt him a serious blow from which he vainly attempted to recover; the identification of "C. Bradlaugh, of 23 Great St. Helen's," with "Bradlaugh, the Atheist lecturer," was fatal to business. The spirit of the boycott existed long before Captain Boycott lived to give it his name. People were much too good to do business with an Atheist, and just as the baker's wife took her custom from the boy coal merchant in 1848, so customers of a different class took their business from the City merchant twenty years later.

My father began to despair of making his business succeed under these conditions, and to think seriously of giving up his City life, and of devoting himself to public work. This course would relieve him from the anxieties of two clashing occupations; moreover, as he said, "while prejudice and clamour bring ruin to me as a business man, they can do me no injury as a lecturer and a journalist."¹²⁸

In addition to all these difficulties – the outcome of his public work – there were others, less serious in some respects, it is true, but far more so in the discredit attaching to them and the anguish they caused. I refer to those home extravagances and home debts, due to my mother's infirmity, which all helped to pile up the total liabilities to unmanageable figures. In March or April a man was put into possession at Sunderland Villa, and remained there for several weeks. My father felt this bitterly, but his course of conduct was now clear before him, and unhesitatingly decided upon; thus once more we see the pressure of money difficulties directly shaping his path. A few personal words in the National Reformer¹²⁹ indicated his resolve: "After five years' severe struggle," he wrote, "so severe, indeed, as to repeatedly endanger my health, I find it is utterly impossible to remain in business in the City in the face of the strong prejudice excited against me on political and religious grounds. I have determined to entirely give up all business, and devote myself to the movement. I have, therefore, taken steps to reduce the personal expenditure of myself and family to the lowest possible point, in order that I may set myself free from liability as early as I can, and I shall be glad now to arrange for week-night lectures in any part of Great Britain."

Hence, when these people, moved by their "political and religious" prejudices, drove Mr Bradlaugh from the City, and prevented him from making a livelihood in the ordinary way of business, they were unconsciously forging a weapon against themselves. Instead of giving a small portion of his time to writing and speaking against Theology, and on behalf of Radicalism and Republicanism, my father henceforth devoted the whole of his life to that work.

In accordance with his determination to reduce his personal expenditure to the lowest point, in the middle of May – before his words could have been read by those to whom they were addressed – my mother, my sister, and myself went to Midhurst, to find a home in my grandfather's little cottage, and my father set aside a modest sum weekly for our board and clothing. My brother remained with Mr John Grant of the Grenadier Guards for tuition, and Mr Bradlaugh himself took two tiny rooms at 3s. 6d. a week, at 29 Turner Street, Commercial Road, in the house of a widow who had been known to our family from her early girlhood. The size and style of these rooms may be guessed from the neighbourhood in which they were situated, and from the weekly rental asked for them. Within a few days or so from our leaving London, our household effects at Sunderland Villa were sold, my father retaining a few of the least saleable articles of furniture to supply what was necessary for his two rooms.

Instead of taking the most comfortable bedstead, he took the one which had been used by us little girls, and this was the bed upon which he slept until a year before his death, when I removed it without his knowledge during his absence in India, and put a more comfortable one in its place. Our nursery washstand, a chest of drawers, a writing-table, and half-a-dozen chairs comprised all the furniture he thought necessary for his use. My mother was not allowed to take anything whatever with her beyond our wearing apparel and a few trifles of small actual worth, but which she specially valued. My father's books, of course, he took with him, these, and one other thing which I had almost forgotten. The bedroom and sitting-room at Turner Street communicated, and the walls of both were covered with shelves, except just over the bed-head, which was reserved for the one other treasure brought from home. This was a large canvas painted in oils for Mr Bradlaugh by an artist friend, Emile Girardot. The subject was very simple, being nothing more than a tired hurdy-gurdy boy sleeping in a doorway, with a monkey anxiously watching. Whatever the intrinsic value of the picture might be, to my father it was above all price. He had quite a love for it, and often spoke of it – even in his last illness he talked of it, and wondered where it was, and longed for it, for by that time it had gone out of his hands.

So by the end of May we were all adrift and separated – my father in his small book-lined rooms in the east end of London; my brother Charlie with the 2nd Battalion Grenadier Guards, wherever it happened to be; my mother, sister, and self vegetating in a Sussex hamlet. But bad as all this was, 1870 held still worse things in store for us. In June my brother was taken ill with a mild attack of scarlatina, of which we knew nothing until he came home to us for his holidays on the 20th of the month. Due precautions had been neglected, and almost immediately after he reached us kidney disease began to manifest itself. From this he died on the 15th July, and he was buried exactly a month from the day on which he came home. The shock of his death was terrible to all of us, and not least so to my father. Although barely eleven years old at his death, Charlie was a lad full of promise, quick to learn and to comprehend, amiable, honourable, and generous; and of these traits I can recall many little instances. I have a photograph of him taken at the age of seven or eight, and as I look at it I see his eyes gaze out from under his square brow with a wonderfully clear and fearless look.

He was buried on the 20th day of July in Cocking Churchyard, my grandfather's cottage at Cocking Causeway (Midhurst) being in the parish of Cocking. Of course, we had to submit to the Church of England service, for it was before the Burials Act was passed, but the Rev. Drummond Ash was a kindly, courteous gentleman, and he made things as easy as the circumstances would allow. The burial would have taken place at the Brookwood Necropolis had my father been able to afford the expense. As he was not, Charlie was laid perforce in consecrated ground at the foot of the South Down Hills with Christian rites and ceremonies.

The Rev. Theophilus Bennett, a later Rector of Cocking, has stated that his predecessor, Mr Ash, "attended" my brother "in his dying moments." This statement is entirely without foundation; I am not aware that Mr Ash ever saw or spoke with my brother at all, and certainly the only persons present when the boy was dying were my grandmother, my mother, our nurse Kate (who remained with us at her own wish to help nurse him in his illness), my sister, and myself; moreover, Mr Ash was at that time reported to be himself ill and away from home, having left word that if "the little boy at the Causeway should die," all facilities for his funeral were to be given, or some such message.

The telegram bearing the totally unexpected summons to my father to hasten to see his son for the last time was handed to him on the platform at Bury just as he was about to deliver a lecture. I have been told that when he read the words he turned deathly pale, but with that self-control which never failed him in adversity, he rose, and with the least perceptible hesitation, commenced and went through with his lecture. On Tuesday night he received his summons; on Wednesday he was with us, though only to leave again by the early train on Thursday morning. On Friday the boy died, and on that same day and the next my father had to be in the law-courts as witness in a case relating to the Naples Colour Company.¹³⁰ His grief for the loss of his son was intense, but he shut it up in his heart, and rarely afterwards mentioned the name of his boy, of whom he had been so proud.