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 the worse for you, if you
could not give a plain straightforward reason why it should be called
"a garden implement." "Verbosity" was lost upon him; he passed it over
unnoticed, and came back to his facts as though you had not spoken. In
his early old age he had rather a fine appearance, and I have several
times been asked at meetings which he has attended with us, who is that
"grand-looking old man." Although in politics and religion he was all
on the side of liberty, in his own domestic circle he was a tyrant and
a despot, exacting the most rigorous and minute obedience to his will.

His passionate affection for my father was a most beautiful thing to
see. He had heard him speak, as a lad, many a time in Bonner's Fields,
and from 1854 had him always under his eye. "The young enthusiast"
became "my boy Charles," the pride and the joy of his life; and he
loved him with a love which did but grow with his years. My father's
friends were his friends, my father's enemies were his enemies; and
although "Charles" might forgive a friend who had betrayed him and take
him back to friendship again, _he_ never did, and was always prepared
for the betrayal--which, alas! too often came. He outlived my father
by only five months: until a few years before his death he had never
ailed anything, and did not know what headache or toothache meant; but
when his "boy" was gone life had no further interest for him, and he
willingly welcomed death.

And it was the eldest daughter of this single-hearted, if somewhat
rigorous man, Susannah Lamb Hooper, whom my father loved and wedded.
I knew that my mother had kept and cherished most of the letters
written her by my father during their courtship, but I never opened
the packet until I began this biography. These letters turn out to be
more valuable than I had expected, for they entirely dispose of some
few amongst the many fictions which have been more or less current
concerning Mr Bradlaugh.

At the first glance one is struck with the quantity of verse amongst
the letters. I say struck, because nearly, if not quite, all his
critics, friendly and hostile, have asserted that Mr Bradlaugh was
entirely devoid of poetic feeling or love of verse. With the unfriendly
critics this assumed lack seems to indicate something very bad: a
downright vice would be more tolerable in their eyes; and even the
friendly critics appear to look upon it as a flaw in his character.
I am, however, bound to confirm the assumption in so far as that,
during later years at least, he looked for something more than music in
verse; and mere words, however beautifully strung together, had little
charm for him. His earliest favourites amongst poets seem to have been
Ebenezer Elliott, the Corn Law rhymer, and, of course, Shelley. As late
as 1870 he was lecturing upon Burns and Byron; later still he read
Whittier with delight; and I have known him listen with great enjoyment
to Marlowe, Spenser, Sydney, and others, although, curiously enough,
for Swinburne he had almost an active distaste, caring neither to read
his verse nor to hear it read. It is something to remember that it was
my father, and he alone, who threw open his pages to James Thomson ("B.
V.") at a time when he was ignored and unrecognised and could nowhere
find a publisher to recognise the fire and genius of his grand and
gloomy verse.

But to return to his own verses: he began early, and his Bonner's
Fields speeches in 1849 and 1850 more often than not wound up with
a peroration in rhyme; in verse, such as it was, he would sing the
praises of Kossuth, Mazzini, Carlile, or whatever hero was the subject
of his discourse. His verses to my mother were written before and
after marriage: the last I have is dated 1860. I am not going to quote
any of these compositions, for my father died in the happy belief that
all save two or three had perished; but there is one that he sent my
mother which will, I think, bear quoting, and has an interest for its
author's sake. Writing in July 1854, he says: "I trust you will excuse
my boldness in forwarding the enclosed, but think you will like its
pretty style. I begged it from my only literary acquaintance, a young
schoolmaster, so can take no credit to myself"--

 "Breathe onward, soft breeze, odour laden,
 And gather new sweets on your way,
 For a happy and lovely young maiden
 Will inhale thy rich perfume this day.
 And tell her, oh! breeze softly sighing,
 When round her your soft pinions wreathe,
 That my love-stricken soul with thee vieing
 All its treasures to her would outbreathe.

 "Flow onward, ye pure sparkling waters
 In sunshine with ripple and spray,
 For the fairest of earth's young daughters
 Will be imaged within you this day.
 And tell her, oh! murmuring river,
 When past her your bright billows roll,
 That thus, too, her fairest form ever
 Is imaged with truth in my soul."

The "young schoolmaster" was, of course, James Thomson; and these
verses express the thought which occurs again so delightfully in No.
XII. of the "Sunday up the River."[15]

[Footnote 15: The City of Dreadful Night, and other Poems. By James
Thomson ("B. V.").]

Another current fiction concerning my father is that he was coarse,
rude, and ill-mannered in his young days. Now, to take one thing alone
as a text: Can I believe that the love letters now before me that he
wrote to my dear mother could have been penned by one of coarse speech
and unrefined thought? The tender and respectful courtesy of some of
them carries one back to a century or so ago, when a true lover was
most choice in the expressions he used to his mistress. No! No one with
a trace of coarseness in his nature could have written these letters.

Another and equally unfounded calumny, which has been most
industriously circulated, concerns my father's own pecuniary position
and his alleged neglect of his mother. I am able to quote passages from
this correspondence which make very clear statements on these points;
and the silent testimony of these letters, written in confidence to his
future wife, is quite incontrovertible. In a letter written on the 17th
November 1854, he says:--

 "My present income at the office is £65, and at the Building Society
 £35, making about £100 a year, but I have not yet enjoyed this long
 enough to feel the full benefit of it. I am confident, if nothing
 fresh arises, of an increase at Christmas, but am also trying for
 a situation which if I can get would bring me in £150 per annum
 and upwards. Your father did not tell me when I saw him that I was
 extravagant, but he said that he thought I was not 'a very saving
 character,' so that you see, according to good authority, we are
 somewhat alike.... I do not blame you for expecting to hear from me,
 but I was, as the Americans say, in a fix. I did not like to write,
 lest your father might think I was virtually taking advantage of a
 consent not yet given.

 "You will, of course, understand from my not being a very careful
 young man why I am no

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