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ree
 unkind if I stay away, because I assure you it is a great source
 of discomfort to me; but the fact is, if you want to spend thirty
 shillings, and have only twenty, there arises a most unaccountable
 difficulty in getting your purse and programme to agree. Had Carr and
 L., as I anticipated, closed accounts with me on Monday, all would
 have gone on smoothly, but as it is I am cramped. I have also been
 disappointed in the receipt of two or three other small sums which,
 coupled with an increased expenditure, all help to draw me up short."

The newly-married couple did not stop very long at Warner Place. Mrs
Bradlaugh senior and her daughter-in-law did not get on comfortably
together, and so husband and wife removed to 4 West Street, Bethnal
Green, where their first child, my sister Alice, was born on April
30, 1856. At the outset my parents were devotedly attached to one
another, an attachment which was not in the least degree diminished on
my mother's part until the hour of her death; and had they remained
pinched by the same close grip of poverty as at first their union
might have remained unbroken; who can say? My father was essentially
a "home" man, and when not called away on business preferred his own
fireside to that of any other man. People have taken it upon themselves
to describe my mother's personal appearance, some by one adjective
and some by another; but to my eyes, at least, she was comely to look
upon. She was a brunette, with hair which was black and silky, and the
finest I ever saw; she was nearly as tall as my father, and carried
herself well, although in her later years she was much too stout.
She was good-natured to a fault, generous to lavishness, and had an
open ear and an open pocket for every tale of sorrow or distress.
During my recollection our home was never without one or more needy
visitors: my father's brother and youngest sister, her own brother
and sister, Mr James Thomson, and others too numerous to mention, all
partook of the open-hearted hospitality which was lavished upon them.
She shone at her best in entertaining my father's political friends,
and her good-natured amiability made her a general favourite. She
was passionately attached to her children, and was rewarded by her
children's devotion, which endured through fair weather and foul; as,
indeed, was only her just due, for in all points save one she was the
best of mothers.

And it was this one point which, overbalancing all the rest, ruined
our home, lost her my father's love and her friends' respect, and was
the cause of her own sufferings, unhappiness, and early death. As soon
as fortune and success began to shine ever so feebly on my father's
labours, there did not lack the usual flatterers to his wife, and
panderers to her unhappy weakness. In a terribly short time, by the aid
of thoughtless, good-natured evil-doers and intentional malice, this
weakness developed into absolute and confirmed intemperance, which it
seemed as though nothing could check. With intemperance came the long
train of grievous consequences; easy good nature became extravagant
folly, and was soon followed by the alienation of real friends and a
ruined home. My father was gentleness and forbearance itself, but his
life was bitterly poisoned; he had his wife treated medically, and
sent to a hydropathic establishment, but all to no purpose. When our
home was finally broken up in 1870, and the closest retrenchment was
necessary, my father decided that it was utterly impossible to do that
with dignity as long as my mother remained in London; so she and we two
girls--my brother was at school--went to board with my grandfather at
Midhurst, Sussex. It was intended as a merely temporary arrangement,
and had it proved beneficial to my mother we should, when better
times came, have had a reunited home; but, alas! it was not to be. At
first my father came fairly frequently to Midhurst, but there was no
improvement, and so his visits became fewer and fewer; they brought
him no pleasure, but merely renewed the acuteness of his suffering.
At length he, always thoughtful for those about him and recognising
the terrible strain upon us his daughters in the life we were then
leading, arranged for us each to spend a month alternately with him at
his London lodgings, but not continuously, as he was anxious not to
separate us. Sometimes it was contrived for us both to be in London
together, and these were indeed sun-shiny days. We wrote letters for
him, and did what we could, and he made us happy by persuading us
that we were his secretaries and really useful to him; we tried to
be, but I fear our desires and his loving acceptance of our work went
far beyond its real merits. With time my mother became a confirmed
invalid, and in May 1877 she died very unexpectedly from heart disease
engendered by alcoholism.

Malevolent people have made a jest of all this, but the tragedy was
ours; others even more malevolent have endeavoured to make my father
in some way blameworthy in the matter--they might just as well blame
me! Any one who knows the story in all its details, with its years of
silent martyrdom for him, will know that my father's behaviour was that
of one man in a thousand. Some also have said that my mother was in an
asylum. Perhaps the following quotation from a letter written by her
from Midhurst, a few days before her death, to us who were in London
getting my father's things straight in his new lodgings, will be the
best answer, and will also show a little the kind of woman she was:--

 "My chest is so bad. I really feel ill altogether; if either of you
 were with me, you could not do me any good. I shall be glad of a
 letter to know how Hypatia gets on.

 "Do not neglect writing me, my darlings, for my heart is very
 sad. With great love to dear Papa, and also to your own dear
 selves.--Always believe me, your faithful mother,

 S. L. BRADLAUGH."

I have in this chapter said all I intend to say as to the relations
between my father and my mother. I shall perhaps be pardoned--in my
capacity as daughter, if not in that of biographer--for leaving the
matter here, and not going into it more fully. It is a painful subject
for one who loved her parents equally, and would fain have been equally
proud of both. Honestly speaking, I think I should never have had
the courage to touch upon it at all had I not felt that my duty to
my father absolutely required it. He allowed himself to be maligned
and slandered publicly and privately on the subject of his alleged
separation from his wife, but he never once took up the pen to defend
himself. Hence it becomes my unhappy duty to give the world for the
first time some real idea of the truth.

CHAPTER VII.

HYDE PARK MEETINGS, 1855.

In the summer of 1855, Mr Bradlaugh for the first time took part in
a great Hyde Park meeting. He went, like so many others, merely as a
spectator, having no idea that the part he would be called upon to play
would lead him into a position of p

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