Adventure | Science Fiction | Ghost stories | Poetry | Children | History

Book

Open Original Text

on who brought it "gave it to me in a fearful manner, keeping as
far away from me as possible, and evidently regarding me as a dangerous
animal; he backed towards the room door after putting the paper in
my hand, and seemed relieved in mind that I had not in some manner
personally assaulted him."

On his next visit to Sheffield, where he was announced to deliver
three lectures on three successive evenings, the walls were covered
with bills advising the people to keep away, and the clergy in church
and chapel publicly warned their congregations against attending the
lectures. In spite of all these precautions (or was it because of
them?) the lectures were a decided success, the audiences increasing
with each evening, until on the last evening "the large Temperance
Hall was full in every part, the applause was unanimous, and not one
opponent appeared." The visit of "Iconoclast" to Bradford produced a
great flutter in the clerical society of that town; and after he left
we hear that "almost every missionary and clerical speaker opened fire
upon him," and one sensitive gentleman wrote to the _Bradford Observer_
expressing his grief that the Teetotal Hall should be "prostituted" by
being let to the Freethought lecturer.

In his _Autobiography_ my father himself puts the date of his first
lecturing visit to Northampton as the year 1857, and this year is again
given in the little book issued as a _souvenir_ of the unveiling of the
statue of their late member by the Northampton Radical Association in
June 1894; but I am inclined to think that this is a mistake, that my
father's memory misled him a little, and, that he put the date a few
months too early. In any case, although I have made diligent inquiry,
the first lectures of which I can find any note took place on Sunday
and Monday, January 30th and 31st, 1859, in the large room of the
Woolpack Inn, Kingswell Street. On the Monday evening the chair was
taken by the late Mr Joseph Gurney, J.P., who, in company with his
old friend Mr Shipman, had already heard Mr Bradlaugh lecture at the
John Street Institution in London, and had been much impressed by the
ability and earnest eloquence of the young speaker. The people crowded
the street outside the Woolpack Inn for some time before the doors of
the lecture-room were open, and the room was packed in a few moments.
I wonder how many times after that did Mr Gurney preside at densely
packed meetings for Mr Bradlaugh! Mr Gurney himself subsequently
attained all the municipal honours Northampton could bestow upon her
deserving townsman, nominated Charles Bradlaugh seven out of eight
times that he contested the borough, and only did not nominate him on
the eighth occasion because his position as chief magistrate prevented
him.

In the following March it was arranged that my father should lecture
in the Guildhall, at Doncaster. Doncaster, with its reputation as a
race town, was also in those days the abode of the "unco' guid." Some
of the inhabitants appear to have been much put out at the proposed
lecture, and certain "Friends of Religion," as they called themselves,
issued a "Caution to the public, especially the religious portion,"
in which they, the "People of Doncaster," are entreated to give
"Iconoclast the extacy (_sic_) of gazing on the unpeopled interior of
the Guildhall." The "Friends of Religion" prefaced their entreaty by
announcing that "the juvenile destroyer of images" had been engaged as
a "grand speculation!" Presumably this "Caution" resulted in a famous
advertisement, for the _Doncaster Herald_ says that the Guildhall was
"crowded to excess," and in writing his account of the lecture, which
he says was a "frantic panegyric in honour of hell and a blasphemous
denunciation of heaven," the reporter to this journal seems to have
worked himself up into a fine frenzy. One can almost see him with his
tossed-back hair, his rolling eyes and gnashing teeth, as he hurled
these dynamitic words at the readers of the _Herald_:--

 "There boldly, defiantly, recklessly--with the air of the dreadnought
 bravo or the Alpine bandit--stood the creator's work [elsewhere styled
 'clayformed ingrate'] toiling, sweating, labouring strenuously, to
 heap slander upon his creator, and to convert into odious lies the
 book by which that creator has made himself known to the world!...
 Need we go further to express our more than disgust--our horror--at
 the fact of a young and accomplished man standing forth in crowded
 halls, and, while the beauteous moon marches aloft in the vast and
 indefinable firmament, and the myriad of silvery stars shoot their
 refulgent rays upon the desecrated lecture-room, actually telling
 the people that no God lives! no Supreme hand fretted the brave
 o'erhanging firmament with golden fire--no Jehovah made the wide
 carpet of fair nature bespangled with laughing flowers--no God made
 roaring seas and mighty rivers--no God revealed the Bible--no God made
 man!"

One really needs to draw breath after all that: the lecture-room
lighted by star rays, the firmament fretted with golden fire, the
laughing flowers and roaring seas, must surely have carried conviction.
The _Doncaster Chronicle_, if more prosaic, is not the less hostile.
Its report thus describes the lecturer:--

 "He is a tall, beardless, whiskerless young man, with a pale face,
 and has rather a harmless and prepossessing appearance"--[compare the
 _Herald's_ 'Alpine bandit!']--"certainly not the fierce individual we
 had previously imagined him to be from the elements of destruction
 indicated in his name--'the image breaker!' He is a person possessing
 great fluency of speech, of ready wit, and the declamatory style of
 his oratory is well calculated to excite and carry away a popular
 audience."

And the _Chronicle_, in a vain endeavour to outvie its colleague in
choice epithets, winds up by styling the arguments of Atheists as "the
miserable sophistry of these 'filthy dreamers,'" the delicate wording
of which phrase would be hard for even a "coarse" Atheist to match,
and urges that "for the sake of the youth of our town, the municipal
authorities will not again lend the Guildhall for such an object." In
Sheffield Mr Bradlaugh was rapidly growing in popularity; lecturing
there again immediately after his Doncaster lecture, he had an audience
of 2000 persons to hear his address on "Has Man a Soul?"

Later in the year he was again in Doncaster, and this time the "Friends
of Religion" had succeeded so far in their endeavours that the Granby
Music Hall was refused, and it was rumoured that the lectures would
not be permitted. A temporary platform was however erected under the
roof of the Corn Market, and, in lieu of the electric light of to-day,
the lecturer was made dimly visible to his audience by means of a lamp
raised upon a pole. The audience was said to number about 4000, "the
hollow and partly arched roof of the Corn Market served as a sounding
board, and the tones of Iconoclast, whilst speaking, 

Previous Next