Bygones Worth Remembering Volume I Part 3

CHAPTER III. OTHER INSTANCES

My first public discussion in London was with Mr. Pa.s.smore Edwards--personally, the handsomest adversary I ever met. A ma.s.s of wavy black hair and pleasant expression made him picturesque. He was slim, alert, and fervid. The subject of debate was the famous delineation of the Bottle, by George Cruikshank, which I regarded as a libel on the wholesome virtue of Temperance. Exaggerations which inform and do not deceive, as American humour, or Swift's Lilliputians, Aztecs, and giants of Brobdingnag, have instruction and amus.e.m.e.nt. The exaggeration intended to deride and intimidate those who observe moderation is a hurtful and misleading extreme. Mr. Edwards took the opposite view.

Cruikshank could not be moderate, and he did right to adopt the rule of absolute abstinence. It was his only salvation. To every man or woman of the Cruikshank tendency I would preach the same doctrine. To all others I, as fervently, commend the habit of use without abuse. Without that power no man would live a month. Had Mr. Edwards been of this way of thinking, there had been no debate between us.

Mr. Edwards had much reason on his side. Mankind are historically regarded as possessing insufficiency of brains, and it is bad economics to put an incorrigible thief into their mouths to steal away what brains they have.

I had respect for Mr. Edwards' side of the argument. For when a man makes a fool of himself, or fails to keep an engagement, or departs, in his behaviour from his best manner--through drink--he should take the next train to the safe and serene land of Abstinence.

The first person who mentioned to me the idea of a halfpenny newspaper was Mr. Pa.s.smore Edwards. One night as we were walking down Fleet Street from Temple Bar, when the Bar stood where the Griffin now stands, Mr. Edwards asked me, as I had had experience in the publishing trade whether I thought a halfpenny newspaper would pay, which evidently had for some time occupied his mind. The chief difficulty I foresaw was, would newsagents give it a chance? It afterwards cost the house of Ca.s.sells'--the first to make the experiment--many thousands. The _Workman_, in which I had a department, was intended, I was told, to be a forerunner of the halfpenny paper. But that t.i.tle would never do, as I ventured to predict. Workmen, as a rule with no partnership in profits, had enough of work without buying a paper about it. Tradesmen, middle-cla.s.s and others, did not want to be taken for workmen, and the _Workman_ was discontinued. But, strange to say, the same paper issued under the t.i.tle of _Work_ became successful Everybody was interested in work but not in being workmen. Such are the subtleties of t.i.tles! Their right choice--is it art or instinct? The _Echo_ was the name fixed upon for the first halfpenny paper. Echo of what? was not indicated. It excluded expectations of originality. Probably curiosity was the charm.

It committed no one to any side. There were always more noises about than any one could listen to, and many were glad to hear the most articulate. I wrote articles in the earliest numbers under the editorship of Sir Arthur Arnold.

The House of Allsop, as known to the world of progress in the last century, is ended. The first who gave it public interest was Thomas AIlsop, who a.s.sisted Robert Owen in 1832 in the Gray's Inn Lane Labour Exchanges. He was a watchful a.s.sistant of those who contributed to the public service without expecting or receiving requital. His admiration of genius always took the form of a gift--a rare but encouraging form of applause. Serjeant Talfourd somewhere bears testimony to the generous a.s.sistance Mr. AIlsop rendered to Hazlitt, Lamb, and Coleridge. To Lamb, he continually sent gifts, and Coleridge dined at his table every Sunday for nineteen years. Landor, who had always n.o.bility of character, and was an impulsive writer--represented Mr. Allsop's interest in European freedom as proceeding from "vanity," forgetful of his own letter to Jessie Meriton White, offering 100 to any a.s.sa.s.sin of Napoleon III.; and John Forster preserves Landor's remark upon Mr. Allsop, but does not, so far as I remember, give Landor's a.s.sa.s.sin Letter. The fact was, no man less sought publicity or disliked it more than Mr. Allsop. When Feargus O'Connor was elected member for Nottingham, Mr. Allsop qualified him by conferring upon him lands bringing an income of 300. He divided his Lincoln estate into allotments for working men, but he never mentioned these things himself. His son Robert held his father's intellectual views. His eldest son Thomas, who was cla.s.s-mate with Mr.

Dixon Galpin at Queenwood, a considerable landowner in British Columbia, was the philosopher of the family, and like Archbishop Whately, had a power of stating them with ever apt and ready ill.u.s.trations.

They were like Mr. Owen, Conservative in politics; but in social and mental matters they were intrepid in welcoming new truth. It was at Thomas's suggestion that I omitted his father's name altogether in my chapter, "Mr. Secretary Walpole and the Jacobin's Friend."* Landor was quite wrong, there was no "vanity" in the Allsop family. Were Thomas Allsop the younger now living I should not write these paragraphs. As it is, I may say that I owed to his generosity an annuity of 100. He commenced it by a subscription of 200, and by Mr. Robert Applegarth's friendly secretaryship, which had devotion and inspiration in it, a committee to which the Rev. Dr. Joseph Parker, with his intrepid tolerance, gave his name, was formed, and an annuity of 100 was purchased for me.

* "Sixty Years," chap. lxx. p. 72.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Parker]

When the Taxes on Knowledge were repealed, Mr. Collet and I attempted to procure the repeal of the Pa.s.senger Tax on Railways. For forty years after the imposition of the tax of Lord Halford, 1832, the workman was taxed who went in search of an employer. When a poor sailor, arriving in London after a long voyage, desired to visit his poor mother in Glasgow, the Government added to his fare a tax of three shillings, to encourage him in filial affection. In the interests of locomotion and trade, two or three a.s.sociations had attempted to get this pernicious tax repealed, without success. It was remarked in Parliament in 1877 that no committee representing the working cla.s.s asked for the repeal of this discreditable impost, which most concerned them. This was the reason of the formation of the Travelling Tax Abolition Committee, of which Mr.

Collet became secretary and I the chairman. We were a.s.sisted by an influential committee of civic and industrial leaders. After six years'

agitation we were mainly instrumental (that was in Mr. Gladstone's days) in obtaining the repeal of the penny a mile tax on all third-cla.s.s fares, effected by Mr. Childers in 1883, which ever since has put into the pocket of working-cla.s.s travellers 400,000 a year, besides the improved carriages and improved service the repeal has enabled railway companies to give. We continued the committee many years longer in the hope of freeing the railways wholly from taxation, which still hampers the directors and is obstructive of commerce. I was chairman for twenty-four years, during which time twenty-two of the committee died.

Our memorials, interviews with ministers, correspondence with officials, pet.i.tions to Parliament, public meetings and various publications, involved a large and incessant amount of work without payment of any kind. Subsequently a committee of publicists, journalists and members of Parliament, for whom Mr. Applegarth was the secretary, caused 80 to be given to me, in recognition of my services. Though it represented less than 4 a year as the salary of the chairman, it was valuable in my eyes from the persons who gave it, as they were not the persons much benefited by the work done, and who really taxed themselves on behalf of others. A subscription of a halfpenny each from the working-cla.s.s travellers who had profited by the repeal would have amounted to a handsome acknowledgment. But from them it was impossible to collect it. Testimonials, I believe, are often given by persons who generously subscribe for others upon whom the obligation of making it more properly rests.

It would seem insensibility or ingrat.i.tude not to record, that on my eightieth birthday--now eight years ago--I was entertained at a numerously attended dinner party in the National Liberal Club, at which to my gratification, Mr. Walter Morrison presided. The speakers, and distinction of many in the a.s.sembly, were a surprise, transcending all I had foreseen. The words of Mr. Morrison's speech, to use Tennyson's words, were like

"Jewels That on the stretch'd forefinger of all time Sparkle forever"

in my memory.

On my eighty-sixth birthday a reception was given me by the Ethical Society of South Place Chapel, Finsbury--the oldest Free Thought temple in London, where the _duty_ of free inquiry was first proclaimed by W.

J. Fox. The place was filled with faces familiar and unfamiliar, from near and far, of artists, poets, publicists, journalists, philosophers, as at the National Liberal Club, but in greater numbers. Lady Florence Dixie purchased a large and costly oil painting,* and sent it for me to present to the Library of the Rationalist Press a.s.sociation. Among the letters sent was one, the last sent to a public meeting, by Herbert Spencer. The reader will pardon the pride I have in quoting it.

* By my nephew, Roland Holyoake.

Writing from 5, Percival Terrace, Brighton, March 28, 1903, Mr. Spencer said: "I have not been out of doors since last August, and as Mr.

Holyoake knows, it is impossible for me to join in the Reception to be given to him on the occasion of his eighty-sixth birthday. I can do nothing more than express my warm feeling of concurrence. Not dwelling upon his intellectual capacity, which is high, I would emphasise my appreciation of his courage, sincerity, truthfulness, philanthropy, and unwearied perseverance. Such a combination of these qualities, it will, I think, be difficult to find."

For a period I had the opportunity accorded me of editing a daily newspaper--_The Sun_. The Rev. Dr. Joseph Parker had been my predecessor. I was left at liberty to say whatever I pleased, and I did.

In one week I wrote twenty-nine articles.

But opulent opportunity of working was afforded me. As I was paid ten times as much as I had received before, I thought myself in a paradise of journalism.

In the correspondence of Robert Owen, now in possession of the Co-operative Union Memorial Committee, Manchester, is the following letter from his customary legal adviser, who then resided at Hornsey.

"6, Old Jewry, London,

"February 17, 1853. "R. Owen, Esq.,

"Dear Sir,--I am glad to see your handwriting upon an envelope conveying to me a pamphlet of yours.

"Holyoake I expect will breakfast with me on Sunday morning.

He comes down by the railway to Hornsey, which leaves London at nine o'clock precisely.

"I am afraid it is too cold for you, and that the walk from the railway to our house, which is three quarters of a mile, may not be agreeable.

"Yours truly,

"W. H. Ashurst.

"H. will return about 12 or 1."

After breakfast Mr. Owen walked briskly with me into town. He was then eighty-two. On his way he explained to me that, when walking as often had done from Birmingham to Worcester, or from Huddersfield to Sheffield--to lecture, I should find it an advantage to use the horse road, as on the footpath there is more unevenness and necessity of deviation to allow persons to pa.s.s, which increases the fatigue of a day on foot. So thoughtful and practical was the reputed visionary.

Of letters on public affairs I confine myself to three instances.

When the South Kensington Exhibitions were in force, more than twenty thousand visitors a day thronged the Exhibition Road. Mothers with their children had to cross the wide Museum Road, where policemen, stationed to protect the pa.s.sengers, had enough to do to keep their own toes on their feet, in the undivided traffic of cabs. I wrote to the _Times_ suggesting that a lamp should be erected in the middle of the wide road serving as a light, a retreat, and a division of traffic. All the cabmen who could write protested against the danger, or the necessity, and possibility of the proposal. But it was done, to the great joy of mothers and advantage to the public.

After the fall of the French a.s.sa.s.sin at Sedan when Marshal Bazaine was hanging about Europe in obscurity and ignominy, Mr. Arthur Arnold proposed that he should be invited to a banquet in London. Seeing that the citizens of Paris went out at night in bands of twenty or thirty heroically to help to raise the siege--on what ground could we offer to honour Bazaine, who with 192,000 soldiers under his command, was afraid to attempt it? I asked the question in the Press, and the proposal, which had a sentiment of chivalry in it to a fallen general, and was commanding some concurrence--went out--like the Marshal--into outer darkness. *****

When public opinion was in the balance respecting the South American War, Mr. Reverdy Johnson and a Copperhead colleague arrived in London and began to do a respectable business in public mystification. From information supplied to me I wrote letters explaining the real nature of that sinister mission, in consequence of which the two emissaries of slavery made tracks for New York.

But of instances, as of other things, there must be an end.

CHAPTER IV. FIRST STEPS IN LITERATURE

Surely environment is the sister of heredity? Mr. Gladstone once said to me that "The longer he lived the more he thought of heredity." Next to heredity is environment--the moulder of mankind. My first pa.s.sion was to be a prize-fighter. Nature, however, had not made me that way. I had no animosity of mind, and that form of contest was not to my taste. But prize-fighting was part of the miasma the Napoleonic war had diffused in England. It was in the air; it was the talk of the street "Hammer" Lane, so called from the iron blow he could deliver, was the local hero of the Ring in the Midlands in my youth. He was a courtier of my eldest sister, and created in me a craving for fistic prowess. I fought one small battle, but found that a lame wrist, which has remained permanent, cut me off from any prospect of renown in that pursuit Next, to be a circus jester seemed to me the very king of careers. My idea was to leap into the arena exclaiming:--

"Well, I never! Did you ever? I never did."

"Never did what?" the clown was to ask me, when my reply was to be:--