 | Friend and Foe1887 |
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| Friend and Foe1887 |
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: Charlotte M. Wilson was an English Fabian and anarchist who co-founded Freedom newspaper in 1886 with Peter Kropotkin, and edited, published, and largely financed it during its first decade. She remained editor of Freedom until 1895. Born Charlotte Mary Martin, she was the daughter of a well-to-do physician, Robert Spencer Martin. She was educated at Newnham College at Cambridge University. She married Arthur Wilson, a stockbroker, and the couple moved to London. Charlotte Wilson joined the Fabian Society in 1884 and soon joined its Executive Committee. At the same time she founded an informal political study group for 'advanced' thinkers, known as the Hampstead Historic Club (also known as the Karl Marx Society or The Proudhon Society). This met in her former early 17th century farmhouse, called Wyldes, on the edge of Hampstead Heath. No records of the club survive but there are references to it in the memoirs of several of those who attended. In her history of Wyldes Mrs Wilson records the names of some of those who visited the house, most of whom are known to have been present at Club meetings. They included Sidney Webb, George Bernard Shaw, Sydney Olivier, Annie Besant, Graham Wa... (From: Wikipedia.org.)
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Friend and Foe
Photo by doener232000,
CC BY-SA License
Suddenly he sees before him a stream with precipitous banks, a narrow but deep torrent, . . . . and he cannot swim.
But the stream is bridged by a thin plank, half-rotten with age. The fugitive has already one foot upon it. And there, by chance, stand his dearest friend and his bitterest foe.
The enemy uttered no sound, and merely folded his arms. The friend, on the contrary, cried out at the top of his voice:
"For God's sake, consider, foolhardy man, what you are doing! Do you not see that the plank is quite rotten? It will give way under your weight, and you will inevitably be lost."
"But there is no other way," groaned the despairing fugitive, "and my pursuers–listen, they are close at hand." And he stepped forward to cross the plank.
"I cannot permit it. No, I cannot allow you thus to step to your destruction," cried the zealous friend, and even from beneath the feet of the fugitive he tore the plank away.
The fugitive, in despair, plunged into the rushing torrent and was drowned.
The foe smiled with a bitter satisfaction, and passed on his way. But the friend sat down sadly by the bank, and bewailed the loss of his dearest friend. It never entered his head for a moment to consider himself to blame for the death.
"He would not heed me; he would not heed me," he cried in his great sorrow.
"After all," he presently thought, "he must have passed his whole life in a horrible dungeon. At least he is delivered from all his troubles. He is now better off, and it is clear that an all-wise providence had so intended it. And yet, from a merely human point of view, what a pity it is."
And so the pious soul continued, weeping hot tears over his unfortunate friend.
Freedom: A Journal of Anarchist Socialism
Vol. 1 -- No. 11,
AUGUST, 1887
Source: http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/journals/freedom/freedom1_11.html
From : AnarchyArchives
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