19121912
People :
Author : Guy Aldred
Text :
A bitter struggle for existence was now waged, and the little family oftentimes starved for days at a stretch. Carlile was none the less enthusiastic and heroic about the cause, however. As George Jacob "Holyoake so well said, in candor, in independency of judgment, in perfect moral fearlessness of character, Carlile cannot be paralleled among the public men of his time. . . . Carlile was no slave. He was able to stand in the right by himself against the world. One forgives his errors, his vanity, and his egotism, for the bravery of his bearing and his speech.” Nevertheless, there was a good deal of simplicity—-—an unostentatious simple greatness--in Carlile’s character. As to this, let the following words, quoted from the preface to Holyaoke's four-chaptered Life and Character of Richard Carlile (1849), speak: --
"When I first entered London, one Saturday evening in 1842, I was not known personally to half-a-dozen persons in it. On reaching the office of the Oracle of Reason, I found an invitation (it was the first I received in the Metropolis) from Richard Carlile to take tea with him on the next afternoon at the Hall of Science. There was no name known to me in London from whom an invitation could have come which I should have thought a greater honor. The conversation at table was directed to advising me as to my defense at my coming trial. He requested me to hear his evening lecture, which he devoted to the policy of skeptical defense which he thought most effectual. At the conclusion he called upon me for my coincidence or dissent. I stated some objections which I entertained to his scientifico-religious views with diffidence but distinctness. The compliments which he paid me were the first words of praise which I remembered to have trusted. Coming from a master in our Israel, they inspired me with a confidence new to me. I did not conceal my ambition to merit his approval. On my trial at Gloucester, he watched by my side for fourteen hours, and handed me notes for my guidance. After my conviction he brought me my first provision with his own hand. He honored me with a public letter during my imprisonment, and uttered generous words in my vindication, when those in whose ranks I had fought and fallen were silent. It was my destiny, on my liberation, to be able to pour my gratitude only over his grave. In his ‘Life and Character,’ here attempted, I am proud to confess that I have written with affection for his memory, but I have, also, written with impartiality---for he who encouraged me to maintain the Truth at my own expense, would be quite willing, if need be, that I maintain it at his."
The same characteristic of simple greatness found external manifestation in Car1ile’s Enfield home. To his present biographer that home life is sacred, and nothing shall induce him to paraphrase the description which his daughter, Hypathia—then but a child—— published in her life of her father, in a chapter entitled "Memories." From it we make the following extract :——
"With the writer, as far as life has yet lasted, have lingered some precious memories. The memories of her birthplace made sweet and hallowed by the remembrance of one who was all tenderness and gentleness, and who spent much time with her, working and walking in the pretty garden, and occasionally in the orchard beyond the garden. Sometimes as we walked by the house the old-fashioned latticed window would be thrown open, and a beautiful face, adorned with long ringlets, would smile down upon us ; and she remembers what a pretty frame for this beautiful picture the vines, the jasmine and honeysuckles made. There was, too, a pretty lawn, in the center of which grew a tree with wide-spreading branches, where seats and a table were always ready to receive gathered flowers and weary little girls, who here loved to climb upon father’s knee and fall happily asleep. But oh, the mystery of it How strange it was that whenever she might fall asleep she always awakened in the same place. This took her a long time to understand. She was quite a bit old before she understood how she always awoke in her own bed. But the garden, what a subject of wonder it was with its old-fashioned flowers, chief among which were its wonderful moss roses which grew to such perfection there, and the mignonette so fragrantly sweet ; nor can the writer see these roses or inhale the fragrance or mignonette to this day without being instantly transported back to dear Old Enfield Highway of half-a-century and more ago. This little girl was fortunate—or was it unfortunate ?—-in having so much of the time of this tender and loving father. She learned long afterwards that it was because of his failing health he had to live in the garden in summer and his room in the winter, because he could breathe nothing else ; and thus the two least competent ones were relegated to the garden and inactivity, the last baby in the family and its failing head."
With this quotation we are brought to the death scene. Carlile, who had returned to Fleet Street on the lease of the Enfield Cottages running out, had returned but to die-—" to die," as his daughter has it, “on the old ground where for twenty-seven years he had waged such a stern fight against tyranny and injustice. But where could a place be found that was more fitting than this, for the death of a hero of a hundred fights, the battlefield itself?” The London winter-—always so dangerous to Carlile—-he had hopes of surviving, since November and December, 1842, had been passed in safety, and January, 1843, also. February, however, proved fatal’ and on the 10th of that month, 1843, he who had done so much for the cause of freedom, and fought so tremendous a battle passed away, dying as he had lived, exclaiming with a great effort of will-power, and with his last breath, “I am the same man I have always been, I have gone neither to the right nor to the left. My aim has been to accomplish one great purpose.”
He bequeathed his body for scientific purposes to Dr. Laurance --a friend and servant of humanity—-after consciousness had ceased to animate his frame. Isis, who experienced great privations, survived until 1861, during which period she devoted herself to the education of her children, established a literary and scientific institution at the back of Warner Street Temperance Hall, assisted in the conversion of Charles Bradlaugh, who became as a second son to her on his persecution by his relatives because he had too much moral principle to be insincere in his religious professions. Bradlaugh’s subsequent political charlatanism serves to prove that early idealism often fails to mature.
From : Marxists.org & RevoltLib.com.
Chronology :
November 30, 1911 : Chapter 16 -- Publication.
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