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 prominence. In order to get a little into the spirit of that Hyde Park meeting, I must recall a few of the events which led up to it.