Charles Bradlaugh: a Record of His Life and Work, Volume 2 (of 2): With an Account of his Parliamentary Struggle, Politics and Teachings. Seventh EditionRobertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Religion
Charles Bradlaugh: a Record of His Life and Work, Volume 2 (of 2): With an Account of his Parliamentary Struggle, Politics and Teachings. Seventh Edition
Robertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Bradlaugh, Charles, 1833-1891
the blinds, and opened a window for a few moments to let in a little
fresh air. He was himself out of health, and I did not like to see him
sitting there in that close and heated atmosphere. I asked if he was
going to the House? No; he did not think he should, he replied. I urged
him to go, believing it was the best thing he could do. He did go, but
he could not stay long; somehow an announcement of my sister's death
had got into the papers, and Members sympathised with him in his sorrow
in such kindly fashion that he was obliged to come away lest he should
break down. A night or two later he made his speech in reply to Mr
Broadhurst on the Employers' Liability Bill, and if his words had in
them somewhat more of acerbity than usual, I often think that it was in
a measure due to the biting pain of his own grief.
[Footnote 62: Mr Bradlaugh asked for it to be closed on 26th September.]
On the 5th my sister was buried at the Brookwood Necropolis, where
already some members of our family lay. Many who had known her, and
whose lives had been helped by hers, begged that there might be a
public funeral; but my father shrank from exposing his sorrow even to
the most sympathetic of friends, and we quietly and silently laid her
in her last resting-place, where, alas! she was so soon to be joined
by her stricken father. Her death was not allowed to pass without the
Christian commonplaces as to "the miserable barrenness of the sceptic's
theories" in the presence of domestic calamities; and Mr Bradlaugh
asked what would be thought of him if at a similar hour he should
obtrude upon some Christian some mocking word upon the horrors of the
theory that "many are called and few are chosen"?
My husband and I now went to live at Circus Road, and as my father was
suddenly without a secretary, I filled the post while he was seeking a
fresh one. I had given up the class teaching, in which I had been for
many years associated with my sister, having thus a certain amount of
leisure, and finding I could manage all that was wanted, I begged him
to let me continue his work. I liked to feel I was helping him, if only
in the mechanical way of writing at his dictation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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