Part 2 (2/2)
they would not be He was afraid they had not pluck enough for that
Their th Therefore he would not say that they were prepared to do so They must plead _ad misericordiam_ He appealed to the press, which represented the power of England; to that press which in its panic-stricken ht now to save these four doomed men If the press deh to resist The memory of the blood which was shed in 1798 rose up like a bloody ghost against them to-day He only feared that what they said upon the subject ood If it were not so, he would coin words that should speak in words of fire As it was, he could only say to the Govern to-day; you hold these men's lives in your hands; but if you want to reconcile their country to you, if you want to win back Ireland, if you want to make her children love you--then do not e the lives of these th with eance, for the day may come when it shall be broken in your hands, and you yourselves brained by the hilt of the weapon you have so wickedly wielded” In October he had printed a plea for Ireland, strong and earnest, asking:--
”Where is our boasted English freedostown pier?
Where has it been for near two years? The Habeas Corpus Act suspended, the gaols crowded, the stea at shebeen shops for sedition, and the end of it a Fenian panic in England Oh, before it be too late, before es of our present history, before we exasperate and arouse bitter animosities, let us try and do justice to our sister land Abolish once and for all the land lahich in their iniquitous operation have ruined her peasantry
Sweep away the leech-like Church which has sucked her vitality, and has given her back no word even of coradation Turn her barracks into flax e a spirit of independence in her citizens, restore to her people the protection of the law, so that theytherievances Let a cost Irishes added, sit soleislate, not for the punishment of the discontented, but to remove the causes of the discontent It is not the Fenians who have depopulated Ireland's strength and increased her misery It is not the Fenians who have evicted tenants by the score It is not the Fenians who have checked cultivation Those who have caused the wrong at least should frame the remedy”
In December, 1867, I sailed out of the safe harbour of irlhood on to the wide sea of life, and the waves broke roughly as soon as the bar was crossed We were an ill-matched pair, h ideas of a husband's authority and a wife's subly to the ” eered and with difficulty appeased I, accustomed to freedom, indifferent to home details, impulsive, very hot-tempered, and proud as Lucifer I had never had a harsh word spoken to , had had my way smoothed for my feet, and never a worry had touched me Harshness roused first incredulous wonder, then a stornant tears, and after a time a proud, defiant resistance, cold and hard as iron The easy-going, sunshi+ny, enthusiastic girl changed--and changed pretty rapidly--into a grave, proud, reticent wo deep in her own heart all her hopes, her fears, and her disillusions I , though I think other treatradually have turned me into a fair i with the ignorance before alluded to, and so scared and outraged at heart froement or econoht er to perfor to potter over little things, and liking to do swiftly what I had to do, and then turn toforfor her presence raised jealous vexation; with strangers about me hom I had no sympathy; visited by ladies who talked to me only about babies and servants--troubles of which I knew nothing and which bored me unutterably--and ere as uninterested in all that had filled y, in politics, in science, as I was uninterested in the discussions on the house ”butter, when dripping would have done perfectly well, my dear”; was it wonderful that I becaer, passionate enthusiasirl, were doubtless incompatible with ”the solid comfort of a wife,”
and Ito the Rev Frank Besant
And, in truth, I ought never to have irl there lay hidden, as s, a woth that panted for expression and rebelled against restraint, fiery and passionate e under compression--a most undesirable partner to sit in the lady's ar before the fire [_Que le diable faisait-elle dans cette galere,_] I have often thought, looking back at irl make her bed so foolishly? But self-analysis shows the contradictories in my nature that led me into so mistaken a course I have ever been the queerest th, and have paid heavily for the weakness As a child I used to suffer tortures of shyness, and if my shoe-lace was untied would feel sha; as a girl I would shrink away froers and think ratitude to any one who noticedmistress of a house, I was afraid of my servants, and would let careless work pass rather than bear the pain of reproving the ill-doer; when I have been lecturing and debating with no lack of spirit on the platforo without what I wanted at the hotel rather than to ring and make the waiter fetch it; combative on the platform in defence of any cause I cared for, I shrink from quarrel or disapproval in the hohter in public How often have I passed unhappy quarters of an hour screwing up e to find fault with some subordinate whom my duty compelled me to reprove, and how often have I jeered at hty platfor so their work badly! An unkind look or word has availed to make me shrink into myself as a snail into its shell, while on the platfore blindly and stupidly, fearing to give pain; fretted my heart out for a year; then, roused by harshness and injustice, stiffened and hardened, and lived with a wall of ice round ed mental conflicts that nearly killed me; and learned at last how to live and work in are of the weapons that struck it, and left the flesh beneath unwounded, armour laid aside, but in the presence of a very few
My first serious atte were made in 1868, and I took up two very different lines of composition; I wrote some short stories of a very flimsy type, and also a work of a much more ambitious character, ”The Lives of the Black Letter Saints” For the sake of the unecclesiastically trained it may be as well to land there are a number of Saints' Days; some of these are printed in red, and are Red Letter Days, for which services are appointed by the Church; others are printed in black, and are Black Letter Days, and have no special services fixed for the to take each of these days and write a sketch of the life of the saint belonging to it, and accordingly I set to work to do so, and gathered various books of history and legend where-from to collect my ”facts” I do not in the least knohat became of that valuable book; I tried Macmillans with it, and it was sent on by the a series of Church books for the young; later I had a letter froive it as ”an act of piety” to their order; its ultimate fate is to me unknown
The short stories were more fortunate I sent the first to the _Family Herald_, and some weeks afterwards received a letter from which dropped a cheque as I opened it Dear ood deal of ave s It was the firstwas added to the pride of authorshi+p In ion, I went down onit to uineas, and beco quite a support of the household Besides, it was ”htful sense of independence calish law, and the dignified position in which it placed the married woman; I did not understand that all a ed to her owner, and that she could have nothing that belonged to her of right[1] I did not want the ive, and it was rather a shock to learn that it was not really mine at all
From time to time after that I earned a few pounds for stories in the same journal; and the _Family Herald_, let me say, has one peculiarity which should render it beloved by poor authors; it pays its contributor when it accepts the paper, whether it prints it immediately or not; thus my first story was not printed for some weeks after I received the cheque, and it was the saed by these s time to do, but was at last finished, and sent off to the _Fa ca es, but that if I would write one of ”purely domestic interest,” and up to the same level, it would probably be accepted But by that tiical doubt, and that novel of ”purely doot itself written
I contributed further to the literature of et the exact title, but it dealt with the duty of fasting incumbent on all faithful Christians, and was very patristic in its tone
In January, 1869, my little son was born, and as I was very ill for some months before, and was far too much interested in the tiny creature afterwards, to devote myself to pen and paper, ave a new interest and a new pleasure to life, and as we could not afford a nurse I had plenty to do in looking after his s became less feverish when it was done by the side of the baby's cradle, and the little one's presence al pain of my mother's loss
I ust, 1870, a little sister was born to eneral health had been failing for sohton's Art Studio, Cheltenhaht, healthy little fellow, but the girl was delicate fro from her mother's unhappiness, and born somewhat pre of 1871, the two children caught the whooping cough, h fatal to her She was very young for so trying a disease, and after a while bronchitis set in and was followed by congestion of the lungs For weeks she lay in hourly peril of death We arranged a screen round the fire like a tent, and kept it full of steaht, all through those weary weeks, the tortured baby on my knees I lovedlove soothed the aching at my heart, and their baby eyes could not critically scan the unhappiness that grew deeper month by month; and that steaht with Death for my child The doctor said that recovery was i shewas that, at last, even a drop or two of , and it see child At length, one h the day; I had sent for him hurriedly, for the body had suddenly swollen up as a result of the perforation of one of the pleurae, and the consequent escape of air into the cavity of the chest
While he was there one of the fits of coughing cah it must be the last He took a s a drop on a handkerchief held it near the child's face, till the drug soothed the convulsive struggle ”It can't do any har” He went away, saying that he feared he would never see the child alive again One of the kindest friends I had in my married life was that saood as he was clever, and, like so many of his noble profession, he had the merits of discretion and silence He never breathed a word as to ive evidence as to cruelty which--had the deed of separation not been held as condonation--would have secured me a divorce _a mensa et thoro_
The child, however, recovered, and her recovery was due, I think, to that chance thought of Mr Winterbothan of a fit of coughing appeared, and so warded off the convulsive attack and the profound exhaustion that followed, in which a mere flicker of breath at the top of the throat was the only sign of life, and soone For years the child re the tenderest care, but those weeks of anguish left a deeper trace on er I collapsed physically, and lay in bed for a week unle which lasted for three years and two le which transforony of the struggle was in the first nineteen , as it was a hell to live through at the tiuish inflicted by doubt on the earnestly religious soul There is in life no other pain so horrible, so keen in its torture, so crushi+ng in its weight It seeleam of happiness ”on the other side” that no earthly storloomy with a horror of despair, a darkness that verilybut an imperious intellectual and ious h an earthquake shook the foundations of the soul, and the very being quivers and sways under the shock No life in the eht; no voice to break the deadly silence; no hand outstretched to save Empty-brained triflers who have never tried to think, who take their creed as they take their fashi+ons, speak of Atheism as the outcome of foul life and vicious desires In their shallow heartlessness and shallower thought they cannot even di the mere penureat darkness in which the orphaned soul cries out into the infinite emptiness: ”Is it a Devil that has made the world? Is the echo, 'Children, ye have no Father,'
true? Is all blind chance, is all the clash of unconscious forces, or are we the sentient toys of an Alony, whose peals of awful s of our despair?”
How true are the noble words of Mrs Ha:--
”For some may follow Truth from dawn to dark, As a child follows by hisall the way; And unto soh an avenue of thorns and fires, And waving branches black without a leaf; And still It draws thearments must be rent, and eyes be scorched: And if the valley of the shadow of death Be passed, and to the level road they come, Still with their faces to the polar star, It is not with the same looks, the same limbs, But halt, and maimed, and of infiro It is not day but night, and oftentiht of clouds wherein the stars are lost”[2]
Aye! but never lost is the Star of Truth to which the face is set, and while that shi+nes all lesser lights h which I had been passing, with the see ofblow at my belief in God as a ood deal, and hadof their lives; my idolised mother had been defrauded by a lawyer she had trusted, and was plunged into debt by his non-payh his hands to others; ht life had been enshrouded by pain and rendered to e; and here was my helpless, sinless babe tortured for weeks and left frail and suffering The shtness of , and the sudden plunge into conditions so new and so unfavourable dazed and stunnedpresent All my personal belief in Christ, all my intense faith in His constant direction of affairs, all my habit of continual prayer and of realisation of His Presence--all were against ht of ave way Toreality, and all ainst this Person in whoer I saw inof my mother's proud heart under a load of debt, and all the bitter suffering of the poor The presence of pain and evil in a worldon the innocent, as onon into eternity unhealed; a sorrow-laden world; a lurid, hopeless hell; all these, while I still believed, droveand tre, I believed and hated All the hitherto dorth of my nature rose up in rebellion; I did not yet dreaer kneel
As the first stirrings of this hot rebellion yman of a very noble type, who did much to help ht hi the crisis of the child's illness; he said little, but on the following day I received fro note:--
”_April_ 21, 1871
”My Dear Mrs Besant,--I aave you but little help in your trouble yesterday It is needless to say that it was not from want of sympathy Perhaps it would be nearer the truth to say that it was fro with the sorrow of any one whom I feel to be of a sensitive nature 'The heart hath its own bitterness, and the stranger meddleth not therewith' It is to ht awaken such a reflection as
”'And corain'
Conventional consolations, conventional verses out of the Bible, and conventional prayers are, it see And so I acted on a principle that I reat as that of one hu upon another human faith' The promises of God, the love of Christ for little children, and all that has been given to us of hope and comfort, are as deeply planted in your heart as in mine, and I did not care to quote them But when I talk face to face with one who is in sore need of them,that I think Ithe faith find its oay from soul to soul Indeed, I could not find words for it if I tried And yet I as of God, to solemnly assure you that all is well We have no key to the ' the Cross of Christ But there is another and a deeper solution in the hands of our Father; and it will be ours e can understand it There is--in the place to which we travelsorief, which will fill with light the darkest heart Now youseen; that is true faith You h time to catch The far-off interest of tears'