A Girl Among the Anarchists

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A GIRL AMONG THE ANARCHISTS

By Isabel Meredith

PREFACE

In spite of the fact that there are certain highly respectable
individualists of a rabid type who prefer to call themselves Anarchists,
it must be owned that it requires some courage to write about Anarchism
even with the sympathy befitting a clinical physician or the scientific
detachment of a pathologist. And yet it is certain that Anarchists are
curiously interesting, and not the less in need of observation from the
fact that apparently none of the social quacks who prescribe seriously in
leading articles has the faintest insight into them as a phenomenon, a
portent, or a disease. This book, if it is read with understanding, will,
I feel assured, do not a little to show how it comes about that Anarchism
is as truly endemic in Western Civilisations as cholera is in India.
Isabel Meredith, whom I had the pleasure of knowing when she was a more
humble member of the staff of the _Tocsin_ than the editor, occupies,
to my knowledge, a very curious and unique position in the history of
English Anarchism. There is nothing whatever in "A Girl among the
Anarchists" which is invented, the whole thing is an experience told very
simply, but I think convincingly. Nevertheless as such a human document
must seem incredible to the ordinary reader, I have no little pleasure in
saying that I know what she has written to be true. I was myself a
contributor to the paper which is here known as the _Tocsin_. I have
handled the press and have discussed details (which did not include bombs)
with the editor. I knew "Kosinski" and still have an admiration for
"Nekrovitch." And even now I do not mind avowing that I am philosophically
as much an Anarchist as the late Dr. H. G. Sutton, who would no doubt have
been astounded to learn that he belonged to the brotherhood.

Curiously enough I have found most Anarchists of the mildest
dispositions. I have met meek Germans (there are meek Germans still
extant) who even in their wildest Anarchic indignation seemed as little
capable of hurting a living soul as of setting the Elbe on fire. For it
must be understood that the "red wing" of the Anarchists is a very small
section of the body of philosophers known as Anarchists. There is no doubt
that those of the dynamite section are practically insane. They are
"impulsives"; they were outraged and they revolted before birth. Most of
the proletariat take their thrashing lying down. There are some who cannot
do that. It is out of these who are not meek and do not inherit even
standing-room on the earth that such as "Matthieu" comes. Perhaps it may
not be out of place to suggest that a little investigation might be better
than denunciation, which is always wide of the mark, and that, as
Anarchism is created by the social system of repression, more repression
will only create more Anarchism. However, I am perfectly aware that the
next time a wild-eyed philosopher, who ought to be under restraint in an
asylum, throws a bomb, all the newspapers in Europe will advocate measures
for turning all the meeker Anarchists into outrage-mongers. For of the
Anarchists it is certainly true that repression does not repress.
Anarchism is a creed and a philosophy, but neither as creed nor philosophy
does it advocate violence. It only justifies resistance to violence. So
much, I think, will be discovered in this book even by a leader-writer.

In conclusion I cannot do better than quote from Spinoza's _Tractatus
Politicus:_--

"In order that I might inquire better into the matter of this science
with the same freedom of mind with which we are wont to treat lines and
surfaces in mathematics, I determined not to laugh or weep over the
actions of men but simply to understand them, and to contemplate their
affections and passions such as love, hate, anger, envy, arrogance, pity,
and all other disturbances of soul not as vices of human nature, but as
properties pertaining to it in the same way as heat, cold, storm, thunder
pertain to the nature of the atmosphere. For these, though troublesome,
are yet necessary and have certain causes through which we may come to
understand them, and thus by contemplating them in their truth, gain for
our minds as much joy as by the knowledge of things which are pleasing to
the senses."

I think that Isabel Meredith, so far as the outlook of her book extends,
is a disciple of Spinoza. But she can speak for herself.

MORLEY ROBERTS.

CONTENTS

I. A STRANGE CHILDHOOD

II. A GATHERING IN CHISWICK

III. AN ABORTIVE GROUP-MEETING.

IV. A POLICE SCARE

V. TO THE RESCUE

VI. A FOREIGN INVASION

VII. THE OFFICE OF THE _TOCSIN_

VIII. THE DYNAMITARD'S ESCAPE

IX. SOME ANARCHIST PERSONALITIES

X. A FLIGHT

XI. A CRISIS

XII. THE _TOCSIN'S_ LAST TOLL.

CHAPTER I

A STRANGE CHILDHOOD

In the small hours of a bitter January morning I sat in my room gazing
into the fire, and thinking over many things. I was alone in the house,
except for the servants, but this circumstance did not affect me. My
childhood and upbringing had been of no ordinary nature, and I was used to
looking after myself and depending on my own resources for amusement and
occupation.

My mother had died when I was yet a small child and, with my elder sister
and brother, I had grown up under our father's eye. He was a chemist and a
man of advanced ideas on most things. He had never sent us to school,
preferring to watch in person over our education, procuring for us private
tuition in many subjects, and himself instructing us in physical science
and history, his two favourite studies. We rapidly gained knowledge under
his system and were decidedly precocious children, but we had none of the
ordinary school society and routine. Our childhood was by no means dull or
mopish, for there were three of us and we got on very well together, but
we mixed hardly at all with children of our own age, our interests were
not theirs, and their boisterous ways were somewhat repellent to us.

Our father was a great believer in liberty, and, strange to say, he put
his ideas into practice in his own household. He was a devoted and
enthusiastic student, and for days, nay, weeks together, we would see but
little of him. He had fitted himself up a small laboratory at the top of
our house on which he spent all his available money, and here he passed
nearly all the time he could dispose of over and beyond that necessary for
the preparation and delivery of his scientific lectures. As we grew out of
childhood he made no difference in his mode of life. He gave us full
liberty to follow our various bents, assisting us with his advice when
requested, ever ready to provide the money necessary for any special
studies or books; taking an interest in our readings and intellectual
pursuits. The idea of providing us with suitable society, of launching us
out into the world, of troubling to see that we conformed to the ordinary
conventions of society, never occurred to him. Occasionally some old
friend of his would drop in, or some young admirer who had followed his
scientific work in the press would write asking permission to call and
consult him on some point. They were always received with cordiality, and
my father would take much trouble to be of any assistance he could to
them. We children used generally to be present on such occasions, and
frequently would join in the conversation, and thus we got to know various
people, among whom foreigners and various types of cranks were fairly in
evidence.

We lived in a large old-fashioned house in Fitzroy Square where our
father had settled down somewhere in the seventies soon after his marriage
to a South American Spaniard, whom he had met during a scientific research
expedition in Brazil. She was a girl of seventeen, his junior by some
twenty years. During his journeys into the interior of Brazil he had
fallen seriously ill with malarial fever, and had been most kindly taken
in and nursed by a coffee-planter and his family. Here he had met his
future wife who was acting as governess. She was of Spanish descent, and
combined the passionate enthusiasm of a Southerner with the independence
and self-reliance which life in a new and only partially civilised country
breeds. She was an orphan and penniless, but our father fell in love with
her, attracted doubtless by her beauty and vivaciousness in such striking
contrast with his bookish way of life, and he married her and brought her
home to London. He truly loved her and was a good husband in all essential
respects, but the uncongenial climate and monotonous life told on her
health, and she died three years after my birth, much mourned by her
husband, who plunged all the more deeply into scientific research, his
only other thought being a care for our education. He had lived on in the
same old house which grew somewhat dingier and shabbier each year, whilst
the neighbourhood fell from its pristine respectability to become the
resort of foreigners of somewhat doubtful character, of Bohemian artists
and musicians.

As I sat gazing into the fire many pictures of those old days rose before
me. I saw our large drawing-room with its old-fashioned furniture,
handsome, often beautiful, but ill-kept; its sombre hangings and fine
pictures. I recalled a typical scene there with a large fire burning
cheerily in the big grate, relieving the gloom of a late winter afternoon
with the bright flickering of its flames. Ensconced in a roomy arm-chair,
our father is seated by the fire in a skullcap and list slippers, with his
favourite cat perched on his knee. Opposite him sit two ladies, the elder
of whom--a quaint, nice-looking old lady, dressed neatly in black, but
whose innate eccentricity succeeded in imparting something odd to the
simplest and quietest of attires--is leaning eagerly forward, pouring
forth a long tale of woe into my father's sympathetic ear. She is
denouncing the London roughs, landlords, and police, who, apparently, are
all in league to ruin her and turn her cats astray upon an unkind world.
The brutality of the English poor, who consider their duty towards the
feline race fully performed when they have fed them, and who pay no more
attention to their morals and higher feelings than if they were stocks and
stones, arouses her ire; sympathy is what she needs, sympathy to help her
to face the world and continue her crusade against cruelty. She says all
this in a scattered and disconnected style, jumping from one point to
another, turning occasionally to her friend for support or confirmation.
This friend is a meek, subdued-looking person of uncertain age, somewhat
washed-out and bedraggled in appearance. Her attire is nondescript, and
seems to consist of oddments bought solely because they were cheap and
bearing no relation whatever one to the other. Mrs. Smuts, growing more
and more absorbed in the course of her harangue on the great cat question,
states that she believes in marrying cats young in life and looking
strictly after their morals; and as she appeals to Miss Meggs whilst
voicing this sentiment, the latter timidly interjects, "But do you think,
my dear Maria, that cats can maintain themselves chaste on a meat diet? I
never give mine anything more exciting than cold potatoes and rice
pudding, and I find that they thrive on it, Mr. Meredith!"

At this point we children, stifling our laughter, rush headlong from the
room, to vent our mirth in safety in the kitchen.

Another frequent visitor whom my imagination summoned from the grave in
which he had lain now for several years past, was a tall, thin,
delicate-looking man of some thirty years of age. He was by birth a
Frenchman, but had lived mostly in England, his parents having come over
as political exiles from the tyranny of Louis Napoleon, afterwards
settling permanently in this country. He was an engineer by profession,
but a poet at heart, and all his spare time and thought he devoted to
tackling the problem of aerial navigation. His day was spent earning a
scanty living in a shipbuilding yard, but his evenings and nights were
passed in constructing a model of a flying-machine. He would bring his
drawings round to our father for discussion and advice; and although he
never attained success, he was always hopeful, trusting that some one of
the ever fresh improvements and additions which his fertile brain was
always busy conceiving would solve the difficulty which had hitherto beset
him. His sallow face with its large dreamy eyes and his spare figure, clad
in an old bluish suit, rusty with age and threadbare with brushing, stand
out clear in my memory. There was also an old professor, a chemist like my
father, who often assisted him in his experiments. He was somewhat
formidable in appearance, wearing gold spectacles, and helping himself
freely to the contents of a snuff-box, but he was one of the most
kind-hearted of men. Children were great favourites with him, and his
affection was returned with interest as soon as the shyness consequent on
his somewhat gruff manner was overcome. He used to enjoy drawing us out,
and would laugh heartily at our somewhat old-fashioned remarks and
observations, at which we used to grow very indignant, for we were
decidedly touchy when our dignity was at stake. He had nicknamed me
Charlotte Corday, for, after a course of Greek and Roman history, studied
in Plutarch and Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar," I had plunged into the
French Revolution, glorying in its heroisms and audacity, and it had
become a favourite amusement with all three of us to enact scenes drawn
from its history, and to recite aloud, with great emphasis if little art,
revolutionary poetry. The old professor loved to tease me by abusing my
favourite heroes; and when he had at last roused me to a vigorous
assertion of revolutionary sentiments, he would turn to my father and say,
"There's a little spitfire for you; you will have to keep a look-out or
she will be making bombs soon and blowing us all up," at which my father
would smile complacently.

Our father was very charitable. He did not like to be bothered or
disturbed, but he would willingly give a little assistance when asked, and
the result was that our door was always besieged by beggars of various
nationalities, Spaniards and Italians forming the chief contingent.
Generally they confined themselves to sending in notes, which used to be
returned with a shilling or half-crown as the case might be, but sometimes
one would insist on a personal interview. I remember one wild-looking
Hungarian, whose flowing locks were crowned by a sort of horse's
sun-bonnet, who used to rush round on one of those obsolete bicycles,
consisting of an enormously high wheel on the top of which he was perched,
and a tiny little back one. He was generally pursued by a crowd of hooting
boys, advising him to "get 'is 'air cut," and inquiring, "Where did you
get that 'at?" He used to insist on seeing my father; but the help he
solicited was not for himself but for various political refugees in whom
he was interested. One day the professor happened to meet this
wild-looking creature at our door, and inquired of my father who that
maniac might be. "Oh, he is a Hungarian refugee; a good fellow, I believe.
I have noticed something rather odd in his appearance, but I do not
consider him mad," replied his friend.

Amid such surroundings we grew up. My elder sister, Caroline, had a
notable musical gift, and even as a small child had a fine voice, which
developed into a rich contralto. Our father, always anxious to do his duty
by us, gave her a first-rate musical education, sending her abroad to
study under famous Continental teachers, and at eighteen she made her
first appearance in public, exciting much attention by the powerful
dramatic qualities of her voice. It was evident that her right course was
to go in for operatic singing, and this she did. She continued on the most
affectionate terms with her family, but naturally her pursuit took her
into quite another path of life, and we saw less and less of her as time
went on. This threw my brother and myself more together. There was only a
year's difference between us, and we studied together, walked, talked,
played, and read together--in fact, were inseparable. Raymond was no
ordinary boy. In character and in manners he was very like my father. His
favourite study was physical science in its various branches; mine,
history and sociological subjects. He saw things from the scientific
standpoint, I from the poetical and artistic; but we were both by nature
enthusiastic and dreamers, and sympathised heartily with each other's
views. His ambition was to become a famous explorer; mine, to die on a
scaffold or a barricade, shouting Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.

Our father took a great pride in Raymond, and carefully supervised his
studies. He passed various brilliant examinations, and at eighteen, having
decided to go in for medicine, was already walking a hospital. Shortly
after this our father died suddenly. He was at work as usual in his
laboratory when he was seized by a paralytic stroke, and in three days he
was dead.

This blow quite stunned us for a time. Our father was everything to us;
and the possibility of his death we had never contemplated. Though, as I
have explained, he had always left us free to follow our own devices,
still he was the centre round which our family life circled; we were
passionately attached to him, and now that he was gone we felt at a loss
indeed. We had no relatives living of our father's; our mother's family we
had never known, and they were too distant to be practically available.
Our father's friends were not such as to be of much help to us. Cat
enthusiasts and scientific dreamers are all very well in their way, but
they almost always take far more than they give in the mart of friendship.
The old professor had preceded my father to his grave.

Our father left us comfortably off. The house was our own, and property
yielding a comfortable income was divided equally between us. Our home
seemed desolate indeed without our father, and very gloomily did the first
months of his absence pass; but in time hope and youth reasserted
themselves and we gradually settled down to much our old way of life.
Caroline obtained several engagements and was still studying
enthusiastically. Raymond passed most of his time at the hospital, where
he had rooms, though he frequently came home; I was the only one who had
not a definite occupation. I read a great deal and wrote a little also,
chiefly studies on historical subjects which interested me, but I had
printed nothing. In fact I had never been in the way of the literary
world, and did not know how to set about it. Time used often to hang
rather heavily on my hands in the big house where I was generally alone. I
was the housekeeper, but such cares did not take up much of my time. The
result of so much solitude and lack of occupation was that I became
restless and dissatisfied. Mere reading without any definite object did
not and could not suffice me; to write when there seemed no prospect of
ever being read, and keenly alive as I was to my own deficiencies, did not
attract me; friends I might say I had none, for the few people my father
knew were interested in him and not in us children, and ceased to frequent
our house after his death. Caroline's musical friends did not appeal to
me, so that the whole interest of my life was centred round my brother.
When he came home we used always to be together, and conversation never
flagged. Never having been to school he had none of the schoolboy's
patronising contempt for a sister. We had always been chums and
companions, and so we continued, but whereas, as children, it was I, with
my more passionate and enterprising nature, who took the lead, now it was
he who, mixing with the outer world, provided the stimulus of new ideas
and fresh activities for which I craved. Brought suddenly face to face,
after the studious seclusion of home, with the hard facts of life as seen
in a London hospital, he had begun to take a deep interest in social
questions. The frightful havoc of life and happiness necessitated by the
economic conditions of nineteenth-century society, impressed him deeply,
and he felt that any doctor who looked upon his profession as other than a
mere means to make money must tackle such problems. Following up this line
of thought he became interested in economics and labour questions. His
views were the result of no mere surface impression, but the logical
outcome of thought and study, and he arrived at socialism by mental
processes of his own, uninfluenced by the ordinary channels of propaganda.
I shared his interests and read on parallel lines. We had no friends in
Socialist circles, no personal interest of any kind balanced our judgment.
The whole trend of our education had been to make independent thinkers of
us. What we saw in the whole problem was a question of justice, and for
this we were ready and anxious to work. A new interest was thus brought
into our lives, which, in my case, soon became all-absorbing. I was always
begging my brother to bring me home fresh books. The driest volumes of
political economy, the most indigestible of philosophical treatises,
nothing came amiss. From these I passed on to more modern works. Raymond
had made friends with a student who was a professed socialist and through
him he came into possession of a number of pamphlets and papers, all of
which I devoured eagerly, and some of which made a lasting impression on
my mind. Krapotkin's "Appeal to the Young" was of this number. I remember
in my enthusiasm reading it aloud to my sister Caroline, who, however,
took scant interest in such matters, and who tried, but in vain, to put a
damper on my enthusiasm.

I was always fond of scribbling, and the outcome of all this reading was
that I, too, flew to pen and paper. I used to read my papers to Raymond on
those rare occasions when I fancied I had not done so much amiss. They
would provide the material for an evening's conversation, then I would
toss them aside and think no more about them. One day, however, Raymond
brought his Socialist friend home with him. It seems they had talked about
me and my all-absorbing interest in social subjects. Hughes, my brother's
friend, had been surprised to hear from Raymond that I knew no socialists
in the flesh, and that all my hero-worship was laid before the altar of
mental abstractions, of my own creation for the most part.

Great was my excitement when Raymond told me that I might expect him and
his friend, of whom I had heard so much, to turn up together one Sunday
evening. So great was my ignorance of the world, so wild my enthusiasm,
that I imagined every socialist as a hero, willing to throw away his life
at a moment's notice on behalf of the "Cause." I had had no experience of
the petty internal strifes, of the jealousies and human frailties which a
closer knowledge of all political parties reveals. I remember how ashamed
I felt of the quite unostentatious comfort of our home, how anxious I was
to dissemble the presence of servants, how necessary I thought it to dress
myself in my oldest and least becoming clothes for the occasion, and how
indignant I felt when Caroline, who was going off to sing at a concert
that evening, said, on coming in to wish me good-bye, "Why, surely,
Isabel, you're not going to receive that gentleman looking such a fright
as this?" As if a Socialist could care for dress! How I felt he would
despise me for all the outward signs which proved that I was living on the
results of "unearned increment" (_vide_ Karl Marx) and that I was a
mere social parasite!

When at last the longed-for, yet dreaded moment came, I was surprised,
relieved, and I must add somewhat disappointed, at seeing a young man
looking much like any other gentleman, except that he wore a red tie, and
that his clothes were of a looser and easier fit than is usual. "What a
jolly place you have!" he exclaimed after my brother had introduced us and
he had given a look round. I felt considerably relieved, as I had quite
expected him to scowl disapproval, and my brother, after saying, "Yes, it
is a nice old house; we are very fond of it," suggested that we should
adjourn to supper.

During this repast I took an animated part in the conversation, which
turned on recent books and plays. At last reference was made to a book,
"The Ethics of Egoism," which had excited much attention. It was a work
advocating the most rabid individualism, denying the Socialist standpoint
of the right to live, and saying that the best safeguard for the
development and amelioration of the race lay in that relentless law of
nature which sent the mentally and morally weak to the wall. I had read
the book with interest, and had even written a rather long criticism of
it, of which I felt distinctly proud. In the course of the discussion to
which this book gave rise among us, my brother mentioned that I had
written something on it, and Hughes begged me to read my performance.
Though I felt somewhat diffident, I acceded, after some persuasion, to his
request, and was elated beyond measure at earning his good opinion of my
effort.

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