[CHAPTER XXXIV]
FAMILY AFFAIRS.
When our home was broken up in May 1870, and my father went to live by himself in those two little rooms in Turner Street, he was very downcast and lonely. Apart from the many weighty reasons he had to make him heavy-hearted, he felt the separation from his children, young though we were, much more than might be imagined or than we indeed quite realised ourselves at the time. He felt it for his own sake, but even more he felt it for ours. We had been away from him but little more than two weeks—weeks crowded with worry and work—when he wrote us a little letter, which I shall always keep amongst my dearest treasures, so much does it seem to convey a sense of his fatherly love for us, and his fatherly anxiety for our lives in the difficult circumstances in which we were placed. The letter is written in French and very legibly, the foreign language making a sort of excuse for the letter. He writes:—
"My Dear little Daughters,—I have a notion to write you from time to time in French, because by that means more than by any other I shall make you learn the language. Unfortunately for your instruction, my own knowledge of this beautiful tongue is very limited, but I hope that you will correct me each time you find mistakes. I want to know every thought, every act of your lives, because, as you will be too long out of my sight, I would keep you very close to my heart, and I want to watch in thought the steps I cannot see each day with my own eyes.—À vous, mes petites bien aimées,
C. Bradlaugh."
Our brother's death drew us yet nearer to him, and while we were at Midhurst he wrote to us constantly, scolding us if we delayed too long in answering his little letters. As soon as he was able, he took a third room at Turner Street, and sent for each of us by turns to spend a month with him, to write for him; but as he was unwilling to separate my sister and me for long together this was by no means a regular arrangement.
After he became acquainted with Madame de Brimont, she soon expressed a desire to know us. I have said that she was a staunch friend to my father; to my sister and to me she was goodness itself. She asked my father to let her find a school for us in Paris, and as he had always been very anxious for us to know French, he let himself be persuaded, in spite of sundry misgivings about the extra expense. A school was found, and to Paris my father took us at the end of September 1872. We went a few days before the beginning of the school-term and stayed with him at his old hotel in the Rue Vivienne—now demolished to make room for the extension of the Bibliothéque. We were very proud to be with him, and proud of course to be for the first time in Paris; we lunched or dined at Madame de Brimont's, and our leisure moments were filled up by most delightful drives outside Paris, or walks along the Champs Elysées or the Boulevards. Before entering school, we three went one day with Madame de Brimont to make acquaintance with the Directress of the establishment and to look over the building. The two ladies walked on first, chatting of the school arrangements and so on, whilst we behind admired, but could not imitate, the deliberate calmness with which they trod the highly polished parquet floors. My sister and I, as we slipped about and frantically caught at each other for support, thought we never should be able to walk steadily on these waxed floors. Before we left, Madame la Directrice asked what was our religion. Mr Bradlaugh, inwardly expecting difficulties, answered, "None, Madame." Madame's "Ah! Monsieur, that saves trouble," brought a smile of surprise and amusement to my father's face. Seeing this, the Directress went on: "You know, Monsieur, I have young ladies here of various religions, but they are principally Roman Catholic, Jewish, and Greek Church; it is sometimes difficult to make their different religious duties fit in with the studies."
We were very happy at this school; there were good masters, and we had plenty of work to do. On Thursday afternoons, the "at home" day for the school, Madame de Brimont visited us, and our Saturday afternoons and Sundays were spent with her. Unfortunately, I was never very strong, and during the winter I fell ill. At Christmas my father came quite unexpectedly to fetch us home for the holidays. My sister went back in the course of a week or two, but the doctor would not allow me to return. The details of that journey home, and the sad story told at the end, remain vividly in my memory. We had been surprised at receiving my father's letter to say we were to go home, a letter followed almost immediately by my father himself. It was two or three days before Christmas; he had travelled at night, and coming to us in the morning, gave us just a few hours to get ready, and in the afternoon he came to fetch us away. He seemed depressed and preoccupied, and though he made us plenty of gay speeches, we were conscious that his mood was not gay. We left Paris that night, and well do I remember what great care he took of me, the invalid, holding me in his arms a great part of the way. As we drove to Turner Street from the station, in the gloomy dawn of a dull December morning, I could not help noticing, in spite of my own pain and weariness, how grey and haggard his face looked. We passed the day in London, and in the evening he took us to Midhurst, where we were all to spend Christmas.
After the first excitement of our home-coming had somewhat subsided, my father got up from his chair, and throwing back his head with a peculiar movement, said abruptly, "Well, Bob's in prison."