15 MRS BESANT'S ANTECEDENTS

ANNIE WOOD was born in 1847 into an Irish Protestant family. In her youth she fed on mystical literature. Around the age of fifteen years she lived in Paris, and unlikely as it seems, it has been contended that at this time she converted to Catholicism. She returned to England at seventeen and four years later married Rev. Frank Besant, an Anglican minister, by whom she had a son and a daughter; but it was not long before her unruly temperament rendered the marriage untenable. Her husband, who seems to have been very decent, showed much patience, and it was she who finally left, taking the two children with her. This happened in 1872, and it is likely that she then went to live with the free-thinker Charles Bradlaugh, who was leading a violent anti-religious campaign in the _National Reformer_ and converted her from the mystic she had previously been to his own ideas. Nevertheless, if we are to believe her own account, she would not have made the acquaintance of this person until somewhat later while earning her livelihood making copies in libraries; in any event, her husband was never able to convict her of adultery. At the same time she also worked with Dr Aveling, son-in-law of Karl Marx; she studied anatomy and chemistry, and after three failures earned the diploma of Bachelor of Science. Finally, she became editor of the _National Reformer_, signing her articles with the pseudonym _Ajax_. It was then, around 1874, that she began lecturing widely, preaching atheism and Malthusianism, and linking to her altruistic theories the names of the three great benefactors of humanity, who for her were Jesus, Buddha, and Malthus.

In 1876 a Malthusian pamphlet entitled _The Fruits of Philosophy_, by Knowlton,^[1] was banned as an immoral publication, a bookseller in Bristol being sentenced to two years in prison for having put it on sale while the publisher got off with a heavy fine. Bradlaugh and Mrs Besant immediately hired a marketing agency where they publicized and sold the incriminated work,^[2] even having the audacity to send copies to the authorities, and in June 1877 they were prosecuted in their turn. The jury declared that 'the book in question had as its aim to deprave public morals,' and since the accused indicated their intention to continue its sale in spite of everything, they were condemned to a heavy prison sentence accompanied by a fine; however, this sentence having been overturned on a technicality, they were freed shortly afterward.^[3] They then founded a society called the 'Malthusian League,' which set as its goal 'to mount active and passive resistance to any attempt made to stifle discussion of the question of population'. On June 6, 1878, after a bookseller was again sentenced for the same activity, this League held a protest meeting at St James's Hall, where vehement speeches were delivered by Bradlaugh and Mrs Besant.^[4] It was doubtless to her sentencing that Papus was to allude when on August 23, 1890 he wrote to Olcott that he 'had just acquired proof that certain important duties in the Theosophical Society were entrusted to members who had only just left prison after having been sentenced to several years for moral outrage'; unfortunately, the accusation in this form contained inaccuracies which allowed it to be declared 'false and defamatory.'

On the subject of Mrs Besant's children, it seems that at first an arrangement was made between her and her husband; but after the facts that we have just noted, Mr Besant sued to remove custody from his wife. The case was heard and then taken to the Court of Appeal; on April 9, 1879 this court confirmed the decision of the first court and Mrs Besant saw her daughter taken away. The judgment was based on the subversive opinions she had displayed and on the fact that she had propagated 'a work considered immoral by a jury.' In September 1894, curing a lecture tour in Australia, Mrs Besant was again to meet up in Melbourne with her daughter Mabel, now Mrs Scott,^[5] whom she had already succeeded in bringing to Theosophy, but who in 1910 or 1911 separated from her and converted to Catholicism.

In September 1880 a Congress of Free-Thinkers took place in Brussels, where Mrs Besant revealed that her party in England had as its aim 'the propagation of atheism, republicanism, civil burial, and the abolition of the House of Lords and the system of land ownership still in force';^[6] it was she who gave the closing address, in which she made the violent anti-religious declaration we cited at the outset. During the same period she published quite a number of works, among others a _Freethinker's Textbook_ [Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History] in two volumes, and sundry 'essays' with titles clearly characteristic of the tendencies and opinions which were then hers.^[7] In November 1884 she commended Bradlaugh's affiliation with the _Grand-Orient de France_,^[8] but things were soon to change. Bradlaugh, who had entered Parliament, could only think of ridding himself of Mrs Besant; discord arose between them and he removed her from the management of his journal. So much ingratitude toward her who had been 'the friend of bad times,' as she herself said, surprised and shocked her; her convictions were shaken by this, which proves that at root they had always been more sentimental than truly thought out. She later gave a strange explanation of these past bad habits, claiming to have received orders from the 'Mahātmas' even from the time (before the foundation of the Theosophical Society) when she was the wife of the Rev. Besant, and to have been constrained by them to abandon him in order to 'live her life'—an altogether too easy excuse, and one by which the worst aberrations could be justified.

It was then, at a loss and not knowing which way to turn that in 1886 Mrs Besant read _The Occult World_ by Sinnett. Thereupon she began to study spiritism and with Herbert Burrows to cultivate psychic phenomena. Next, on the advice of W.T. Stead, then head of the _Pall Mall Gazette_ to which she contributed, she began reading _The Secret Doctrine_, at the same time giving up for good her association with free-thought. Her early tendencies to an exaggerated mysticism once again gained the upper hand, and she began to have visions under the influence of auto-suggestion. It was thus prepared that she went to see Mme Blavatsky, whose magnetic power did the rest, as we have already reported; and we have also said that she was not long in becoming one of the governing members of the British section (it was at the end of this same year, 1889, that she actually joined Theosophy), then of the autonomous European section which was constituted in 1890 under the direct authority of Mme Blavatsky, with G.R.S. Mead [1863-1933] as Secretary-General.