Robert Buchanan | Page 6

the principle of association, consulted their own taste in matters of diet, but the most popular table in the Hall was the one where a vegetarian diet alone was served. It was, as I gathered, a happy and innocent community; but infamous reports were spread concerning it by the antagonists of human progress; it was, in fact, described as an immoral association. Members of the Church Orthodox were not likely to forgive a community founded to illustrate the doctrines of the man who denounced all religions as 'wrong,' and who on the platform and in the newspapers had so often shown the weak points in the armour of Christianity. 'Is it possible' asked an opponent of Socialism at Edinburgh, in 1838, 'to train an individual to believe that two and two make five?' 'We need not, I fancy, go far for an answer,' replied Owen, with his gentle smile and inimitable courtliness of manner, 'I fancy all of us know many persons who are trained to believe that three make one, and who think very ill of you if you differ from them.'
"I have often heard my mother speak of Robert Owen as the kindliest and most gracious of men, with an air of indomitable gentleness peculiarly irritating to individuals whose m��tier it was to discuss burning questions under burning excitement. I saw the good man often early in my life, but my recollection of him is kaleidoscopic--one tiny sparkle of memory mixed confusedly with things I have only heard. In our home, wherever it might be, he was a sort of religious presence. I heard his name long before I heard that of Jesus Christ. I was taught to think of him as of one wholly unselfish, holy, and morally omniscient. I heard again and again of his gracious deeds and inspiring words. One secret of his extraordinary power was that he was pre-eminently a 'gentleman.' Under his refining influence the rough, untutored men who flocked to his standard became gentle too. When persecution came they took it like their master, patiently and wisely. To know Robert Owen was in itself a liberal education.
"My first vivid recollections are of the period when my father, having established himself on the London Press, and residing permanently in London, sent me to a small school at Hampton Wick, kept by a well-known Socialist missionary, Alexander Campbell, known to his circle as the 'Patriarch.' He was a grave, simple man, with peculiar notions on the Immanence of the Deity, or what is called Being. With his peculiar religious ideas he combined, I fancy, eccentric views concerning the diet of the human race. At all events, the children under the care of himself and his daughter pined for lack of fitting nutriment. I myself as a very little boy, must have been in danger of starvation, for I vividly remember having to supplement the school diet, which was chiefly vegetarian, by eating snails gathered in the garden. On going home for the holidays I was found to be a little skeleton, and my mother took care that I did not return to the establishment.
"I was next sent to a so-called French and German College at Merton, kept by a certain M. de Chastelain, a French gentleman and, I think, a refugee. It was a large school, excellently conducted, but resembling, in some respects, Mr. Creakle's establishment, made famous by the author of "David Copperfield." Just opposite the main entrance was a CHURCH, almost the first I had ever seen, and certainly the first I ever entered. Here, I presume, I became acquainted with the national religion and its sacred terminology. I vividly recall the sense of strangeness I experienced when I listened, little heathen that I was, to the ordinary vocabulary of Christianity. I had received no religious teaching: if I had heard the name of God, it had been as a voice from far away; and I was old enough to understand that much that was taught in churches was mostly 'superstition.' But not till some years afterwards, when I was taken to Scotland, did I completely realise the gloom and narrowness of the popular Christian creed.
"My parents were now residing at Norwood, in a quaint little cottage commanding a distant prospect of St. Paul's; and thither, chiefly on Sundays, came many of the apostles of progress--hirsute men for the most part, of all characters and of all nations. When my holidays occurred I saw a good deal of these gentlemen. Two of them I remember vividly, who generally came together: one a little miniature of a man with tiny feet and hands and an enormous head, generally covered by a chimney-pot hat three or four sizes too large for it; the other a mighty fellow, of gigantic stature, with a chest fit