From Time and Tide for July 16, 1926 pp. 648-649

I have been asked to write an account of the Freewoman, and those who asked me were wise, for that paper, unimportant as it was in content, – and amateurish in form, had an immense effect on its time. But unfortunately, I have forgotten nearly everything about it. It must have lived about 14 or 15 years ago, because I know I was about 17 or 18 years of age; and in the intervening years I have done so much else and have so completely lost touch with the other persons involved, that the details are fogged in my mind.

The paper was the creation of Dora Marsden, who was one of the most marvellous personalities that the nation has ever produced. She had, to begin with, the most exquisite beauty of person. She was hardly taller than a child, but she was not just a small woman; she was a perfectly proportioned fairy. She was the only person I have ever met who could so accurately have been described as flower-like that one could have put it down on her passport. And on many other planes she was as remark able. In her profession she had been more than ordinarily successful. Though she was still under thirty, she was head of a training college for teachers. She was one of the fighting suffragettes under Mrs. Pankhurst, and in the course of her activities she had shown courage that even in that courageous company seemed magnificent. She had been to prison more than once, and had behaved with what would have been amazing heroism in any woman, but which was something transcendent in her case, since she was physically fragile and the victim of a tiresome form of ill-health.

She conceived the idea of starting the Freewoman because she was discontented with the limited scope of the suffragist movement. She felt that it was restricting itself too much to the one point of political enfranchisement and was not bothering about the wider issues of Feminism. I think she was wrong in formulating this feeling as an accusation against the Pankhursts and suffragettes in general, because they were simply doing their job, and it was certainly a whole time job. But there was equally certainly a need for someone to stand aside and ponder on the profounder aspects of Feminism. In this view she found a supporter in Mary Gawthorpe, Yorkshire woman who had recently been invalided out of the suffrage movement on account of injuries sustained at the hands of stewards who had thrown her out of a political meeting where she had been interrupting Mr. Winston Churchill. Mary Gawthorpe, was a merry militant saint who had travelled round the provinces, living in dreary lodgings on $15 or $20 a week, speaking several times a day at outdoor meetings, and suffering fools gladly (which I think she found the hardest job of all), when trying to convert the influential Babbits of our English zenith cities. Occasionally she had a rest in prison, which she always faced with a sparrow-like perkiness. She had wit and common sense and courage, and each to the point of genius. She lives in the United States now, but her inspiration still lingers over here on a whole generation of women.

These two came together and planned this paper, but Dora Marsden played the chief part of organizing and controlling it throughout the whole of its life, for at that time Mary Gawthorpe was sick almost unto death.

Dora Marsden came to London with her devoted friend Grace Jardine, who was Martha to her Mary, and they found a publisher to finance them. At this point I had better remind my readers that again and again radical movements find themselves obliged to be financed by the insane. Radicals may take comfort in reflecting that the same is true of non-radical movements, but that the fact is so serious because there is no striking antithesis between such movements and their financiers. This particular gentleman financed not only the Freewoman, but Chesterton and Belloc’s The Eye Witness, and a fashionable illustrated paper. which was tended by a beautiful lady with red gold hair and decorative footwear. Her slippers gleam undimmed across the gulf of time; I have not been able to forget them. The movies had not come into their own, but she anticipated the anima of Mr. Cecil de Mille. He also published his own poetry, which consisted of Wordsworthian nature verse and Browningish monologues about he soul. One I remember particularly was a touching lament by St. Augustine on his own celibacy. And this gentleman also published, with the utmost generosity of terms, various books by young lions. For example, he brought out Katherine Mansield’s first volume of short stories “In a German Pension.” So we started in; or rather they did. I did not join them till later; in fact, I never wrote for the Freewoman till it had got such a bad name for its candour that I was forbidden to read it by my family, and thus I came to adopt my present pseudonym. The initial group consisted of Dora Marsden, Grace Jardine and a glorious red-haired bachelor of science, who had been in and out of gaol for the cause, named Rona Robinson. They went at first or all the conventional Feminist articles of faith. In their early numbers I fancy they represented as nearly as possible the same program as the National Woman’s Party. That program has certainly been accepted by English women of this subsequent period with an extraordinary completeness. I think there are probably hardly any subscribers to the quiet orthodox woman’s weekly of to-day, Time and Tide, who do not take it for granted that it is degrading to woman, and injurious to the race to leave the financing of the mother and her children to the double-barrelled caprice of the father and the father’s employer. They may differ regarding the specific remedies they propose to end this state of affairs, but hardly any of them would defend it. I am convinced that this change of outlook is partly due to the strong lead given by the Freewoman. But the greatest service that the paper did its country was through its unblushingness. It paralleled the achievement of Miss Christabel Pankhurst, who did an infinite service to the world by her articles on venereal disease. The content of them was not too intelligent. It blamed the impurity of men for a state of affairs to which the impurity of women and the social system are also contributory causes. But it mentioned venereal diseases loudly and clearly and repeatedly, and in the worst possible taste; so that England fainted with shock, and on recovering listened quite calmly when the experts came forward and said that since the subject had at last been mentioned they might urge that the state could do this and that to prevent these diseases. Even so, the Freewoman mentioned sex loudly and clearly and repeatedly, and in the worst possible taste; and likewise the content was not momentous. Those who laugh at Freud and Jung should turn back to those articles and see how utterly futile and blundering discussions on these points used to be even when they were conducted by earnest and intelligent people. But the Freewoman by its candour did an immense service to the world by shattering, as nothing else would, as not the mere cries of intention towards indepence had ever done, the romantic conception of women. It pointed out that lots of women who were unmated and childless resented their condition. It pointed out that there were lots of women who were mated and who had children who found elements of dissatisfaction in their position. It even mentioned the existence of abnormalities of instinct. In fact, it smashed the romantic pretence that women had as a birthright the gift of perfect adaptation; that they were in a bland state of desireless contentment which, when they were beautiful, reminded the onlooker of goddesses, and when they were plain were more apt to remind him of cabbage. If this romantic conception had been true, there would have been no reason for the emancipation of women, since as they could be happy anywhere and anyhow, there was never any need to alter their environment. It had to be admitted that women were vexed human beings who suffered intensely from mal-adaptation to life, and that they were tortured and dangerous if they were not allowed to adapt themselves to life. That admission is the keystone of the modern Feminist movement. Dora Marsden made her point with unique effectiveness, considering the length of the paper’s life. Nevertheless the paper was coming to an end psychically when it came to an end physically. Its psychic death was due to the fact that Dora Marsden started on a train of thought which led her to metaphysics. She began to lose her enthusiasm for bringing women’s industry on equal terms with men, because it struck her that industrialism destroyed more in life than it produced. She began to be sceptical of modern civilisation and this led her to preaching a kind of Tolstoyism which would have endeavoured to lead the world back to primitive agriculture. waged war with her on this point in a correspondence that the curious might hunt down in the files. I signed myself therein Rachel East. I got no chance to convince her, for already she had retreated to further remotenesses and was developing an egoistic philosophy on the lines foreshadowed by Max Stirner. About this time the brick fell. Our publisher fled suddenly to North Africa, with the lady of the shoes and a considerable sum of money which an unfortunate gentleman had entrusted him as an investment in the business. It then turned out that he was a criminal of a singular type; really a naïve moral imbecile. After various financial fantasias and a number of carelessly conceived and executed bigamies he had settled down as a publisher not a mile from our police department offices at Scotland Yard, and had there flourished for two years; and no doubt would have done so for many more years had not the young lions been so expensive and the lady with the shoes so desirous of foreign travel.

He was brought back and sent to a place of seclusion for some Mr. Chesterton and Mr. Belloc and Dora Marsden and her flock were homeless for a time. Then odd people turned up and financed it, and it was reissued as The Egoist, of which paper I was literary editor. That did not last long. My position seemed to me impossible. The routine of the office was not impeccable. There was an arrivist American poet who intended to oust me, and his works and those of his friends continually appeared in the paper without having passed me. This was unbearably irritating, particularly at that age. And Dora Marsden, more and more remote in her ether of speculation, could not understand it when I objected to articles which did not come up to a certain standard of taste and literary skill. So I quit. I am quite sure that she never understood why. An argument that there is relation between the expression and what is expressed, and that if the one is coarse the other is unlikely to be authentic, seemed to her a far away babble, for it was becoming less and less imperative for her to express herself. Hers was now to be rather than to do.

The paper lived some time after I left it. It did a magnificent thing for literature in publishing James Joyce’s “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.” Of its last days I cannot speak, for about that time ill-health fell on me and for long I was out of things. I have heard nothing of Dora Marsden for ten years or so. It may be that the wisdom she has obtained is not communicable, but I am sure to some far peak of wisdom she must have attained, and I cannot think that it is not good for the race when some of its component atoms reach projection, even if they cannot transmit it to their fellows. At any rate, Dora Marsden left us a heritage in the unembarrassed honesty of our times.

Dora Marsden was born in the village of Marsden in 1882. In 1900 began teaching at Owens College, where she met Christabel Pankhurst and other suffragists. Dora joined them and became a leader in the Women’s Social and Political Union (WPSU) by 1908. The following year she resigned as a teacher and became a full time agitator for the WSPU, graduating from suffragist to suffragette. She was sentenced to two months in prison for vandalism in 1909: she refused to wear prison clothes and served her time in the nude, even wriggling out of a straightjacket that had been forced on her. After a hunger strike she was released and continued to agitate. She disrupted political meetings (including a speech by a young Winston Churchill). The WSPU “promoted” her to a clerical position to temper her agitation. Dora, meanwhile, had grown tired of the “skirt movement” and sought a liberty beyond feminism.

In 1911, Dora founded “The Freewoman” (1911 – 1912), a periodical described as “a disgusting publication… indecent, immoral and filthy.” Financial troubles led to a re-launch as “The New Freewoman” (1914). And an ever more keen search for liberty led to a re-launch as “The Egoist” (1914 – 1919). Dora’s periodicals were the first to publish significant works by James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and others.

In the 1920s – 1930s Dora wrote three books: “The Definition of the Godhead” (1928), “The Mysteries of Christianity” (1930) and “The Philosophy of Time” (published later, in 1955). During the writing of these books she went from a self-imposed isolation to confinement in a mental hospital, where she spent the remainder of her life.

About Trevor Blake (born 1966)

Author and publisher with a special interest in Dora Marsden. Published a new and expanded edition of “A Brave and Beautiful Spirit: Dora Marsden (1882 – 1960)” by Dr. Les Garner. Wrote “Dora Marsden Bibliography,” edited collection of Dora essays “The Gospel of Power,” published new and expanded edition of “The Philosophy of Time.”

This was a free online talk by The Atkinson to celebrate International Women’s Day 2024. The Atkinson is Southport’s home for music, theatre, art, literature and history. Special thanks to The Atkinson for this opportunity.

Wednesday 13 March 2024 — 1:00 pm GMT

Free. Donations welcome.

Free online talk, booking is required before 11am on the morning of the talk. The talk will be presented using Zoom. You will receive an email invitation to join a Zoom meeting just after 11am on the morning of the talk. Free ticket at…

https://www.theatkinson.co.uk/events/online-talk-dora-marsden-and-the-gospel-of-power/

Dora Marsden could not be confined, bursting bonds from teacher to suffragist to suffragette to publisher to philosopher and, eventually, the madhouse.

Presentation by Trevor Blake. Author and publisher with a special interest in Dora Marsden. Published a new and expanded edition of A Brave and Beautiful Spirit: Dora Marsden (1882 – 1960) by Dr. Les Garner. Wrote Dora Marsden Bibliography, edited collection of Dora essays The Gospel of Power, published new and expanded edition of The Philosophy of Time.

See The Women of Dumfries: Art, Suffrage, Temperance and War at Dumfries Museum, United Kingdom.

This is a republication (with a new, additional Foreword) of an anthology first published in 1977. It is a collection of excerpts and other written material connected to Hyde Park’s Speakers’ Corner and there are several references to the SPGB scattered throughout. Jim Huggon is an anarchist who spoke regularly there from 1965 to 1983. […] There are excerpts too from famous Speakers’ Corner regular Bonar Thompson’s book, Hyde Park Orator, which has also recently been republished with added illustrations. […] This anthology helps capture the spirit of an earlier age.

Please read the entire review here. The Socialist Party of Great Britain is the oldest extant political party of any kind in the United Kingdom. They were founded in in 1904, preceding the Russian Revolution by a good decade. They know their socialism, and are not adverse to praising those who know their egoism.

Soap box oratory was no figure of speech to Fred M. Wilkes. When he died at the age of 77 in New York his career as an informal outdoor speaker stretched back 55 years. Other haranguers of street crowds dubbed him “king of the soap-boxers.” It all began in Hyde Park, London. Son of a well-to-do brewer, the “super-man” idea of life took hold of him. He decided to tell the world about it. In turn, he was a cooperative socialist, anarchist, Fabian socialist. He headed an organization of his own, the “supercrats.”

In 1885 he came to the United States, said he was a “sirfessor,” a teacher of professors. Chicago knew him as the founder of the so-called Temple of Wisdom. Geniuses are made, not born, he contended. Too much credit to friends brought swift bankruptcy to the “superite” restaurant he opened in New York while the war was on.

Chief distinction he claimed was organization of the sit-down strike idea. Years ago, he said, he coined the motto “S.I.B. — R.I.P.” — stay in bed, rest in peace. If the workers who felt they had a grievance would just take to their beds and stay there, he argued, the Intelligentsia would rally to their cause and public opinion would force a quick settlement.

Peace News once organised an activist training in which the participants had to stand on a stepladder in Tavistock Square and deliver a speech to the passers-by.

It is a skill that people with a political opinion should have. But these days, few do.

Many quail at the simple political tool of door-knocking.

The Speakers’ Corner Anthology is a collection of writings about the famous Tyburn corner of London’s Hyde Park, by Marble Arch. There, since the mid-nineteenth century, speech-making has been tolerated by the park authorities (as long as no racing tips are shared). The park regulations are included in the book so one can see all the other categories of forbidden utterances.

The editor, Jim Huggon, was a speaker on the anarchist platform at Speakers’ Corner for 18 years, after being invited up to ‘have a go’ by my father, John Rety.

Reading this book, I came to understand how standing on a ladder develops a speaker’s quick wit and fearlessness, a closeness and connection with people, and a tolerance of diversity of opinion.

What an art! The writers in this anthology – the socialists, Christians, anarchists and communists – reveal that putting forward your ideas in public is not just about ‘the gift of the gab’, it is a studied and developed skill.

The anthology includes a fantastic piece of reportage by Karl Marx describing the energy and feistiness of the 1855 Sunday Trading Bill demonstrations, where participants harangued the toffs in Rotten Row for three hours (‘Only English lungs are capable of such a feat’). Marx also analyses police strategy towards public demonstrations.

There are also humorous pieces by Bonar Thompson who, like others, made his living as an entertaining speaker – until 1926, when the park authorities banned passing the hat round. So many of the speakers had to have wit to counter hecklers – and humour to keep their crowd from drifting off to hear rival orators.

There is a beautiful piece by Methodist minister Donald Soper who spoke at the other public speaking pitch on Tower Hill (site of the other gallows in London). Soper writes on the personalities, eccentricities and friendships.

In all these writings, it is apparent that discourse, debate, heckling and profound disagreement over politics and religion did not lead to hatred. Which is very interesting when you compare this to the emotions generated by social media.

George Orwell writes about sellers of Freedom and Peace News being arrested in 1945 at Hyde Park and how the belief that the press is free was an overrated one, even though you could say anything you liked at Speakers’ Corner.

On the other hand, Philip Sansom, an anarchist speaker from 1947 to 1960, is critical of the idea that free speech on this corner has any power at all. Rather, he argues, it is a form of kettling of expression into a safely-contained area.

Sansom points out that, during the postwar government, not a single Labour politician addressed the public at Speakers’ Corner. They removed themselves safely from popular debate.

Despite his critique, I finished this engaging book with the understanding that public speaking helps you to think and that we should all be taking that risk and standing on the ladder in Tavistock Square.

Meanwhile the respectable young man, excited through the daily association and contact with his sweetheart, seeks an outlet for his nature in return for money. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, he will be infected, and when he is materially able to marry, he will infect his wife and possible offspring. And the young flower, with every fiber aglow with the fire of life, with all her being crying out for love and passion? She has no outlet. She develops headaches, insomnia, hysteria; grows embittered, quarrelsome, and soon becomes a faded, withered, joyless being, a nuisance to herself and everyone else. No wonder Stirner preferred the grisette to the maiden grown gray with virtue.

Peter Lamborn Wilson, also known as Hakim Bey, has passed. Peter was an enthusiast for Der Geist, the annual publication of The Union of Egoists. He volunteered to be an uncredited copy editor for several issues, for which we gave thanks and give thanks again.

I met Peter in Boston in 1987. He and I became correspondents. I published several of his essays in my zine OVO which were later collected in his book T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone. That’s why he gives thanks to OVO in T.A.Z. My work appeared in two books he edited, semiotext(e) USA and The Astral Convention (the later he gave me permission to reprint a very limited number of). I met Peter a second time a few years later in New York City, and after that a few phone calls, and after that letters with ever longer between them.

I still have the essays, zines and letters he sent me, many still uncollected. I still have the friends he introduced me to. But none of us have Peter any more.

A memorial by Kevin I. Slaughter

I was late to the egoist party by name, traveling to it from non-Anarchist origins. When Trevor and I began the work on the Union of Egoists project it was clear that Mr. Wilson was one of the few living bridges to the great figures of the egoist past. From his work with the Libertarian Book Club of New York City, his collaborations with Mark A. Sullivan and much more, I was pleased to have him as a correspondent in the last few years. It was with a great deal of pride that he took on a role as proofreader beginning with the second issue of our journal Der Geist, which he was quite fond of. He fell too ill to work on the fifth issue, but I was pleased to be able to send him a copy a few months ago with our best wishes. I sent him a Union of Egoists lapel pin, and tucked in a signed copy of his Utopian Trace he wrote a letter: “Thanx for lovely pin – send GEIST 3 galleys for proofreading if you wish!” I have only begun to explore the great deal of work he has now left behind, and I am proud that the Union of Egoists is, in some small way, part of that work.

DEBATE, Sunday, August 10, at 6.30 p.m., on “Meadows,” Edinburgh, between GEORGE DOULL (S.D.F.) and MALFEW SEKLEW (the Apostle of Atheogism), on “Why the Proletarians are in Purgatory.”

ANARCHISTS IN EDINBURGH.

DEAR COMRADE,

In your last issue appears a letter signed L. Vyner, Edinburgh, who expressed a wish therein that some representative of the S.D.F. might join issue in the Meadows with the “blatant egoist” named Malfew Seklew, who takes pleasure in ridiculing Social-Democracy, and take advantage of the big crowds Seklew gets to spread our principles. If I mistake not this is an attempt on the part of Seklew and his friends to draw attention to themselves and their meetings, and to get a bigger crowd by this “draw.” Readers of JUSTICE possibly might infer from Vyner’s letter that the Social-Democrats of Edinburgh had been frightened into silence by the blatant and egoistic one. Now, as a matter of fact, on the night Vyner speaks of, Malfew Seklew got as unmerciful drubbing from our comrade Doull, of the Edinburgh branch, as it was ever the fate of an Anarchist to receive at the hands of a class-conscious Socialist. I hope you will insert this and expose an attempt on the part of the Anarchists above mentioned to obtain cheap advertisement and a further draw.

Fraternally yours,

R. R. O’CONNOR.

Edinburgh.

L. VINER writes: “I am grievously disappointed. After all my trouble of last week, not single S.D.F. member came out to uphold our principles in defiance of Malfew Seklew, who claims to be the apostle of Atheogism, the new religion of reason. We need a good, strong man to counteract his influence. I may say there is rumour that our local champion, Mr. Doull, will combat him at his next meeting.”