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.

Discover rare photographic glimpses of pioneering egoists such as Dora Marsden and Benjamin R. Tucker, and delve into the visionary project to produce a Braille edition of Max Stirner’s magnum opus for the indomitable Helen Keller. Unearth a plethora of fascinating artifacts pertaining to Malfew Seklew, and be riveted by the astonishing revelation of Ragnar Redbeard’s brief yet impactful foray as a Canadian Socialist Provocateur.

This sixth issue of Der Geist is sure to delight and offend, but most of all, serve as an essential philosophical reference work for centuries to come.

DER GEIST: The Journal of Egoism from 1845 – 1945 | ISSUE 6 | Winter 2023
Paperback, 212 pages, $15
ISBN 978-1-944651-29-9, ISSN 2639-5339

Der Geist, (Trevor Blake, editor; Kevin I. Slaughter, co-editor) is an English-language journal for an international audience, publishing original scholarship on the philosophy of egoism. The journal is descriptive of the first century of egoism in print (from the 1845 publication of Der Einzige und sein Eigentum by Max Stirner to the end of 1945), not prescriptive in advocacy of egoism.

CONTENTS

Introduction by the Editor  2

1. Max Stirner   7

Max Stirner’s Anarchist Gospel | A Dutch Review of Stirner’s Work | Anarchist Black Dragon | Max Stirner vs. Wahrheit-Sucher | “Celine Adele Marillier” | Pity and the Future | Max Stirner and the Grisette | Steven T. Byington’s Triple Score

2. Malfew Seklew  29

On “Bérnard’s Tour” | Minister Mocks Malfew  | Stern Critique of Christian Socialist  | Seklew Asks: Nietzsche to Blame?  | Social Aristocrat Socialist Secretary | A Freak Among Reformers  | No Guide for Anybody | Proletarians in Purgatory | No Justice for Malfew Seklew  | “We’re All More or Less Nutty” | Not Seeking Work  | Seklew Scolds Simpoleons, Supplies Sample Shilling Sericine Silk Set | No Detail Too Small!

3. Ragnar Redbeard   51

Redbeard in Canada | Desmond Selling George  | Give the New Hand a Show! | A.D. in the O.E.D.  | A Bogus Book | Australian Socialist Drinking Club | Redbeard’s Rough Stuff |“We Understand the Redbeard Philosophy” | Voima On Oikeus | Etc.

4. Dora Marsden  95

Dora Marsden for the Prosecution | The Freewomen of New York | Dora Marsden, unser aller Mutter  | Dora Marsden Ephemera | Rare Portraits

5. Benjamin DeCasseres   107

Emmeline Pankhurst | Pyrrhonism and Acatalepsy | Balzac | The Borrowed Mirror

6. Friedrich Nietzsche   117

Nietzsche and a Braille Stirner for Hellen Keller | “Will Nietzsche Come Into Vogue…” | The Works of Friedrich Nietzsche | Alexander Tille Reads Egoism

7. Enzo Martucci   135

A Sketch of Martucci | An Excerpt from The Red Sect | Martucci on Stirner

8. Free Spirits  159

Peter Lamborn Wilson Has Passed  | Hakim Bey: Real and Unreal | Vox Populi Vox Dei | Thompson at Rudolf Steiner Hall | Speakers’ Corner Anthology | Among the Anarchists | The True Comarade | Is This What You Call “Living?” | The Thirteenth Paragraph | Greeves Fisher, A Sketch | Dominance vs. Egoism | More Individualism | Individualism and Property | Why I am a Right-Wing Anarchist | Opening and Closing the Dil Pickle | Christmas a Joke! | “I” a poem  | “I GO” a poem| A Letter to the Editors of Freedom | Enrico Arrigoni Bibliography | Photo of Benjamin R. Tucker | About the Editors

In Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (1845), Max Stirner quotes Galatians 4 verse 26 in saying: “Das Jerusalem, das droben ist, das ist die Freie, die ist unser aller Mutter.” Stephen T. Byington translates the passage in his 1907 translation of Stirner, The Ego and His Own, as “The Jerusalem that is above is the freewoman; she is the mother of us all.”

Dora references the passage again in the dedication to her book The Definition of the Godhead (1928): To / THE GREAT NAME, / HUSHED AMONG US FOR SO LONG / of / HER, / HEAVEN, / THE MIGHTY MOTHER / of / ALL.

25. 1. 1913

My Dear Mrs. [Frances Maule] Bjorkman:

Your letter of Jan. 14th has just arrived & I am sending you a hasty note with the outgoing mail. [Miss Kenton’s?] letter has not yet arrived & I therefore do not know the [?] of your deliberations. I am satisfied for the moment with the knowledge that a meeting to discuss “Freewoman” issues has been held in New York, that a Committee of Two has been formed!

A FEMINIST DISCIPLE OF NIETZSCHE

The feminist movement has evolved its ‘superwoman’ or, rather, the superwoman is the ultimate expression of that new philosophy of feminism preached by the very latest prophetess, Dora Marsden, in her daring “humanist review,” the London Freewoman. With its mid-October issue, The Freewoman ceased temporarily to exist,, but we shall probably witness its reappearance shortly in a still more arresting form as a “significant and compelling sign of new developments taking place within the woman movement.” John Galsworthy and Francis Grierson contributed to its columns. H. G. Wells was not only a contributor, but a “constant reader.” The editorials won the applause of Havelock Ellis and the respectful attention of Bernard Shaw. The extraordinary young editor, Mrs. Bjorkman, remarks, “shot into the philosophic firmament as a star of the first magnitude. Although practically unknown except as a settlement worker and a suffragist before the advent of The Freewoman in November, 1911, she speaks always with the quietly authoritative air of the writer who has arrived.” Her amazing staff reviewer Is a girl of eighteen.

The Freewoman has voiced a philosophy as egoistic and undemocratic as Nletzche’s. It discards the ordinary. The difficult and dangerous creed by reason of which It exists will be rejected today, says Dora Marsden, by three women out of every four.

From The Little Review
Vol. V. April 1919 No.11

The Reader Critic

Helen West Heller, Canton, Illinois: on The De Gourmont Number, The Little Review Vol. V. February-March No. 10-11

The De Gourmont number, great! I do not just admit the fineness of Ezra Pound, I am glad of him. What Roger Heller calls his poundigrams are a delight, but chiefly he is a Great Appreciator. It is a joy to find so exquisite a master of the exquisite differentiations of the English language. More, his thought has such urge of fine distinctions that only one speech irks him; he must be a Chaucer to an amalgam of the speech of two peoples.

All languages coalesced will be none too ample for the intense complexity of future thought. All languages and all arts are not enough with which to declare the sensings that wriggle within us. Ezra Pound and Margaret Anderson are administering the future to readers in this country. The English speaking denizens of the U.S. have been nursed by their silly eagle so long that it goes hard with them to have to learn something. But they probably will be compelled to swallow the cosmopolitan pill.

“Gourmont’s essays the best record of the civilized mind from 1885-1915.” From the excerpts here given de Gourmont would seem to be a condensed, transmuted record of Max Stirner’s ”Ego and his Own .” The War of the White Races was fought, is fighting, against three books: “Der Einzige Und Sein Eigenthum”, “Also Sprach Zarathustra”, “Das Kapital”; and the greatest of these is “Der Einzige Und Sein Eigenthum”.

INCIDENTS OF THE RAID
DISAPPOINTED SUFFRAGISTS
ONLY ONE OF THEM ADMITTED TO THE HOUSE
TWELVE ARRESTS

In accordance with the statement contained in Miss Pankhurst’s letter to the Prime Minister on Monday, the members of the Women’s Social and Political Union assembled in large numbers at Caxton Hall yesterday afternoon for the purpose of appointing a deputation to wait upon Mr. Asquith at the House of Commons.

Compared with previous gatherings of a similar nature, there was less enthusiasm in the proceedings, while in the streets there were further evidences of declining interest in the propaganda methods of the Union. A brass band aided in engendering a bellicose spirit by playing patriotic marches before the meeting.

The usual resolution, calling upon the Government to abandon their present policy and to give votes to those women disqualified by sex, was proposed by Mrs. Solomon, seconded by Mrs. Eates, and supported by Miss Smith (Birmingham), Mrs. Morris (Liverpool), Miss Woodlock (Liverpool), Miss Robinson (Manchester), and Miss Dora Marsden (Manchester).

The deputation, 29 in number, left Caxton Hall at ten minutes to four to the strains of the Marseillaise played by the band, and the encouraging cheers of a number of women sympathisers. Miss Dora Marsden carried the suffragist tricolour at the head of the procession. The deputation had only gone about fifty yards when the police stopped it, and courteously explained that their formation constituted a procession, which could not be allowed within a mile of the House. Miss Marsden was allowed to pass the cordon leaning on the arm of a gentleman, and still carrying her triclour. Other members of the party were passed through one at a time, and at such intervals as to render a procession out of the question. Miss Marsden reached the St. Stephen’s entrance just after four o’clock, and, of course, did not get beyond the police who guarded the entrance.

POLICE CAPTURE THE COLOURS
An exciting half-hour followed. Miss Marsden insisted on carrying her colours aloft, and the police broke the pole so as to prevent her doing this. She, however, retained the remains of her flag, and made determined attempts to mount the steps leading to the House of Commons. Altogether about twenty-four members of the deputation had now reached St. Stephen’s, where they were met by a solid cordon of police, and effectively prevented in their endeavours to gain admittance.

Acting Superintendent Boxall had given instructions that nobody should be arrested if arrests could possibly be avoided, and in carrying out that instruction his men displayed the utmost good temper and forbearance. Again and again the women secured a foothold on the pavement, and as they refused to return to the roadway they were pushed off as gently as might be. Some women insisted on addressing the crowd, but appears to have few sympathisers in the gathering. There was good deal of chaff, and the women were repeatedly advices to “go home.”

Two or three mounted policemen helped to keep the crowd on the move, and some of the more daring of the women contrived to seize the bridles of the horses, and were forced away with the greatest difficulty.

The police had absolute control, as was shown by the fact that they readily made a way to the House for a number of ladies who had legitimate business there, and for members passing to and from the House.

The Earl of Granard and his bride presented themselves, and surveyed for some time the exciting scene with evident amusement. The Earl ultimately passed into the House, and the Countess remained in her motor car and ordered it back home.

POLICEMEN’S FACES SMACKED
Shortly before five o’clock the police were compelled, in spite of their desire to avoid arrests, to take a small party of women to Cannon-row Police-station. The offenses alleged against them are of assault against the police. One woman deliberately struck a constable over the head with her umbrella, knocking his helmet off, and twice slapped the officer’s face. A second woman who was taken into custody also knocked off a policeman’s helmet. The leader and bearer of the bannerette became very violent, and, hatless and disheveled, again and again threw herself against the police cordon. Supt. Wells caught her in his arms as she made the rush and turned her back. The woman tried to strike him in the face, but Mr. Wells would not hear of her being arrested. One of his inspectors was also struck in the face, but showed similar forbearance.

In all the police made twelve arrests, the prisoners being:

• Mrs. Emily Davidson, 4, Clement’s Inn, London
• Miss Patricia Woodlock, Canning-chambers, Liverpool
• Mrs. Florence Farmer, 156, Tufnell Park-road, London
• Miss Helen Tolson, Zealand Hall, Manchester
• Miss Margaret Smith, 11, Colore-buildings, Birmingham
• Miss Dora Marsden, Manchester
• Miss Kate Noblet, 63, Bristol-road, Edgbaston
• Miss Alice Burton, 15, Upper Newington, LIverpool
• Mrs. Julia Scott, Woodfield, St. Anne-road, Chertsey
• Mrs. Bessie K. Morris, Wavertree
• Miss Rona Robinson, Fallowfield
• Mr. William Hutcheon, 113, Pepya-road, London, S. E.

“I, AN INDIVIDUAL, AN EGO –”

“I, an individual, an Ego, alone for all time, I want to vote.”

So runs the basic form of argumentation recommended to deep- thinking suffragists in a recent letter from their national headquarters. It reveals at once the extreme individualism with which anti-suffragists have often charged the movement. It clings to the old idea of the vote as a “natural right,” not a responsibility laid on those who can best serve the community by exercising it. It claims the vote as a right of the essential being, in terms of the metaphysical world.

If it were only possible for Egos-alone-for-all-time to step out into the metaphysical world and exercise their rights, no one would dream of objecting.

But here we are, — together, as it seems to most of us, – not alone in the least. Bound up with each other’s concerns. Busied with very practical and concrete matters. Matters that tend to fall into the hands of the Egos that understand them best.

Says the Man-Voter: “Are you in the way of knowing much about railroads, and police, and fire-fighting and engineering and fisheries and shipping and road-making and sewerage and all the other lines of heavy work that government has to do with? Legislation isn’t all moral questions, you know. And by the way, can you enforce your laws after you have made them? Or do you expect me to do that?”

“Why should we trouble to talk about that?” says the Suffragist. “I, an Ego, alone for all time, want to vote.”

Says the indifferent woman: “I outnumber you, fifty to one. My hands are full now, I say ‘no’ every day to work that I should like to take up. I think the men of my community with all their faults, are making as good a job of its affairs as I should, – or as you would. If you vote, sooner or later I shall have to.”

“What of that?” says the Suffragist. “I, an Ego, alone for all time, want to vote.”

Says the Woman Opposed: “I think more is implied in your ‘political equality’ than you realize. I am afraid of the views of your extremists as to sex equality. I don’t see my way to admire your theories of ‘economic independence.’ I think an electorate half women would mean an unstable government. Frankly, I face the future for my children with far more courage as things now are than if you were voting.”

“All that is very tedious” says the Suffragist. “I, an Ego, alone for all time, want to vote.”

Says the Child: “Your friends make me promises. They will protect me from overwork. They will inspect my food. They will have my clothes made in clean places. But what will become of me if my mother must go out to work every day to prove that she is the equal of my father?”

“What business is that of mine?” says the Suffragist. “I, an Ego, alone for all time, want to vote.”

THERE could be no more forcible illustration of the power of thought than is to be so clearly seen in the wonderful change in the last few years, in the position of woman and her relation to the economic world. Not so very many years ago she was considered necessary, indeed, to the life of the world, as its reproducer, and as wife, mother, housekeeper, etc., but as completely subservient to man. This condition she almost universally accepted as her normal position. To be a good and faithful wife and mother; to be a good and obedient servant, if such were her lot, (when she happened to be a God-fearing woman,) she considered her highest duty and pleasure.

When her married life proved unfortunate, and her trials more than she could endure, divorce was open to her, to be sure, but with the penalty of social ostracism, added to the loss of her children, usually. […]

The “new” woman is found in Turkey, in Persia, India, and Egypt, playing her part in politics in a way that would surprise American men; the coup d’etat by which Abdul Hamid was removed, and Mehmet V. elevated in his place, having owed much to her cooperation. And “today members of the fair sex belonging to the most exclusive families in Constantinople, are selling flowers on the street to raise money for the sufferers from the earthquake which a short time ago devastated the eastern portion of the Ottoman Empire.” They are conspicuous as authors as well. In Persia’s recent crisis women aided materially, as shown by Morgan Shuster, in his bock, “The Strangling of Persia.”

To gain an adequate idea of the progress made by Mohammedan women, one should read the article in the December Review of Reviews, by Saint Nihal Singh. In the same magazine is another article entitled “Feminism’s New Prophetess;” in which Dora Marsden, editress of the Freewoman, is presented in that role. She does, indeed, take a step farther into the future than even the suffragists, insisting that woman shall free herself from all traditional relations, and take her position as an “individual;” as absolutely “free spiritual entities.” How far she carries her argument is not shown, but so far as stated there is nothing to startle Koreshans, whose education on those lines is far in advance of the world’s present standpoint.