Heroines of Freethought/Margaret Reynolds Chappellsmith
MARGARET REYNOLDS CHAPPELLSMITH.
I REGRET that my information in regard to the career of Mrs. Chappellsmith is so limited that I shall not be able to make this sketch as interesting to those who would like to know all about her as I could wish.
But she has for so many years, most of her lifetime in fact, been so thoroughly and enthusiastically identified with the cause of Freethought, both in this country and in her native England, that I could not in justice omit her name from these sketches; and so I give to the reader the fragments which I have gleaned concerning her life.
It is years since her articles on Cooperation and other reform subjects, published in the Boston Investigator, and written in a strong, sensible, almost masculine style, first attracted my attention, and made me desirous of knowing more concerning her. What little I do know of her I learned from a letter written by her, at a time when she was very busy, in reply to my letter of inquiry as to the past of her life. In that letter is intimated her intention of writing her own reminiscences at some future date, so that if I fail, from meagerness of material, of doing her justice in this slight and incomplete sketch (which I intend only as a recognition of her services), her own more full relation will supply all deficiencies in this.
Mrs. Chappellsmith, whose maiden name was Margaret Reynolds, was the daughter of a master mechanic who owned a shop and hired workmen. Her life had probably had some hard experiences in regard to the disparity between man and man, between rich and poor, between capital and labor. Hurt and puzzled by these evils of society which she saw everywhere around her, she began early to ponder over, and to endeavor to study out, the why and Wherefore of this disparity: a great and yet unsolved problem. She began also to devise what to her seemed feasible and effective means of counterbalancing or abolishing many of the evils that go to make the poor man's lot so hard.
In her earnest enthusiasm, her deep-felt concern, in these things, she could not long forbear speaking of them to others, and urging upon them some sort of action, to help themselves into a better mode of life, and to keep their descendants from sinking still deeper into degradation and poverty. She talked a great deal of what was uppermost in her mind to her father's customers and to his workmen, and thus in individual cases did already arouse attention and interest.
At first her girlish enthusiasm and eagerness on these subjects, generally considered so foreign to her sex, awakened only curiosity and smiling surprise at the hold which they had gained on her mind. But presently, as they found how strongly she had fortified herself with pertinent illustrations and arguments, how earnestly and convincingly she spoke, and began to reflect for themselves upon how much truth there was in what she said, they began to desire that others might hear this young apostle of reform, and so become also awakened to the welfare of themselves, and, through themselves, of the human race.
She at length determined to act upon these suggestions. Her heart being in her work, as soon as she could form her ideas into connected shape as a series of lectures, she started upon her mission of enlightenment and awakening; and these lectures she delivered for a number of years in various parts of England, under the auspices of Liberal and Freethinking societies.
Moncure D. Conway mentions that she was the first female lecturer of the English Communists established by Robert Owen and others, in Broughton, a little village twenty miles north of the New Forest. Of this Community, which Margaret Reynolds joined, and where she became personally acquainted with many of the leading English Freethinkers, Conway remarks as follows:
"The English Communists, the first considerable body in England who ever professed Materialism, and the only party, perhaps, that never possessed it, made their first practical settlement in Hampshire, at a time when society was hard and cold, taxation heavy, the people ignorant, and workingmen homeless. Robert Owen—the first to bring a breath of courage upon those evil days with which the present generation opened—and his disciples sect up a propagandism, and subscribed money to create that situation in which it should be impossible for men to be depraved or poor. Looking around on the besotted and criminal, Owen said, 'Give me a tiger and I will educate it!' In that faith he called around him the most earnest men of his time, for the effort which represented more high sentiment and spiritual hope than any movement England has seen, . . . The Millennium had not arrived in 1844, and the well-meaning who were ignorant, and the well-informed who were visionary—those who worked and never rested, and those who rested and never worked—crept in. . . Thus Harmony Hall (the name of the Community at Broughton} came to know discord, and after a few years of struggle came to an end, by a complication of disorders such as are too familiar in such experiments to require mention in detail."
Since Mrs. Chappellsmith knew for what purpose I solicited information in regard to her life, I do not think that it will be out of place to quote directly from her own interesting letter.
"I lectured in many parts of London and its environs, in the chief cities in the midland and northern parts of England, and in Scotland, in the neighboring manufacturing districts, and in other places. My lectures were on—
"'Competition and Co-operation.'
"'The Formation of Character.'
"'Education of Women.'
"'The Commercial Condition and Prospects of England'
"'Money—and the Evils of Paper Money in Competitive Society.'
"'Owen at New Lanark.'
"Four lectures 'On the Character, Political Principles, and Writings, of William Cobbett.'
"'My Reasons why I, having been a Calvinist, have Become an Infidel.'
"'The Character of the Priesthood as Given by Themselves.'
"Five lectures 'On the Protestant Reformation,'
"'Marriage, and the Propriety of Divorce when the Marriage is Productive of Misery.'
"In this last-mentioned lecture I urged that a state of society be instituted in which youth and maiden should be better educated than they now are, so that both may better understand themselves and what is requisite to their happiness in their intended partners in marriage; in which they should be educated for marriage, and have more direct moral education than they now have; in which they should be taught that the one enduring, wisely and virtuously formed marriage would produce the greatest amount of happiness that could arise from any union of man and woman; and in which the young people, being brought up together as members of one family, would have sufficient opportunity of knowing each other's characters before marriage.
"I lectured on some other subjects, but in all I showed the evils of the existing state of society, and endeavored to create a public feeling in favor of Co-operation and Communism. I frequently took part in public discussions on religion, taking the Infidel side; and spoke at public meetings against Freetrade lecturers, showing that Freetrade would not, as these lecturers said, remove or mitigate the misery that always abounds in rich England.
"I am not, and never was, fond of a public life; I yielded to the request of friends, who said that I ought to say to the public what I was in the habit of saying in my father's shop. William Cobbett's intimate friends requested me, and Robert Owen urged me, to lecture; and after I commenced, invitation after invitation came, and so I went on; but at last my husband and myself commenced bookselling, and soon I was compelled to decline all other invitations to lecture."
We are not told when or why the Chappellsmiths came to America, nor whether they have ever lived anywhere in the New World save in Indiana; but we can guess that after the breaking up of "the English Brook Farm," as Conway appropriately names the community at Broughton, these enthusiastic believers in a possible and successful Socialism would naturally look to the younger, freer country as the proper field for its realization; and, fresh from association with Owen and with Harmony Hall, what place would be so likely to attract them as Owen's New-World experiment with human nature—New Harmony, Indiana? There, for many years, Mr. and Mrs. Chappellsmith have made their home, and there they still continue to reside.
Both still find time to write on those topics of most engrossing interest to them, and to which they have devoted the greater part and the best energies of their lives—Freethought and Labor-reform.
Mrs. Chappellsmith is now publishing a series of papers on "The Historic Value of the Gospels"—papers which indicate great research and patient study, and which will, if issued in book form, be extremely valuable for reference and authority on that subject.