In Memoriam.

Liberty has lost an apostle,— one of her most tried and true defenders, one of her most courageous soldiers, one of her most ardent advocates, one of her most devoted martyrs. Early in the evening of Wednesday, January 11, 1882, after a ten days’ prostration by a paralytic stroke, in Boston, the city which she loved above all others, Laura Kendrick breathed her last. Hers was a life, hers is a character, fit to be treated by the combined genius of the foremost of biographers and the foremost of novelists. In approaching them Liberty’s pen seems almost powerless. But it would be base ingratitude in a journal aiming to represent a cause which owes so much to her, if to her memory it should fail to pay the heartfelt tribute of a farewell word, however feebly spoken. Briefly, then, what was this life that is gone? what is this character that remains?

Laura Kendrick was born in Paris of English parents forty-nine years ago. Her father occupied a high position in the British navy; her mother belonged to the British nobility. She lived in Paris until the age of eight, reared amid all the advantages of wealth, comfort, culture, and refinement, and speaking only the French language. These eight years, similar in very few respects to any portion of her after-life, left a marked impress upon it. At their close her family took up their residence in Canada, bringing her across the ocean with them. Here she first acquired the English tongue and became assimilated to the English race. She was a strange, dreamy, imaginative, reverent child,— submissive, yet wayward; a family phenomenon, wondered at by all, but dearly loved. Coupled with her waywardness, which was born, not of perversity, but of conviction, her nature, though prone to fun and gaiety, had in it a marked element of serious romanticism. At the age of fourteen circumstances which cannot be related here called upon her for a decision which this combination of characteristics controlled, and the result was a separation from her relatives, which pride made permanent. Thrown on her own resources, she soon found her way to the United States, where, at first earning her living by her needle, she later became the wife of Harvey McAlpine, who had just abandoned his profession of clergyman of the English church in Canada for that of the law, and who afterwards became district attorney at Port Huron, Michigan, where they lived in happiness for many years. During thin period occurred that turning-point of her life without which it would have been of no interest to Liberty, for then and there it was that modern spiritualism wrenched her, as it has so many others, from a thoughtless acceptance of the dogmas of Christianity, and, by its innovating tendency rather than by any rationality of its own, brought her face to face with the tremendous problems upon which the interest of radicalism centres. The phenomena that made her its convert came through her own mediumship. What they were, under what circumstances they were produced, and how much they actually proved we cannot undertake to say; they were, at any rate, sufficient to convince her of the reality of a future life and the possibility of communication with those who have entered it. Whatever may be thought of the theory and phenomena of spiritualism,— and, considered in themselves, we certainly hold them in very small esteem,— every one who knew Laura Kendrick must admit the absolutely unquestionable sincerity of her acceptance thereof. Like all earnest recipients of a new gospel, she burned with zeal to spread it. The opportunity was not only brought, but forced upon her by a sad experience. Financial difficulties drove her husband to suicide, and she took the field as a lecturer. Here her public life began. And as we have already outlined that portion of her private life which was principally instrumental in the formation of her character, we shall refer but casually to the rest of it, since it does not concern the world. She rose rapidly into tho highest rank of spiritualist lecturers, developing a power of oratory capable, under pressure of appropriate circumstance, of piercing to depths of human feeling such as we have never heard sounded by the lips of any other woman. Increasing experience in the advocacy of spiritualism gradually taught her that, if it was to be of real value, it must become a religion of this world as well as of the next, and from the time that she first fully realized this she gave her principal attention to the cause of the suffering and downtrodden. No appeal from violated Liberty ever addressed itself to her in vain. Her responses thereto have been heard by hundreds of thousands from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast, and the radical seed that she has sown has borne abundant fruit. Shortly after the war she went to California, where she started Sunday evening lectures in Maguire’s Opera House at San Francisco, which at once became exceedingly popular. Their novelty contributed not a little to their success, no female orator at that time having been heard in that part of the country. Through these lectures she exerted no small influence on public sentiment, and they became one of the institutions of the city. She eloquently pleaded the cause of oppressed womanhood, of the fleeced laborer, of the maltreated criminal. The San Francisco “Chronicle” pronounced her “the acknowledged leading champion of radicalism on the Pacific coast.” Those were the days of her highest prosperity. Money flowed freely into her treasury, and was as freely disbursed among the poor and the persecuted. She took no thought for the morrow, little dreaming that her devotion to truth would one day lose her the bulk of her supporters. Such a fate, however, was close at hand for her. In 1872 the famous free-love agitation was attracting the attention of the country. Mrs. Woodhull, its leader, had become the heroine of the New York wing of the woman suffragists, and had been chosen president of the spiritualists’ national body. Her praises were being sounded far and wide by prominent radicals. In the fail of that year she launched the Beecher scandal, and her pseudo-friends vanished like smoke. It was a severe test, and only a few stood it. Of these, one was Laura Kendrick, who had returned to the East a short time before. Heedless of consequences, she jumped into the breach, espoused Mrs. Woodhull and her cause believing in both, visited her in prison, carried her food, and, wherever she went, lifted her eloquent voice in behalf of the woman against whom nearly all religious, social, and political forces had united. Then began the fatal period of adversity which drove her to the grave. From that day her fortunes waned. The spiritualists, regardless of their debt to her, were the first to abandon her. Finally — unkindest cut of all — Mrs. Woodhull herself, whose duplicity she had least expected and deserved, turned and attacked her. But she struggled on valiantly, hopefully, never abating one jot or title of the truth. In 1874 she returned to San Francisco, where the labor agitation was just coming to the front. She plunged into it, body and soul. Another ruinous, glorious step. More friends fell off. The Pittsburg riots broke out, and she, with others, initiated the famous “sand-lot” meetings, which the foul-mouthed demagogue, Kearney, afterwards captured and debased. The cry went up that “the Chinese must go.” The persecuted became persecutors. She, ever faithful, championed the Chinese. This was not pleasing to the agitators, but she maintained her ground and struggled on. In 1878 she came back to the East,— to her beloved Boston. The anti-Comstock agitation was at its height. She arrived just as Mr. E. H. Heywood was about to be tried for mailing “Cupid’s Yokes.” At once she became a leader in the struggle. It seemed as if she was fated, during her later years, to run straight into the teeth of every social storm and bear the brunt of it. Mr. Heywood was sentenced and imprisoned. She went to Washington, and by her infinite tact and persuasive tongue procured his pardon from the president. Her reward for this deed of nobility and mercy was chiefly contumely and ostracism. And still she struggled on. But her sensitive nature was beginning to succumb under the heavy load of poverty, persecution, and slander. Disease began its ravages. She grew weaker and weaker. But never, to the very end, did she fail to answer any call if it was possible to maintain her feet. In 1880 she suffered an apoplectic attack and in 1881 a paralytic stroke, the latter being repeated but a few days ago with fatal effect. She lingered for ten days in an unconscious state, and then sank peacefully into her eternal sleep.

The central, predominant, towering characteristic of this brave woman’s nature was her life-long fidelity to sincere conviction. At whatever cost she stood for the truth as she saw it. The power did not exist that could make her retreat one inch Her slender body was ruled by an indomitable will that worked for righteousness. Next in importance came her singular purity. In thought and act her life was utterly clean. Many have been the attempts to stain her reputation, but her character remain as spotless as the freshly-fallen snow. She combined the refinement of aristocracy with the spirit of democracy. Given to violent likes and dislikes, she was tolerant of all, bore no malice, and was incapable of treasuring up ill-will. An almost unerring judge of human nature, she was always careful to revise her first judgment, if necessary, by subsequent experience. Her endurance was phenomenal. While able to improve prosperity to its utmost, she could bear up under adversity with a resistance seemingly out of all proportion to her strength. Her philanthropy was of the broadest, truest sort, taking in and aiding all who suffered before stopping to ask why they suffered. She had a quick temper, but a genial, sunny temperament. Hers was a tropical nature physically and morally, ill-adapted to cast winds of any sort. This, combined with her perfect manners, easy bearing, entire self-possession, unobtrusive modesty, and delightful conversation, made her a charming companion socially. She had her faults, of course, but they were petty ones, not worth considering now.

She has gone, we said above, to her eternal sleep. But her work lives after her, immortal in its beneficent influence, certain to go on forever. Many friends of Liberty owe their first radical impulse to the stimulation of her eloquence and example. She lives also in the grateful and loving memory of thousands who knew her privately, and in the hearts of her mourning husband and children and not a few grief-stricken friends. One of the latter, who dined with her just before her last sickness, writes to us: “I felt that day, when she left the table, she was going to her grave. Poor, aspiring souls that we all are, flickering and disappearing! A very noble woman, of whom the world was not worthy!”

Michael Bakounine.

As announced in our last number, we present on this page, for the first time in America, a faithful portrait of the founder of Nihilism,— the physical lineaments of an heroic reformer, of whom we are willing to hazard the judgment that coming history will yet place him in the very front ranks of the world’s great social saviours. The grand head and face speak for themselves regarding the immense energy, lofty character, and innate nobility of the man. We should have esteemed it among the chief honors of our life to have known him personally, and should account it a great piece of good fortune to talk with one who was personally intimate with him and the essence and full meaning of his thought and aspiration. In the absence of any direct knowledge of the man and his own interpretation of his life-work we can do no more than publish a brief sketch of his career, gathered from various German and French writings, with such inferences as appear to us just and natural.

Michael Bakounine was born in 1814 of an ancient aristocratic Russian family. His father was a wealthy proprietor of Torchok in the governmental department of Twer. He was at an early age sent to the cadet school of St. Petersburg, and entered as ensign in the artillery. In that day the artillery branch of military service was one in which the most favored aristocracy were enrolled, and it had always been the traditional policy of the czars to permit greater freedom of thought and research in that branch of the service than in any other. The immunities and privileges there enjoyed corresponded with that license which the German monarchs have always suffered in the universities, and it was there that Bakounine first nurtured the germs of those great revolutionary ideas which were destined to make his life so eventful, so heroic, and so significant in the evolution of sociological drifts.

With a deep yearning to thoroughly master the leading philosophical thought of his time, and having been commissioned as commandant of an obscure and isolated district, he became restless and disgusted, and in 1841 quitted Russia, and took up his abode in Berlin in order to become master of the Hegelian philosophy, which had already seized upon the young students and thinkers of Germany with a bewitching fascination. Here he entered assiduously into the whole realm of philosophy, especially the Hegelian, which he characterized as the “Algebra of Revolution,” and visited Dresden, Leipzig, and every other locality where he might exchange thought with the leading progressive spirits of the times. He published numerous philosophical writings over the name of Jules Elisard. In 1843 he visited Paris. Here he became an enthusiastic admirer of Proudhon, who probably seasoned his thought with those anarchistic tendencies that in later days developed his logic into what constitutes the philosophical method of Nihilism, which now appals and confounds despotism and challenges the attention of the whole world.

From Paris he next went to Switzerland, where he remained from 1843 to 1847. Here he entered into the new social movement, being en rapport with the Polish exiles. But already he had excited the gravest suspicions on the part of the Russian government, and his permis to sojourn abroad was rescinded. Instead of obeying, he returned to Paris, and there delivered a public appeal to the Poles and Russians to unite in a grand Pan-Slavonic revolutionary confederation. At the demand of the czar he was expelled in 1848 from France, and ten thousand rubles were offered for his arrest and return to Russia. But the revolution of February soon brought him back to Paris, which he quitted again, however, for Prague to attend the Congress of Slavs. The following year he went to Dresden, and became one of the chiefs of the May revolution and a member of the insurrectionary government. Forced to fly from Dresden, he was captured, sent to prison, and condemned to be executed in May, 1850. His sentence, however, was commuted to imprisonment for life. Escaping into Austria, he was again captured and again sentenced to death,— this time for high treason. But again his sentence was commuted to perpetual imprisonment. Upon repeated threats and entreaties the Austrian government was constrained to deliver him up to Russia.

As if hardly knowing how to dispose of so dear a prize, he was kept for several years in a dungeon in the fortress of Neva, and finally deported to Siberia. He spent several years in a penal colony, suffering the most cruel hardships, but finally succeeded in escaping from Siberia, a feat which he alone, it is said, ever accomplished. After a journey of one thousand miles, under hardships which approach the miraculous, he reached the sea, and obtained passage to Japan. From there he sailed to California, thence to New York, and in 1860, as if descending from the clouds, Michael Bakounine alighted, like a thunderbolt, in London.

Experiences like those already suffered would have cooled the ardor of most men, but hardly had Bakounine stepped foot in London when he took up his revolutionary schemes with redoubled enthusiasm. He issued numerous addresses to the Poles and Russians to join in a grand revolutionary confederation of Slavs. Associated with Herzen and Ogareff he published a revolutionary sheet called “The Kolokol” (The Bell). But so grand and deep and searching was his philosophy that he led all his co-laborers beyond their depth. The anarchistic philosophy which he had imbibed from Proudhon permeated all his schemes. He was now precipitated into an ever-deepening conflict with the revolutionary socialists of the Karl Marx school. At the great socialist congress in Geneva in 1870 he took direct and positive issue with the governmental wing of the party. He demanded the abolition of the State and all organized “machines” of social and religious administration. At the congress of the International at Hague in 1872 he was expelled, but succeeded in carrying thirty delegates with him, which body of anarchistic radicals finally waxed strong enough to overthrow the International Association, only to reorganize it later (as they did this last summer) under their own direction. Michael Bakounine now formulated his system of scientific anarchy as fully as his resources would permit. His hope was to crown his life-work by setting in motion a revolution throughout the world, looking to the abolition of the State and the substitution of that natural order which comes of justice, selection, and liberty. His ruling idea was: Given equality of conditions, and organized State and Church become unnecessary. The absence of equality of conditions is due to the existence of the State, and the State alone. Abolish the State! was the banner which he set up to conquer despotism, and erect upon its ruins a reign of true order and natural government. His philosophy and purposes he elaborated in several pamphlets, now very rare, principal among which was one entitled, “Dieu et l’Etat” (God and the State).

Russia, his native country, was the land in which he sought to inaugurate the grand revolution. The result is seen to-day in Nihilism, of which he is the father. Though the flippant, self-sufficient literati of the world may call Michael Bakounine a mad fanatic and visionary, there is one man who sees method in his madness, if not a wisdom akin to his sublime heroism. That man is the czar. Michael Bakounine has doomed the czardom, if not imperialism throughout Europe. His soul is marching on, and his ideas, baptized in living martyrdom, are a terror to all despots, though they may feign iguorance of him.

With hands and heart and brain full of revolutionary material, our hero died at Berne, Switzerland, in 1876. Even a tame sketch of his sufferings and adventures in the cause of liberty would make a tale alike touching and sublime. For several years of his life he was practically outlawed in every land on the planet he sought to redeem. No country would recognize him in a passport, even had he dared to ask for one. He was a refugee and an exile from every land. Despotism had standing rewards for his body. He was early disowned by his family, although his name figures among some of the chief officers near the Russian court to-day. The executioner stood waiting for him in several countries. He was everywhere tracked by spies and detectives. He dared not expose his name on the continent outside of Switzerland. He has no biographer, no authoritative defender, and possibly no authenticated grave. But his thought lives after him, and to the new world of Liberty, Justice, Peace, and Love, to establish which he suffered and died, remains the honor of doing his memory the justice denied him while living. Liberty is not afraid to honor him, being assured that posterity will yet search out his lonely resting-place and bear him from it aloft among the great founders of the new heavens and the new earth.