By the time of her death, Emma was marginalized almost completely within the institutionalized Spiritualist movement, and bitter about that fact.
It appears, from a close-ish reading of The Two Worlds for 1891, that the process of marginalization began with the second annual National Spiritual Conference, in Bradford, in May. During this conference -- whether during the open sessions or the executive meetings, I cannot yet tell -- EHB formally announced her retirement from public speaking, apparently to some consternation, at the close of 1891. During a subsequent executive session, at which EHB was not present, J. J. Morse raised the idea of a testimonial for EHB.
During the summer of 1891, tensions rose between the National Spiritual Conference, organized out of the midlands, and a competing national organization, centered around A. F. Tindall and others, and the London Spiritualist Federation.
It seems pretty clear that all was not well either between town and country, or within the ranks of the National Spiritual Conference, either.
In August, Emma published this letter to J.J. Morse in The Two World; it speaks for itself.
DEAR MR. MORSE,-According to my view of editorial etIquette in my editorship of this little paper, I have steadily forborne to press my own writings upon public attention beyond that sphere of action wherein imperative demands for personal expression were made upon me. Suoh a crisis occurs at the present time, and now, as heretofore, I unhesitatingly proceed to fill up the gap, as duty and self-respect require of me.
Whilst I was informed through certain side issues that you, in the kindness and generosity of your unselfish nature, were planning to organize a testimonial to be presented to me on what is called my retirement from the public spiritual rostrum, I was scarcely prepared to comprehend the nature of this fraternal effort until I learned of its public announcement at the last Spiritual Conference at Bradford, an announcement which your respect for my feelings induced you to make during my enforced absence at the evening gathering.
By report also I learned that a hasty resolution was passed in consequence of your appeal in my behalf to delegate the official work of that testimonial to the Executive Committee appointed to carry an the necessary but onerous work of preparing for the next annual Conference.
As I myself, Dr. Britten,and my sister Mrs. WIlkinson, the Foreign Librarian of Manchester, formed part of that Executive Committee, we unitedly insisted upon refusing to take any part in so personal an undertaking, and at our urgent request the matter was repudiated at once as an action to be carried out in connection with the work of the Federation Executive Committee.
Since this subject was mooted by you however at the late Conference, I have been the target for so many gross insults, both written and printed, and that from those who call themselves Spiritualists and "fellow workers with me," that in duty to my family, and respect to myself, I hereby POSITIVELY and DETERMINEDLY INSIST that this matter of the proposed testimonial shall be now and for ever dropped and suffered to sink into oblivion. I most earnestly desire you to understand that this resolution on my part neither proceeds from pride or ingratitude. As a working woman and breadwinner throughout my long and toilsome career, I have not only been the happy recipient of untold personal kindness, but I have received with heartfelt thankfulness some fifty or sixty testimonials of appreciation from Spiritualistic and Reform associations in various countries, all of which have afforded me strength and good cheer to pursue my ceaseless public labour; and still I look upon them from time to time with the pleasing assurance that even in this world, where envy, jealousy, and unkind rivalry prevail so largely, there are some great hearts and noble souls who have warmly and generously appreciated the wanderer's life-long labours.
I say this, my good friend, to show that it is in no spirit of sour disappointment or proud ingratitude that I imperatively charge upon you as you value my oId-time friendship to cease at once and for ever from attempting to prosecute your kindly scheme of raising a testimonial in any form to one who thankfully and tenderly appreoiates the regard of the good, the true, and the intelligent, but who positively refuses any longer to be a target for envy and malice to shoot the arrows of impertinence and ill nature against. I do not forget, on my first return from America to this country, how, on my next departure, the friends in London not only presented me with a noble testimonial in writing now hanging in an honoured place before my eyes-but added thereto a handsome and substantial proof of the esteem which (Heaven helping me) I have never since done one act of omission or commission to forfeit. The grand old guard who promoted this kindly work were gallantly assisted by Mr. Burns, who was then one with them. Everything is now altered. Nearly all of that grand old Guard are gone to their account, and though I, the recipient of their love and kindness, have only added to but never diminished the record which they desired to honour, all around me is ohanged, and of that old Spiritual Guard I stand - in this oountry at least - almost alone.
Amongst the bitter lessons I have had to learn concerning human appreciation of past services is one which I as an Englishwoman myself have quite recently regarded with equal grief and humiliation. I allude to the spectacle of a few aged men grown old, poor, and mutilated in the defence of their country, beooming by cruel neglect and national ingratitude indebted to a troupe of American showmen for the bread which their own country should have rejoiced to bestow upon them. III all' age when the survivors of the famous Balaclava "six hundred" are indebted to foreign exhibitors in their old age and poverty for the means to live, the toiler in an unpopular cause, and one that interests only a peculiar seotion of the community, has no right to complain if the proposition to do her a special service should rile up a cloud of hornets to sting where they cannot themselves benefit.
And now, my friend, as this most painful subject has arisen in conneotion with the announcement of my intention to give up platform work after the present year, I take this opportunity of stating to the friends I honour and the foes whom I may have unwittingly and unconsciously provoked, that I do this at the charge of the noble spirits with whom for the past thirty years I have taken service, and whose good counsels and wil!dom have ever guided me well and successfully into the accomplishment of their work. "Retire in the prime of your power as an orator," they have said, "and never wait, as too many public workers have done, until the public retires from them, even though they may be worn out and incapacitated in its service."
Having given me the command to finish my platform work this year I should have obeyed their monitions under any circumstances, but seeing that three, if not four, days each week-end are taken from my urgent, incessant and ever increasing editorial work and immense correspondence, my common sense perception of duty to that work, to my hom, family and greatly overtaxed time and health, chimes in so favorably with the spirit command that I most cordially concur, and for the reasons above alleged am prepared to close my thirty years of unbroken labor as a platform worker at the end of this year, and henceforth devote myself, were that possible, even more energetically than ever to my editorial labours.
For all past efforts on behalf of our noble cause, my friend, I have taken my pay as I went. Amply paid in the love and appreciation of the true and the good of this and other lands, still more richly paid in the assurances that neither one toilsome day or restless night had been spent in vain; that, besides the effect that our bold revolutionary yet reconstructive truths have had upon the age, all our efforts for truth and progress are laid up in the archives of eternity, I can well afford to let the pillar of earthly cloud dodge and follow my unfaltering footprints, whilst I fearlessly follow the "pillar of fire" which guides me to the promised land, where I shall find --
No more desperate endeavours,
No more separating evers,
No more desolate nevers
Over there.
Most sincerely and gratefully your friend, dear Mr. Morse,
Emma H. Britten
It was money, always money, at the base of things, for our Emma. She took her pay as she went -- in all sorts of ways. And she paid as she went, as well. Here, she's beginning to pay the biggest bill of her career, and she'll die broke in more ways than one.
Labels: Emma Hardinge, Emma Hardinge Britten, Emma Hardinge-Britten
