Guy A. Aldred Archive
Written: 1912.
Source: RevoltLib.com
Transcription/Markup: Andy Carloff
Online Source: RevoltLib.com; 2021
Christmas, 1831, was the last Elizabeth Sharples ever spent with her mother, sisters, and brothers, who never forgave her for her theological unbelief and political Republicanism. Preparations were made for her journey to London; which she reached on
January 12th, 1832. She interviewed Carlile in the Compter, and re-opened the Rotunda for the purposes of delivering philosophic addresses and holding discussions. Seventeen days later she delivered her first lecture there, concealing her identity from the public, and speaking as “The Lady of the Rotunda.” Thus described, she lectured here and elsewhere in the Metropolis, on Sundays, and two or three times a week. Being one of the first women to mount the English platform as an independent thinker, she naturally attracted much attention, and the journal which she commenced in February, 1832, Isis, found a ready sale.
She now successfully busied herself in seeking to obtain a mitigation of the severities practiced on Robert Taylor during his incarceration.
These activities caused Elizabeth’s twenty-one-year-old sister, Maria, to write a letter to her, expostulating with her upon her ambition to continue as a public teacher of Infidelity, whilst confessing that that ambition was above all suspicion of being any ordinary pursuit of riches, or any particular regard to reputation.
By this time a strong reciprocal affection had grown up between Elizabeth Sharples and Richard Carlile. She was aware of all the circumstances of his union with, mutual separation from, and present simple friendship with Jane Carlile. Accordingly, she consented to their living together as man and wife on his release from prison. This union was defended by Elizabeth in the preface to the first volume of Isis. Nothing, she here states, could have been more pure, more free from venality, than this union. It was not only a marriage of two bodies, but of two congenial spirits, of two minds reasoned into the same knowledge of true principles, each seeking an object on which virtuous affections might rest, and grow, and strengthen. They who were married equally morally, would not find fault with her; but where marriage was merely of the law or for money, and not of a soul, there she looked for abuse. They had passed over a legal obstacle, and remembered that they were human. They had not fallen into the error of pledging love for life, hoping, in the absence of that pledge, to make it last the longer.
Carlile also replied to the attacks made on this free-love union of his with Eliza Sharples. Stating that on the subject of marriage he had ever been the advocate and consistent practicer of monogamy, of the honorable and happy and mutual attachment of one man to one woman, he averred the basis of such an attachment was the divine law of love and affectionate chastity, and not the human law. He was now living up to this divine law in the highest sense in which it could be interpreted, openly, honorably, and with injury to no one. His union was pure in spirit and was pure. It concealed neither motive nor purpose. It did not intrude itself upon the world’s attention, but it did not shrink from the world's scrutiny.
Such were the purity of the motives which inspired each of these devoted children of liberty and parents of freedom. When the world has learned to forget their slanderers, the freedom for which they fought will prove a legacy whereby posterity shall honor them.