The Match Girl and the Heiress

by Seth Koven

  The founding editor of The New Crusader and interwar Britain’s “most remarkable Christian socialist pacifist,” Wilfred Wellock, spent his youth as a laborer in the textile mills of the Lancashire town of Nelson before improbably making his way to the University of Edinburgh.132 His understanding of the world had been shaped by his immersion in Ruskin’s moral economics, Tolstoy’s Christianity, and anarchist Peter Kropotkin’s politics.133 At the war’s outset, he joined the No-Conscription Fellowship to protect the rights of men of conscience against the un-English imposition of military conscription. He refused to take exemption on grounds of his status as a Methodist lay minister, preferring to defy the warfare state and accept imprisonment at Wormwood Scrubs as a conscientious objector. He looked forward to the “next phase in the history of human development … the realization of world-citizenship, the creation of international consciousness.” This consciousness, in marked contrast to Marx’s account of the birth of world history and class consciousness in volume one of Capital, depended upon “spiritual relationships” and “fellowship” between individuals, peoples, and nations. The “crusade” of modern times was a “worldwide spiritual movement” to liberate all people to love one another. Reconciliation, not class conflict, was the route to this new heightened consciousness.134

  5.8. Christian revolutionary iconography oscillated between extremes: at once ardently utopian about the prospects that love would conquer all and hard hitting about the gruesome human costs of war and violence. (Left) “amor vincit omnia,” New Crusader, April 12, 1918, p. 1. (Right) “Ye Will Not Come Unto Me,” New Crusader, May 3, 1917, 4. (Courtesy of Swarthmore College Peace Collection.)

  The money behind the Crusader as well as many of its most original ideas came from Muriel’s FoR colleague, the novelist Theodora Wilson Wilson.135 The flamboyant Wilson was an early friend of Kingsley Hall.136 Like the Lesters, she grew up in the virtuous ease of the Nonconformist bourgeoisie and had engaged in conventional sorts of philanthropy like setting up a Sunday school and Evening Home for working girls in her native Westmoreland. She also played a prominent role in Liberal women’s suffrage organizations in the 1880s and ’90s. By the eve of World War I she had abandoned Liberalism, embraced socialism and suffrage militancy, and become a Quaker.137 A gadfly within the FoR, Wilson chastised members for their preference for talk over action. She traced networks of human exploitation and unfair labor practices fostered by global capitalist corporations and mobilized shareholders to demand that companies pay their employees enough to “live a full and free life.” She directly connected the dividends of the British bourgeoisie with their distant human costs worlds away. Wilson sought to stir up a shareholders’ revolt as part of the “reorganization of the present Industrial system” to benefit the “highest good of the workers and the best interests of the community.”138

  For some quietist members of the FoR, Wilson’s aggressive methods flirted unacceptably with tactics of domination. Could a Christian revolution be achieved without resort to force? This was a question that Muriel’s colleagues asked themselves over and over as they tried to balance ethical thought with necessary action. Wilfred Wellock, like Muriel, emphatically rejected violence and relied upon the overwhelming “force” of God’s Love to bring about Christian revolution. “Bloody revolutions” accomplished nothing; he preferred to kill “the lies that are mutilating” mankind rather than wage armed battles against German militarism. The pacifist was the true “knight errant” and adventurer of modern times, who “faced a hostile world,” armed only with “truth.”139 “You cannot kill hatred and violence,” Maude Royden explained, “by means of hatred and violence.”140 Revolution began by convincing individuals, one by one, who collectively would then express their will as “the people.” For radical Christians like Muriel, revolution took place in seemingly inconsequential everyday interactions and behaviors, rather than in moments of dramatic conversion and political upheaval. “We are what we do, just as civilizations are what people make them by their everyday conduct,” Wellock insisted.141

  In April 1917, the New Crusader reminded readers about the tools in their “everyday” Christian revolutionary arsenal as they pursued peace. “Pray. Sacrifice. Pay. Talk. Think. Study. Get Going.”142 Such ideas about revolution had already been challenged by actual revolution in Russia the month before. Words notably missing from the FoR’s lexicon included “liberate,” “overthrow,” “emancipate”—key concepts under discussion at the Council of Workers and Soldiers Delegates that met in Leeds six weeks later to welcome the Russian Revolution. The first letter read out loud there was from George Lansbury, who extended heartfelt solidarity “with our brothers of the proletariat in Russia, in France, in Germany—(cheers) in Austria, in Italy, in the United States—one with all the world’s workers, who have been deluded, coerced, exploited by their Governments in this war.” In phrases meant to provoke fear among vested political-economic interests, Lansbury spoke of Lloyd George’s wartime ruling coalition as a “provisional government.”143

  Russia’s two-phased revolution in 1917—moderate and constitutionalist in February, radical and Bolshevik in October—heartened and perplexed champions of “world citizenship” in Britain like Muriel. It widened existing fissures among Christian revolutionaries and socialist pacifists. In 1915, Henry Hodgkin’s rejection of a colleague’s contention that force could be used “redemptively” was mostly a matter for theoretical consideration.144 Such distinctions had become deeply consequential in 1917.

  Early accounts of the Bolshevik seizure of power only compounded confusion. On November 8, 1917, the Times described Lenin as a “pacifist” and said the coup d’état was “accomplished without bloodshed.” In loosest contemporary usage, Lenin was a “pacifist” in that he urged negotiation, rather than armed force, to bring about the immediate end of war between nations.145 Christian revolutionary pacifists also shared Lenin’s view (though it is very unlikely they had read any of his works) that World War I was itself a capitalist imperialist conflict. However, this same Times article published the “proclamation” of the Bolshevik Military Revolutionary Committee that promised the use of “force without mercy” against those who defied its demands.146 Such language flatly contradicted the FoR’s core principles.147

  Muriel has left no record of her own thoughts about these great world historical events in Tolstoy’s native land. As a voting member of the FoR’s General Committee, she endorsed the Resolution that it sent to the people of Russia in January 1918. Even allowing for the Committee’s imprecise knowledge of events in Russia, the document is in equal measure naïve, idealistic, and wishful. It opened with thanks and praise for the

  service which the Russian nation has done to the cause of humanity and of reconciliation … by striving to bring about a speedy and universal peace…. We, too, desire to see the government of the world based upon justice and human brotherhood both in international and social life.

  With disregard for Bolshevik views on God, the priesthood, class war (“crushing the resistance of the bourgeoisie” in Lenin’s words) and the virtues of violence, the Resolution continued,

  we believe that as followers of Jesus Christ we are bound to seek to establish His perfect law of Love among men and that the present order is a denial of the power of His life and teaching. We believe … that methods of violence and bloodshed can never establish righteousness and justice, but that these will dawn upon the world as men are ready to manifest the qualities of enduring faith, courageous devotion and utter self-sacrifice, qualities which have always been characteristic of the Russian people.

  Revolutionary Russia and later the Soviet Union remained an object of intense fascination and fear for the British Left—Christian and secular—throughout the interwar period. The FoR’s proclamation makes clear that when many radicals in Britain looked at the Russian revolution in 1917–18, they saw reflected back their hopes and dreams for themselves and their nation.148

  To prepare for t
he “dawning” of “righteousness and justice” in Britain, the Fellowship’s Social Service Subcommittee asked members to reply to a questionnaire whose profundity teetered on absurdity and self-parody. Muriel sat on this committee and its questions and conclusions closely mirrored her own.

  Did Christ lay stress on a life of poverty? Was this poverty to be of a material or a spiritual character? What does the acceptance of such poverty imply? Is it concerned with things other than material possessions, e.g. the use of force, knowledge, eloquence, privilege, etc.? Is there an intrinsic spiritual value in poverty whether voluntary or compulsory?

  A month later, the committee summarized responses and distilled from them a set of practical guidelines about the ethical conduct of daily life. They exhorted members to buy cooperatively rather than competitively; to undertake each day some task of manual labor; to find the minimum sum on which to live satisfactorily; to understand the habits of thought of some section of society to which by their upbringing they did not naturally belong.149 This was precisely how the residents of Kingsley Hall and 60 Bruce Road had chosen to live their daily lives.

  The FoR’s endorsement of such altruistic quotidian routines attracted the High Church Anglican clergyman Bernard Walke, already experimenting in anti-materialistic Christian living in Cornwall.150 Walke became a celebrity in interwar Britain for two things: his Christmas nativity play annually broadcast by the BBC and the sacking of his gorgeously decorated parish church, St. Hilary’s, by ultra-Protestants enraged by his Catholic ritualism.151 Muriel was deeply drawn to Walke’s ideas. She made an odd match with the ascetic aesthete priest with a fondness for dandiacal silk stockings, who preached unorthodox ideas about divine love, voluntary poverty, and the Christian sacraments. The two had met by 1918 when Walke approached the FoR for help “propagating” the Brethren of the Common Table among the FoR’s members and branches. He soon joined Muriel on the FoR’s General Committee.

  Walke insisted that the Communion table was the foundational site for enacting community and a primitive form of communism. Love, he explained, was the “sole basis of human society.” The table at which Jesus and his disciples partook of the last supper of bread and wine “stands as token of the Divine Brotherhood and brings to view the overflowing life and riches of God given to the world in Jesus Christ.” He fused God’s superabundant economy of love with a love-based political economy governing relationships among Brethren. Just as Jesus freely shared and sacrificed his life to enrich humankind, so too Brethren literally put their wealth on the Communion table for others to take according to their own needs. Need was emphatically not based on calculations of family budgets and earnings and external surveillance by charity visitors. Rather, it was entirely a matter of individual conscience. Members “frankly” disclosed their “needs” and “means;” their Brethren, “in the Spirit of Christ,” supplied those needs. The first Brethren who joined Walke at St. Hilary’s were, he recalled, “a queer company with little in common beyond a dissatisfaction with our social system” which included a Marxist named Ernest, a London tramp, and a Scottish Presbyterian minister.152 In dramatic contrast to Muriel’s interpretation of his message at Kingsley Hall, Walke insisted that rules be kept to an absolute minimum. “I believe the end we seek will be achieved not by rules & standards,” he explained to Rosa Waugh Hobhouse, “but by an infection of spirit.”153

  The onset of World War I eviscerated much of the vibrant pre–war culture of pacifist internationalism and Christian radicalism.154 For those few like Muriel, Lansbury, Hodgkin, Wellock, Wilson, and Walke, who held fast to their abhorrence of force and violence as fundamentally contrary to God’s love, World War I intensified their Christian revolutionary faith and sharpened their critique of capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism. It deepened Muriel’s understanding of the connections between global forces and the local lives of laboring men, women, and children in Bromley-by-Bow. The war also turned those who espoused “God is Love” theology from fringe figures in the landscape of theological modernism and progressive social politics into national dangers and enemies. After it was sacked and partially burned in October 1917, the pacifist socialist Brotherhood Church in Croydon received more sympathetic national publicity from papers like the Daily News than it ever had during its previous two decades of public ministry.155 Stephen Hobhouse, Rosa’s husband and Muriel’s friend, went from an obscure albeit exceptionally well-connected social worker and peace activist to a household name among Britain’s leaders of church and state because the government insisted on jailing him repeatedly for his convictions.156

  The weakest link in this program of Christian revolutionary love was translating it from a creed of personal transformation into one that could change the world around them. What did Walke mean by “infection of spirit”? By what means would such moral “infections” revolutionize the state and the economy, structures that most socialists placed at the very core of their analysis? While mechanisms of mass killing efficiently mowed down tens of thousands, sometimes in a single day, the FoR expected justice and righteousness to “dawn” upon the world when men were ready. All of this depended upon those who possessed power and wealth voluntarily relinquishing it so that they could share in the benefits of bringing God’s Kingdom of Heaven to earth.157

  “LOVE YOUR ENEMIES, BLESS THEM THAT CURSE YOU”

  Muriel and Nellie waited for neither an “infection of spirit” nor a “dawning” of righteousness to begin the work of changing themselves and Bromley-by-Bow. War created innumerable opportunities for them to put into practice Matthew 5:44: “love your enemies [and] bless them that curse you.” Outspoken opponents of war, including Muriel, faced daily threats and insults; like conscientious objectors, they were persons “to be rebuked, bullied, and condemned.”158 Protecting Muriel and Kingsley Hall from such dangers was a task Nellie relished. With her deep roots in Bromley-by-Bow and extensive network of family, friends, and workmates, Nellie saw and heard about practically everything that happened in their neighborhood. At home all day, this became her new job, which she conducted on or near the doorstep of No. 58 Bruce Road with wit, tact, and diplomacy. “In the days of Kingsley Hall’s unpopularity,” Muriel recalled, “woe be to the idle gossiper who chanced to say a word against it within her hearing.”159 Almost from the moment Kingsley Hall opened, Muriel and Nellie’s commitment to living the Sermon on the Mount was severely tested. Their friendship sustained them through these ordeals and was in turn nourished by them.

  Pacifism and militarist patriotism split apart families, great and humble. John French, Lord Ypres, was Commander-in-Chief on the western front. His sister, Charlotte Despard, led Nellie and Muriel on peace marches and corresponded with Muriel about whether wartime Prime Minister Lloyd George possessed a “spiritual element” susceptible to ethical awakening. (Despard was not optimistic, Muriel was.)160 War also would soon divide the Dowells of 58 Bruce Road. After Nellie’s brother-in-law, the gun filer William Joseph Dellar sustained a disabling injury, her sister Florence could not afford to feed, shelter, and clothe her children. Rather than allowing Florence’s children to be shipped off to a Poor Law orphanage, Harriet Dowell and Nellie took in Florence’s oldest son, Willie (William Henry Dellar). By 1911, Willie was living with Nellie, her mother, and her milliner aunt Caroline on 313 Brunswick Road, the busy corridor leading from the Limehouse Cut to the entrance of the Blackwall tunnel. Nellie, her mother, and Willie soon moved next door to the Lesters while Caroline occupied a room two doors away at 64 Bruce Road.161

  Nellie adored her nephew. Tales of his endearing silly antics enlivened her letters. While recovering from a leg injury in February 1912, Willie, “a perfect monkey,” delighted in his crutches. “A funny boy but a loving little Chap,” he had made all the nurses at the hospital laugh. He also knew how to “press” his Aunt Nell’s “button” with “tricks” like bandaging their cat’s paw.162

  By 1915, Nellie’s laughter had turned to worries about her nephew. In an unda
ted letter probably written in 1916, Nellie was pleased that Muriel intended to visit Willie, then stationed with his regiment in the Essex village of Ongar.

  he is digging trenches he seems

  rather unhappy I want to

  go one Sunday or some

  day to see him it’s a long

  time now since we saw

  him I hope they don’t send

  him out to France for all

  the poor lads are gone163

  Willie had enlisted in the army in July 1915, following in the footsteps of his father, who must have recovered sufficiently from his injuries to pass the Army’s physical examination. Nellie’s letters do not say why Willie did this. It must have hit everyone at 58–60 Bruce Road quite hard.

  Here was an opening to love a person whose decision to join the army contradicted Muriel and Nellie’s deepest convictions. Nellie reflected on the implications of Willie’s wartime service and that of the other “lads” from Bromley-by-Bow. Like Muriel, she differentiated opposition to the war from her tender regard for its soldiers. War had made responsible men of mischievous boys. She pondered a “beautiful letter” explaining “excately [sic] what the war was like” written by a soldier who once had been a troublemaker in Muriel’s Sunday school class. War had brought home to him and the other “young ones” the lessons that Muriel had taught them. These soldiers, Nellie concluded, were now “quite good different to what they were.” The experience of war, Nellie suggests, had made Muriel’s teachings more powerful, not less, for her former students.

  Muriel penned a vignette in her antiwar book Kill or Cure (1937) about an unnamed young man whose story closely resembles Willie Dellar’s down to its details. I suspect she based it on Willie’s. Muriel used the story to explore why young men like Willie enlisted in the army. England had not given the boy a “very good start in life” after his father was taken to an incurables hospital and the family thrown into poverty. William Joseph Dellar was sent to just such a hospital around 1906–7, hastening Nellie’s return from Sweden. He still remained confined within London’s medico-Poor Law complex at the time of the 1911 census as a workhouse inmate in Nellie’s former orphanage at Forest Gate.164 His incarceration there must have been an especially bitter blow for all the Dowells, a reminder that too many punitive elements of the Poor Law still darkened the lives of working people.