Mr. Anderson called on me in my cell and asked what he could do for me.
"Open the front door," I answered.
With a pleasant smile he regretted his inability to do that.
"Well then," I continued, "let me have something to read."
"Yes," he said, "I can do that. There are many books in the prison library."
"But not one," I retorted, "fit for an educated man to read. They are all selected by the chaplain."
"Well," he answered, "I cannot give you what we haven't got."
"But why not let me have my own books to read?" I asked.
Mr. Anderson replied that such a thing was unheard of, but I persisted in my plea, which Colonel Milman generously supported.
"Well," said Mr. Anderson, "I suppose we must. Your own books may be sent in, and the Governor can let you have them two at a time. But, you know, you mustn't have such writings as you are here for."
"Oh," I replied, "you have the power to check that. They will all pass through the Governor's hands, and I will order in nothing but what Colonel Milman might read himself."
"Oh," said Mr. Anderson, with a humorous smile, which the Governor and the Inspector shared, "I can't say what Colonel Milman might like to read."
The interview ended and my books came. What a joy they were! I read Gibbon and Mosheim right through again, with Carlyle's "Frederick," "French Revolution" and "Cromwell," Forster's "Statesmen of the Commonwealth," and a mass of literature on the Rebellion and the Protectorate. I dug deep into the literature of Evolution. I read over again all Shakespeare, Shelley, Spenser, Swift and Byron, besides a number of more modern writers. French books were not debarred, so I read Diderot, Voltaire, Paul Louis Courier, and the whole of Flaubert, including "L'Education Sentimentale," which I never attacked before, but which I found, after conquering the apparent dullness of the first half of the first volume, to be one of the greatest of his triumphs. Mr. Gerald Massey, then on a visit to England, was churlishly refused a visiting order from the Home Office, but he sent me his two magnificent volumes on "Natural Genesis," and a note to the interim editor of the Freethinker, requesting him to tell me that I had his sympathy. "I fight the same battle as himself," said Mr. Massey, "although with a somewhat different weapon." I was also favored with a presentation copy of verses by the one writer I most admire, whose genius I reverenced long before the public and its critics discovered it. It would gratify my vanity rather than my prudence to reveal his name.
Agreeably to the proverb that if you give some men an inch they will take an ell, I induced the Governor to let me pursue my study of Italian. First he allowed me a Grammar, then a Conversation Book, then a Dictionary, then a Prose Reading Book, and then a Poetical Anthology. These volumes, being an addition to the two ordinary ones, gave my little domicile a civilised appearance. Cleaners sometimes, when my door was opened, looked in from the corridor with an expression of awe. "Why," I heard one say, "he's got a cell like a bookshop."
With my books, my Italian, and my Colenso, I managed to kill the time; and although the snake-like days were still long, they were less venomous. Yet the remainder of my sentence was a terrible ordeal. I never lost heart, but I lost strength. My brain was miraculously clear, but it grew weaker as the body languished; and before my release I could hardly read more than an hour or two a day.
The only break in the monotony of my life was when I received a visit. Mrs. Besant, Dr. Aveling, Mr. Wheeler and my wife, saw me occasionally; either in the ordinary way, at the end of every three months, or by special order from the Home Office. I saw my visitors in the prison cages, only our faces being visible to each other through a narrow slit. We stood about six feet apart, with a warder between us to stop "improper conversation." I could not shake a friend's hand or kiss my wife. The interviews lasted only half an hour. In the middle of a sentence "Time!" was shouted, the keys rattled, and the little oasis had to be left for another journey over the desert sand.
Every three months I wrote a letter on a prison sheet. Two sides were printed on, and the others ruled wide, with a notice that nothing was to be written between the lines. No doubt the authorities were anxious to save the prisoners the pain of too much mental exertion. I foiled them by writing small, and abbreviating nearly every word. My letters were of course read before they were sent out, and the answers read before they reached me. No respect being shown for the privacies of affection, I addressed my letters to Dr. Aveling for publication in the Freethinker.
One of these documents lies before me as I write. It was the extra letter I sent to my wife before leaving, and contains directions as to clothes and other domestic matters. I venture to reproduce the advertisement, which occupies the whole front page:
"A prisoner is permitted to write and receive a Letter after
three months of his sentence have expired, provided his
conduct and industry have been satisfactory during that time,
and the same privilege will be continued afterwards on the same
conditions and at the same intervals.
"All Letters of an improper or idle tendency, either to or
from Prisoners, or containing slang or other objectionable
expressions, will be suppressed. The permission to write and
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