By Robert W. Morrell
142 Strand, A Radical Address In Victorian London. Rosemary Ashton. London, Vintage Books. Paperback. ISBN 978 0 712 60696. £9.99.
This is not a book about Thomas Paine, in fact in the course of its three hundred and eighty-six pages he receives only a single passing mention, which leaves aside whether or not its central character, the publisher and doctor John Chapman, read Paine’s works and like so many of his contemporaries came under their influence. That he may well have been so influenced is suggested by his friendship and association with several freethought publishers, notably G J. Hoiyoake, Hein Hetherington, Edward Truelove and to some extent William Dugdale, although he had abandoned his earlier role as the publisher of radical and freethought books in preference to the more profitable field of Pornography.
John Chapman was born in Nottingham In 1821, being one of four sons of a prosperous shopkeeper He appears to have developed a desire to become a doctor, as in the case of one of his brothers who had been sent to Edinburgh to study medicine, but John’s ambition came to nought, at least for the time being, for he was apprenticed to a watchmaker in Worksop to learn that trade. In 1839 after completing his apprenticeship he immigrated to Australia, settling in Adelaide where he set up in business sang and repairing watches. However, three years later he returned to England and took up the study of medicine first in London then in Paris.
But once more Chapman’s ambition was to be thwarted because he became almost by accident, the proprietor of a publishing house. In June 1843 he had married the daughter of a wealthy Nottingham lace manufacturer and having returned to London, presumably to continue with his medical studies, he approached the publisher John Green with a request that he publish a short work to which he had given the long-winded title, Human Nature, A Philosophical Exposition of the Divine Institution of the Reward and Punishment, which obtains in the physical. Intellectual, and MOM/ constitution of Man; with an Introductory essay. To which is added, a series of ethical observations, written during the perusal of the Rev. James lokatineau’s recent work, entitled Endeavours eller the Christian Life’, only to be told by Green that he was giving up publishing. In response, Chapman offered to purchase the firm, doing so with £4,600 of his wife’s money supplemented by a further sum from one of her relatives. Green had specialised in publishing books by Unitarians, being described by Theodore Parker in a letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson as “the Unitarian and Transcendal Bibliopole for all England….”, however, according to the author information about Chapman’s own religious beliefs is vague, although it may be suggested that as he had approached a well known Unitarian publisher to issue his book this might suggest that at the time he held Unitarian opinions. Whatever be the case the study of medicine was put on the back burner and- Chapman entered into a new career as a publisher. Not surprisingly one of the first works published under his imprint was his extremely dreary treatise, though Professor Ashton diplomatically describes it as being ‘earnest, if rather vapid’.
The Unitarian ethos of Green’s former firm soon disappeared under its new owner who exhibited no hesitation in publishing works by authors critical of Christianity, if not actual unbelievers. These included J. A. Froude’s Nemesis of Faith and Marion Evans’, anonymous translation of The Life of Jesus by D. F. Strauss, which was issued in an attractive three volume set. However, not long before his edition appeared the freethought publisher Henry Hetherington. also based on The Strand, beat him to it by having commenced to publish a translation in parts and this may have had an effect on the viability of Chapman’s edition, for while it caused a lot of interest it does not appear to have been profitable. Evans was destined to become better known as “George Elliot’ but before that she became Chapman’s lover. He went on to publish her translation of another German work, Ludwig Feurbach’s The Essence of Christianity.
Chapman was continually having financial problems and was facing one when Kali Marx approached him to publish his Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Marx had also been suffering from domestic financial difficulties, not for the first time, and was unaware that the same was true at the time in the case of Chapman for he had hoped that he would also discount some of his bills until he received payment from the United States for articles he had written for the New York Daily Tribune. Chapman was forced to turn “Mr. Melte, as he names him, down. Commenting on this Professor Ashton remarks that had he not done so the two ‘might have come into closer and mutually rewarding contact”. In the event Engels bailed Marx out, while wealthy Mends came to Chapman’s assistance, as frequently happened.
What put Chapman firmly on the literary map was his purchase in 1851 of the radical Westminster Review, which prompted the Church and State Gazette to bemoan the fact that the Review had `fallen into the hands of a publisher’ whose principal writers are known for their unorthodoxy. Professor Ashton, though, takes care to distance her subject from unbelief or close association with working class radicals by describing him as representative of the respectable face of nineteenth century radicalism, and the Review, as being the leading journal of respectable radicalism in Britain. It had been founded in 1824 by Jeremy Bentham and James PAM and soon became an organ for Unitarian thought and opinion. It had always been a loss maker, as Chapman must have known. The two founders, though, being wealthy were able to run the journal as a hobby while ensuring that it only published Ideas they approved of. This was also the case with W. E. Erickson, from whom Chapman purchased the Review. On his part he opened It to a whole range of orthodox and unorthodox radical writers and in doing so built up a stable of able new contributors, several of whom appear to have given him financial support by not taking any fee for the articles. They included J. S. Mill, Viscount Amberley, Bertrand Russell’s father, Herbert Spencer, M. D. Conway. Harriet Martineau, Frederick Harrison, Francis Newman, John Tyndall and T. H. Huxley, who became the journal’s scientific correspondent and championed Darwin’s evolutionary hypothesis in its pages. His articles included a particularly important review of Darwin’s Origin of Species. Although Darwin subscribed to the Review he never contributed to its pages, but when certain parties sought to gain control over the journal he was amongst those who rallied to Chapman’s support.
Eventually Chapman sold his publishing house while retaining ownership of the Review, which he continued to edit after resuming his medical studies, and Professor Ashton traces his progress which culminated in his passing the necessary examinations that resulted in him achieving his long sought ambition. Thus he entered Into the final stage of his varied career. As a doctor he specialised in nervous disorders and became a homeopath, in which field he became a well known practitioner. He wrote a number of medical works and contributed articles on medicine and medical reform to his journal. He also invented what he described as ‘spine-bags’ which used cold and heat to treat certain disorders. Amongst those he treated with them was Charles Darwin.
According to Professor Ashton, Chapman took every opportunity to publicise his medical ideas and inventions being ‘a determined self-advertiser’ but he also appears to have been unable to establish a viable medical practice in London so he moved to Paris where he set up in practice treating English and American residents, and it was there on November 25, 1894 that he died. His remains were brought back to England and interred at Highgate Cemetery near the graves of `George G H. Lewes, a frequent contributor to the Review, and Karl Marx. There was no religious service but his friend and colleague Dr. C. R. Drysdale, whose opinions on birth control he strongly supported, gave a brief address. It would seem that Chapman had become, in effect, an unbeliever.
Among other causes Chapman championed in the pages of the Review was that of women’s rights, about which he held very advanced opinions including that they should be enfranchised. On a personal level he was a known womaniser, something he never sought to conceal, unlike so many of his contemporaries who feared the effects on their reputations if their lax morality became public knowledge. Professor Ashton treats his dealings with women in detail in a chapter entitled ‘Chapman’s Radical Women’.
This book rescues from obscurity a man who played an important role in radicalism in nineteenth century Britain. In many respects reminds me of that other radical publisher Charles Watts, the founder of the Rationalist Press Association, which consciously sought to represent itself as being the respectable public face of freethought in contrast to the impression given by the largely working-class based National Secular Society. While Chapman does not feature in the annals of freethought, he certainly deserves a place in them, even if only a minor one. I learned a lot from this stimulating book which I have no hesitation in recommending. Moreover, unlike so many other books these days it has been published at a price that is affordable.