“With all submission to your lordship, I am afraid I must claim my right of arguing my case in person.”

“You will do so if you please, of course, but I think you had much better appear by counsel.  I give you notice that, if you do not, you must not expect to be shown any consideration.  You will not be heard by me at any greater length than the case requires, nor allowed to go into irrelevant matter, as persons who argue their own cases usually do.”

“I trust I shall not do so, my lord; but in any case I shall be arguing under your lordship’s complete control.”

This encouraging beginning may be taken as a sample of the case—­it was one long fight against clever counsel, aided by a counsel instead of a judge on the bench.  Only once did judge and counsel fall out.  Mr. Ince and Mr. Bardswell had been arguing that my Atheism and Malthusianism made me an unfit guardian for my child; Mr. Ince declared that Mabel, educated by me, would “be helpless for good in this world,” and “hopeless for good hereafter, outcast in this life and damned in the next.”  Mr. Bardswell implored the judge to consider that my custody of her “would be detrimental to the future prospects of the child in society, to say nothing of her eternal prospects.”  Had not the matter been to me of such heart-breaking importance, I could have laughed at the mixture of Mrs. Grundy, marriage establishment, and hell, presented as an argument for robbing a mother of her child.  But Mr. Bardswell carelessly forgot that Sir George Jessel was a Jew, and lifting eyes to heaven in horrified appeal, he gasped out: 

“Your lordship, I think, will scarcely credit it, but Mrs. Besant says, in a later affidavit, that she took away the Testament from the child because it contained coarse passages unfit for a child to read.”

The opportunity was too tempting for a Jew to refrain from striking at a book written by apostate Jews, and Sir George Jessel answered sharply: 

“It is not true to say there are no passages unfit for a child’s reading, because I think there are a great many.”

“I do not know of any passages that could fairly be called coarse.”

“I cannot quite assent to that.”

Barring this little episode judge and counsel showed a charming unanimity.  I distinctly said I was an Atheist, that I had withdrawn the child from religious instruction at the day-school she attended, that I had written various anti-Christian books, and so on; but I claimed the child’s custody on the ground that the deed of separation distinctly gave it to me, and had been executed by her father after I had left the Christian Church, and that my opinions were not sufficient to invalidate it.  It was admitted on the other side that the child was admirably cared for, and there was no attempt at attacking my personal character.  The judge stated that I had taken the greatest possible care of the child, but decided that the mere fact of my refusing to give the child religious instruction was sufficient ground for depriving me of her custody.  Secular education he regarded as “not only reprehensible, but detestable, and likely to work utter ruin to the child, and I certainly should upon this ground alone decide that this child ought not to remain another day under the care of her mother.”