This same year (1875) that saw me launched on the world as a public advocate of Freethought, saw also the founding of the Theosophical Society to which my Freethought was to lead me.  I have often since thought with pleasure that at the very time I began lecturing in England, H.P.  Blavatsky was at work in the United States, preparing the foundation on which in November, 1875, the Theosophical Society was to be raised.  And with deeper pleasure yet have I found her writing of what she called the noble work against superstition done by Charles Bradlaugh and myself, rendering the propaganda of Theosophy far more practicable and safer than it would otherwise have been.  The fight soon began, and with some queer little skirmishes.  I was a member of the “Liberal Social Union,” and one night a discussion arose as to the admissibility of Atheists to the Society.  Dr. Zerffi declared that he would not remain a member if avowed Atheists were admitted.  I promptly declared that I was an Atheist, and that the basis of the union was liberty of opinion.  The result was that I found myself cold-shouldered, and those that had been warmly cordial to me merely as a non-Christian looked askance at me when I had avowed that my scepticism had advanced beyond their “limits of religious thought.”  The Liberal Social Union soon knew me no more, but in the wider field of work open before me, the narrow-mindedness of this petty clique troubled me not at all.

I started my definite lecturing work at South Place Chapel in January, 1875, Mr. Moncure D. Conway presiding for me, and I find in the National Reformer for January 17th, the announcement that “Mrs. Annie Besant (’Ajax’) will lecture at South Place Chapel, Finsbury, on ‘Civil and Religious Liberty.’” Thus I threw off my pseudonym, and rode into the field of battle with uplifted visor.  The identification led to an odd little exhibition of bigotry.  I had been invited by the Dialectical Society to read a paper, and had selected for subject, “The Existence of God.” (It may be noted, in passing, that young students and speakers always select the most tremendous subjects for their discourses.  One advances in modesty as one advances in knowledge, and after eighteen years of platform work, I am far more dubious than I was at their beginning as to my power of dealing in any sense adequately with the problems of life.) The Dialectical Society had for some years held their meetings in a room in Adam Street, rented from the Social Science Association.  When the members gathered as usual on February 17th, the door was found to be locked, and they had to gather on the stairs; they found that “Ajax’s” as yet undelivered paper was too much for Social Science nerves, and that entrance to their ordinary meeting-room was then and thenceforth denied them.  So they, with “Ajax,” found refuge at the Charing Cross Hotel, and speculated merrily on the eccentricities of religious bigotry.