Читать книгу The Life & Work of Susan B. Anthony - Ida Husted Harper - Страница 13

Table of Contents

Winter canvass of New York; extract from Rondout Courier; letter from Greeley on Woman Suffrage; another proposal; applying the "water cure;" hot meal for husbands, cold bite for wives; marriages of Lucy Stone and Antoinette Brown; speaking at birthplace; Saratoga Convention; goes to Worcester Hydropathic Institute; her letters from Boston and Worcester; first Republican meeting; treatment at "water cure;" letter from Dr. Rogers on marriage; takes out life insurance.

Miss Anthony left home on Christmas Day, 1854, and held her first meeting at Mayville, Chautauqua Co., the afternoon and evening of the 26th. On her expense account is the item: "56 cents for four pounds of candles to light the courthouse." The weather was cold and damp and the audiences small, although people were present from eight towns, attracted by curiosity to hear a woman. At the evening session a "York shilling" admittance fee was charged. At Sherman, the next evening, there was a large audience and the diary says: "I never saw more enthusiasm on the subject; even the orthodox churches vied with each other as to which should open its doors."

The plan adopted was to hold these meetings every other day, allowing for the journey from place to place; but whenever distances would permit, one was held on the intervening day. Occasionally Miss Anthony had the assistance of another speaker, but more than half the meetings were conducted with the little local help she could secure. In the afternoon she would read half of her one and only speech and try to form a society, but there was scarcely a woman to be found who would accept the presidency. In the evening she would read the other half, sell as many tracts as possible and secure names to the petitions. In almost every instance she found the sheriff had put up her posters, inserted notices in the papers, had them read in the churches and prepared the courthouse for her. From only one of the sixty counties did she receive an insulting reply to her letters, and this was from Schoharie. The postmasters also pasted her hand-bills in a conspicuous place, and they were a source of much amusement and comment. Most of the towns never had been visited by a woman speaker, and wagon-loads of people would come from miles around to see the novelty. The audiences were cold but respectful and, as a rule, she was treated decently by the county papers. Occasionally a smart editor would get off the joke about her relationship to Mark Antony, which even then had become threadbare, and invariably the articles would begin, "While we do not agree with the theories which the lady advocates." Most of them, however, paid high tribute to her ability as a speaker and to the clearness, logic and force of her arguments. A quotation from the Rondout Courier will illustrate:

At the appointed hour a lady, unattended and unheralded, quietly glided in and ascended the platform. She was as easy and self-possessed as a lady should always be when performing a plain duty, even under 600 curious eyes. Her situation would have been trying to a non-self-reliant woman, for there was no volunteer co-operator. The custodian of the hall, with his stereotyped stupidity, had dumped some tracts and papers on the platform. The unfriended Miss Anthony gathered them up composedly, placed them on a table disposedly, put her decorous shawl on one chair and a very exemplary bonnet on another, sat a moment, smoothed her hair discreetly, and then deliberately walked to the table and addressed the audience. She wore a becoming black silk dress, gracefully draped and made with a basque waist. She appears to be somewhere about the confines of the fourth luster in age, of pleasing rather than pretty features, decidedly expressive countenance, rich brown hair very effectively and not at all elaborately arranged, neither too tall nor too short, too plump nor too thin—in brief one of those juste milieu persons, the perfection of common sense physically exhibited. Miss Anthony's oratory is in keeping with all her belongings, her voice well modulated and musical, her enunciation distinct, her style earnest and impressive, her language pure and unexaggerated.

Judging from other friendly notices this must be an accurate description of Miss Anthony at the age of thirty-five. The experiment of a woman on the platform was too new, however, and the doctrines she advocated too unpopular for it to be possible that she should receive fair treatment generally, and there were few papers which described her in as unprejudiced a manner as the one quoted. A letter from her father during this trip said: "Would it not be wise to preserve the many and amusing observations by the different papers, that years hence, in your more solitary moments, you and maybe your children can look over the views of both the friends and opponents of the cause?" This was the beginning of the scrap books carefully kept up for nearly half a century.

The journal for that year gives a detailed account of the hardships of this winter, one of the coldest and snowiest on record. Many towns were off the railroad and could be reached only by sleigh. After a long ride she would be put for the night into a room without a fire, and in the morning would have to break the ice in the pitcher to take that sponge bath from head to foot which she never omitted. All that she hoped from a financial standpoint was to pay the expenses of the trip, and had she desired fame or honor, she would not have sought it in these remote villages. The diary relates:

At Olean, not a church or schoolhouse could be obtained for the lecture and it would have had to be abandoned had not the landlord, Mr. Comstock, given the use of his dining-room....

At Angelica, nine towns represented; crowded house, courtroom carpeted with sawdust. A young Methodist minister gave his name for the petition, but one of his wealthy parishioners told him he should leave the church unless it was withdrawn....

At Corning, none of the ministers would give the notice of our meeting, which so incensed some of the men that they went to the printing office, struck off handbills and had boys standing at the door of the churches as the people passed out. Who was responsible for the Sabbath breaking?...

At Elmira, took tea at Mrs. Holbrook's with Rev. Thomas K. Beecher. His theology, as set forth that evening, is a dark and hopeless one. He sees no hope for the progress of the race, does not believe that education even will improve the species. I find great apathy wherever the clergy are opposed to the advancement of women.

In February Miss Anthony suspended her canvass long enough to go to Albany to the State convention and present the petitions. In response to her request to be present Horace Greeley wrote: "You know already that I am thoroughly committed to the principle that woman shall decide for herself whether she shall have a voice and vote in legislation or shall continue to be represented and legislated for exclusively by man. My own judgment is that woman's presence in the arena of politics would be useful and beneficent but I do not assume to judge for her. She must consider, determine and act for herself. Moreover, when she shall in earnest have resolved that her own welfare and that of the race will be promoted by her claiming a voice in the direction of civil government, as I think she ultimately will do, then the day of her emancipation will be very near. That day, I will hope yet to see."

Her mission accomplished, Miss Anthony plunged again into the ice and snow of northern New York. At Albany a wealthy and cultured Quaker gentleman had been an attentive and interested listener, and when she took the stage a few days later at Lake George, she found not only that he was to be her fellow-passenger, but that he had a thick plank heated, which he asked permission to place under her feet. Whenever the stage stopped he had it re-heated, and in many ways added to the comfort of her journey. At the close of the next meeting to her surprise she found his fine sleigh waiting filled with robes and drawn by two spirited gray horses, and he himself drove her to his own beautiful home presided over by a sister, where she spent Sunday. In this same luxurious conveyance she was taken to several towns and, during one of these trips, was urged in the most earnest manner to give up the hard life she was leading and accept the ease and protection he could offer. But her heart made no response to this appeal while it did urge her strongly to continue in her chosen work.

All through the Schroon Lake country the snow was over the fences and the weather bitterly cold. At Plattsburg, Miss Anthony was a guest at Judge Watson's. Before leaving Rochester she had had a pair of high boots made to protect her from the deep snows, which were so much heavier than she was accustomed to that they almost ruined her feet. She was at that time an ardent convert to the "water cure" theories and, after suffering tortures from one foot especially, she came home from the afternoon meeting, put it under the "penstock" in the kitchen and let the cold water run over it till it was perfectly numb, then Crapped it up in flannels. That evening it did not hurt her a particle, and concluding that what was good for one foot must be good for two, she put both under the "penstock" till they were almost congealed. In the morning she scarcely could get out of bed, all the pain having settled in her back, but in spite of protests from the family she resumed her journey. All the way to Malone, she had to hold fast to the seat in front of her to relieve as much as possible the motion of the cars. She managed to conduct her afternoon and evening meetings, and then went on to Ogdensburg, where she stopped with a cousin. The next morning she hardly could move and the women of the family had to help her make her toilet. Nothing they could say would persuade her to remain; she was advertised to speak at Canton and proposed to do it if she were alive, so she was carried out, put into a sleigh and driven seventeen miles actually doubled up with her head on her knees. She finished the two meetings and then resolved on heroic measures. Arising at 4 A.M. she rode in a stage to within ten miles of Watertown, took the cars to that city and went to a hotel. Here she ordered the chambermaid to bring several buckets of ice water into her room and, sitting down in a tub, she had them poured on her back, then wrapping up in hot blankets went to bed. The next morning she was apparently well and held her meetings.

At Auburn, Mrs. Stanton came over from Seneca Falls to assist and they were entertained by Martha C. Wright. As a usual thing Miss Anthony stopped at a hotel but after the first session some one in her audience would be so pleased with her that she was sure to be invited into a comfortable home for the rest of her stay. One cold spring day she was to speak at Riverhead, L.I. Reaching the courthouse, at 1 o'clock, she found it swept and garnished and a good fire but not a person in sight except the janitor; so she sat down and waited and finally one man after another dropped in, until there were perhaps a dozen. Not at all discouraged, she began her speech. Presently the door opened a little and she saw a woman's bonnet peep in but it was quickly withdrawn. This was repeated a number of times but not one ventured in. Whether each woman saw her own husband and was afraid to enter, or whether she did not dare face the other women's husbands, there was not one in the audience. The men heard her through, bought her tracts and signed the petition. Having decided there was nothing dangerous about her, they came back in the evening, bringing their wives and neighbors.

She closed her campaign May 1, having made a thorough canvass of fifty-four counties, during which she sold 20,000 pamphlets. The total receipts for the four months were $2,367, and the expenses were $2,291, leaving a balance of $76. Out of this she sent Mr. Phillips the $50 he had advanced, but he returned it saying he thought she had earned it.

The diary relates that it was the common practice in those days for the husband, upon coming to an eating station, to go in and get a hot dinner, while the wife sat in the car and ate a cold lunch. It tells of an old farmer who came with his wife to her lecture and went into the dining-room for the best meal the tavern afforded, while the wife sat in the parlor and nibbled a little food she had brought with her. Miss Anthony and her companions were the only women who dared go out when the train stopped, to walk up and down for air and exercise, and they were considered very bold for so doing.

In 1855, to Miss Anthony's great regret, Lucy Stone and Antoinette Brown were married. Both were very active in the reforms of the day, and there was such a dearth of effective workers she felt that they could ill be spared. Their semi-apologetic letters and her half-sorrowful, half-indignant remonstrances are both amusing and pathetic. They assure her that marriage will make no difference with their work, that it will only give them more power and earnestness. She knew from observation that the married woman who attempts to do public work must neglect either it or home duties, and that the advent of children necessarily must compel the mother to withdraw practically from outside occupation. She was not opposed to marriage per se, but she felt that such women as Lucy Stone and Antoinette Brown might make a sacrifice and consecrate themselves to the great needs of the world which were demanding the services of the ablest women.

In May Miss Anthony went as usual to the Anti-Slavery Anniversary. In regard to this her father wrote: "Were I in your place I should like to attend these anniversaries. The women are soon to have their rights and should there be any slavery left in the world after they are liberated, it should be your business to help clear it out." Very few of those who were actively engaged in the effort to secure equal rights for women had the slightest conception of the half century and more of long and steady work before them. To their minds the demand seemed so evident, so just and so forcible, that prejudice and opposition must yield in a short time and the foundation principles of the government be established in fact as well as in theory.

From New York she went to her birthplace, Adams, Mass., and spoke in the Baptist church. Just as she began, to her amazement, her Quaker grandfather eighty-five years old came up the aisle and sat down on the pulpit steps. While he had been very anxious that she should speak and that her lecture should be well advertised she had not expected him to be present, as he was not in the habit of entering an orthodox church. She stopped at once, gave him her hand and assisted him to a seat in the pulpit, where he listened with deep interest. When she finished he said: "Well, Susan, that is a smart talk thee has given us tonight."

After Miss Anthony returned home, outraged nature asserted itself and at every moment the pain in her back was excruciating. She went to a doctor for the first time in her life and was given a fly-blister and some drugs to put in whiskey. The last two she threw away but applied the blister, which only increased her misery. She suffered terribly all summer but was busy every moment writing a new speech and sending out scores of letters for a second woman's rights convention which had been called to meet at Saratoga in August. Most of the replies were favorable. T.W. Higginson wrote: "With great pleasure will I come to Saratoga Springs on August 15 and 16. It is a capital idea to have a convention there, coax in some curious fashionables and perhaps make those who come to scoff, remain to pray." Lucretia Mott sent a letter full of good cheer. From Mrs. Stanton, overwhelmed with the cares of many little children, came this pathetic message: "I can not go. I have so many drawbacks to all my efforts for women that every step is one of warfare, but there is a good time coming and I am strong and happy in hope. I long to see you, dear Susan, and hear of your wanderings."

Paulina Wright Davis said, in discussing the convention; "I get almost discouraged with women. They will work for men, but a woman must ride in triumph over everything before they will give her a word of aid or cheer; they are ready enough to take advantage of every step gained, but not ready to help further steps. When will they be truer and nobler? Not in our day, but we must work on for future generations." Lucy Stone, enjoying her honeymoon at the Blackwell home near Cincinnati, wrote in a playful mood: "When, after reading your letter, I asked my husband if I might go to Saratoga, only think of it! He did not give me permission, but told me to ask Lucy Stone. I can't get him to govern me at all.... The Washington Union, noticing our marriage, said: 'We understand that Mr. Blackwell, who last fall assaulted a southern lady and stole her slave, has lately married Miss Lucy Stone. Justice, though sometimes tardy, never fails to overtake her victim.' They evidently think him well punished.

With the old love and good will I am now and ever,

LUCY STONE (only)."

On the way to Saratoga Miss Anthony stopped at Utica for the State Teachers' Convention and was appointed to read a paper at the next annual meeting on "Educating the Sexes Together." This action showed considerable advance in sentiment during the two years since this same body at Rochester debated for half an hour whether a woman should be allowed to speak to a motion. She called the Woman's Rights Convention to order in Saratoga, August 15, 1855, and Martha C. Wright was made president. The brilliant array of speakers addressed cultured audiences gathered from all parts of the country at this fashionable resort. The newspapers were very complimentary; the Whig, however, declared, "The business of the convention was to advocate woman's right to do wrong." It was here that Mary L. Booth, afterwards for many years editor of Harper's Bazar, made her first public appearance, acting as secretary.

She decided to go for a while to the Worcester Hydropathic Institute conducted by her cousin, Dr. Seth Rogers, and she found here complete change and comparative rest, although occupying a great deal of her time in sending out tracts and petitions. Her account-books show the purchase of 600 one-cent stamps, each of which meant the addressing of an envelope with her own hand, and her letters to her father are full of directions for printing circulars, etc. She was, however, enabled to take some recreation, a thing almost unknown in her busy life. On September 18 she attended the Massachusetts Woman's Rights Convention, and wrote home:

I went into Boston with Lucy Stone and stopped at Francis Jackson's, where we found Antoinette Brown and Ellen Blackwell, a pleasant company in that most hospitable home. As this was my first visit to Boston, Mr. Jackson took us to see the sights; and then we dined with his daughter, Eliza J. Eddy, returning in the afternoon. In the evening, we attended a reception at Garrison's, where we met several of the literati, and were most heartily welcomed by Mrs. Garrison, a noble, self-sacrificing woman, loving and loved, surrounded with healthy, happy children in that model home. Mr. Garrison was omnipresent, now talking with and introducing guests, now soothing some child to sleep, and now, with his wife, looking after the refreshments. There we met Caroline H. Dall, Elizabeth Peabody, Mrs. McCready, the Shakespearian reader, Caroline M. Severance, Dr. Harriot K. Hunt, Charles F. Hovey, Wendell Phillips, Sarah Pugh and others. Having worshipped these distinguished people afar off, it was a great satisfaction to meet them face to face.

Saturday morning, with Mr. and Mrs. Garrison and Sarah Pugh, I visited Mount Auburn. What a magnificent resting-place! We could not find Margaret Fuller's monument, which I regretted. I spent Sunday with Charles Lenox Remond at Salem, and we drove to Lynn with his matchless steeds to hear Theodore Parker preach a sermon which filled our souls. We discussed its excellence at James Buffum's where we all dined. Monday Mr. Garrison escorted me to Charlestown; we stood on the very spot where Warren fell and mounted the interminable staircase to the top of Bunker Hill Monument. Then we called on Theodore Parker; found him up three nights of stairs in his library which covers that whole floor of his house; the room is lined with books to the very top—16,000 volumes—and there at a large table in the center of the apartment sat the great man himself. It really seemed audacious in me to be ushered into such a presence and on such a commonplace errand as to ask him to come to Rochester to speak in a course of lectures I am planning, but he received me with such kindness and simplicity that the awe I felt on entering was soon dissipated. I then called on Wendell Phillips in his sanctum for the same purpose. I have invited Ralph Waldo Emerson by letter and all three have promised to come. In the evening with Mr. Jackson's son James, Ellen Blackwell and I went to see Hamlet. In spite of my Quaker training, I find I enjoy all these worldly amusements intensely.

Returning to Worcester, I attended the Anti-Slavery Bazaar. I suppose there were many beautiful things exhibited, but I was so absorbed in the conversation of Mr. Higginson, Samuel May, Jr., Sarah Earle, cousin Seth Rogers and Stephen and Abby Foster, that I really forgot to take a survey of the tables. The next day Charles F. Hovey drove with me out to the home of the Fosters where we had a pleasant call.1

Miss Anthony visited a baby show but she considered it "a sad exhibition, unless it may be the crude and rude beginning of arousing an interest in the laws which govern the production of strong, healthy, beautiful children." She heard Mr. Higginson preach every Sunday, and of one sermon on the "Secret Springs of True Greatness" she writes home:

The minister read from the Book of Esdras in the Apocrypha. It is astonishing that such a beautiful and forcible exemplification of the governing principle of life should have been cast aside as doubtful by those who presumed to sit in judgment upon the revealed will of the Almighty. That they did fail to perceive in this the divine stamp, proves all the more conclusively to me that we, who have the experience of all past generations to enlighten our understanding and deepen our convictions, are infinitely more competent to discern between the good and evil in that wonderful book than were any king-appointed councils of olden times.

During Mr. Higginson's absence his place was filled by Rev. David A. Wasson, who was temporarily a resident of the "water cure." His sermons and his daily companionship were a revelation to Miss Anthony of a higher intellectual and spiritual life than she had known before, and she records in her diary: "It is plain to me now that it is not sitting under preaching that I dislike, but the fact that most of it is not of a stamp that my soul can respond to." While in Worcester she went to her first Republican meeting and heard John P. Hale. Her cousin escorted her to a seat on the platform and Mr. Hale gave her a cordial welcome. She was the only woman present, although several peeped in at the door but had not the courage to enter. She also heard Henry Wilson, Charles Sumner and Anson Burlingame, and writes: "Had the accident of birth given me place among the aristocracy of sex, I doubt not I should be an active, zealous advocate of Republicanism; unless, perchance, I had received that higher, holier light which would have lifted me to the sublime height where now stand Garrison, Phillips and all that small but noble band whose motto is 'No Union with Slaveholders.'"

She was at this time becoming deeply interested in politics but had not dreamed that she herself ever would enter the ranks of political speakers. In October she complains of her restlessness and her anxiety to go home, but she is not strong and knows it would be impossible to keep up the treatment there, so she says: "Because of this, and because of my great desire to be able to do what now seems my life work, I have decided to stay awhile longer." But in this same letter she adds: "If Merritt is sick and needs me I will go to him at once. My waking and sleeping thoughts are with him." This young brother had insisted upon going West to seek his fortune and was taken ill in Iowa. At one time when he asked for some money he had saved, and his father, thinking he was too young to be trusted, did not let him have it, Miss Anthony wrote: "It is too bad to treat him like a child. Let him make a blunder even; it will do much more to develop him than the judgment of father, mother and all the brothers and sisters. He ought to have the privilege, since it is clearly his right, to invest his money exactly as he pleases and I hope he will yet be trusted at least with his own funds."

To a woman who is publishing a paper and complains that her efforts are neither helped nor appreciated, she replies: "Every individual woman who launches into a work hitherto monopolized by men, must stand or fall in her own strength or weakness. Whatever we manufacture we must study to make it for the interest of the community to purchase. If we fail in this, we must improve the work.... Each of us individually has her own duties to perform and each of us alone must work out her life problem."

In October the National Woman's Rights Convention was held in Cincinnati but she was unable to attend. It was the only one she missed from 1852 until the breaking out of the war, when they were abandoned for a number of years, and she felt so distressed that she wrote to Rochester and persuaded her sister Mary to get leave of absence from school and go in her place. We know she has a very pretty bonnet this fall, for she says: "It is trimmed with dark green ribbon, striped with black and white, and for face trimming, lace and cherry and green flowers with the least speck of blue." She grieves because her married sisters never have time to write her, and says:

But so it is; every wife and mother must devote herself wholly to home duties, washing and cleaning, baking and mending—these are the must be's; the culture of the soul, the enlargement of the faculties, the thought of anything or anybody beyond the home and family are the may be's. When society is rightly organized, the wife and mother will have time, wish and will to grow intellectually, and will know that the limits of her sphere, the extent of her duties, are prescribed only by the measure of her ability.

Her daily treatment at the "water cure" is thus described: "First thing in the morning, dripping sheet; pack at 10 o'clock for forty-five minutes, come out of that and take a shower, followed by a sitz bath, with a pail of water at 75° poured over the shoulders, after which dry sheet and then, brisk exercise. At 4 P.M. the programme repeated, and then again at 9 P.M. My day is so cut up with four baths, four dressings and undressings, four exercisings, one drive and three eatings, that I do not have time to put two thoughts together." Miss Anthony recovered her health, either as a result of the treatment or of the rest and the long rides which she took daily with her cousin as he made his round of visits. While he was indoors she sat in the chaise enjoying the sunshine and fresh air and reading some interesting book. The journal shows that during the fall she read Sartor Resartus, Consuelo, bits from Gerald Massey, Villette, Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Bronte, Corinne, and a number of other works. Dr. Rogers, the intimate friend of Thoreau and Emerson, was a cultured gentleman, liberal in his views, strong in his opinions, yet tender, sympathetic and companionable. Many of his beautiful letters to Miss Anthony have been preserved. In speaking of political cowardice and corruption, he says: "Were it not for the thunder and lightning of the Garrisonians to purify the moral atmosphere, we would all sink into perdition together." His love of liberty is thus expressed:

I believe in the absolute freedom of every human being so long as the rights of others are left undisturbed. Conformity too often cuts down our stature and makes us Lilliputians, no longer units but unities. Help me to stand alone and I will help you to right the universe. Better, a thousand times better, that societies, friendships even, never were formed, that we all were Robinson Crusoes, than that the terrible tragedy of soul-annihilation through conformity be so conspicuous in the drama of human life. How many wives do you see who are not acting this tragedy? How many husbands who do not applaud? Hence degeneracy after marriage, more directly of the wife than the husband, but too often of both.

As soon as Miss Anthony reached home, the last of November, she began preparing for another winter campaign in the interest of the petitions, and also for a course of lectures to be given in Rochester by the prominent men of the day. Lucy Stone wrote her at this time: "Your letter full of plans reaches me here. I wish I lived near enough to catch some of your magnetism. For the first time in my life I feel, day after day, completely discouraged. When my Harry sent your letter to me he said, 'Susan wants you to write a tract, and I say, Amen.' When I go home I will see whether I have any faith in nay power to do it.... Susan, don't you lecture this winter on pain of my everlasting displeasure. I am going to retire from the field; and if you go to work too soon and kill yourself, the two wheelhorses will be gone and then the chariot will stop."

Arguments were of no avail, however, when the field was waiting and the workers few, and while Miss Anthony was ever ready to excuse others, she never spared herself. She decided before starting to take out a policy in the New York Life Insurance Company. The medical certificate given on December 18, 1855, by Dr. Edward M. Moore, the leading surgeon of western New York, read as follows: "Height, 5 ft. 5 in.; figure, full; chest measure 38 in.; weight, 156 lbs.; complexion, fair; habits, healthy and active; nervous affections, none; character of respiration, clear, resonant, murmur perfect; heart, normal in rhythm and valvular sound; pulse 66 per minute; disease, none. The life is a very good one." And so it has proved to be, as she has paid her premiums for over forty years.2

Just before she was ready to start on her long lecture tour in the interest of educational, civil and political rights for women, she received a letter, which was an entire surprise and added a new feature to the work to which she was devoting her time and energy.

1. At this Boston convention Ralph Waldo Emerson gave a flowery description of the changed condition when women should vote and the polls would be in a beautiful hall decorated with paintings, statuary, etc. The women were very much worried, fearing that the politicians would be frightened at the idea of so much respectability.

2. The president of the company, John A. McCall, in a personal letter, written December 21, 1897, just forty-two years afterwards, says: "That you may be spared for many, many years to your numerous friends and admirers is the wish of this company and its officials."