Eighty Years and More; Reminiscences 1815-1897
the fact that, at last, a woman had arisen brave enough to assert her
right to grow old and openly declare that half a century had rolled over
her head.
Of carefully prepared written speeches Miss Anthony has made few; but
these, by the high praise they called forth, prove that she can--in
spite of her own declaration to the contrary--put her sterling thoughts
on paper concisely and effectively. After her exhaustive plea, in 1880,
for a Sixteenth Amendment before the Judiciary Committee of the Senate,
Senator Edmunds accosted her, as she was leaving the Capitol, and said
he neglected to tell her, in the committee room, that she had made an
argument, no matter what his personal feelings were as to the
conclusions reached, which was unanswerable--an argument, unlike the
usual platform oratory given at hearings, suited to a committee of men
trained to the law.
It was in 1876 that Miss Anthony gave her much criticised lecture on
"Social Purity" in Boston. As to the result she felt very anxious; for
the intelligence of New England composed her audience, and it did not
still her heart-beats to see, sitting just in front of the platform, her
revered friend, William Lloyd Garrison. But surely every fear vanished
when she felt the grand old abolitionist's hand warmly pressing hers,
and heard him say that to listen to no one else would he have had
courage to leave his sick room, and that he felt fully repaid by her
grand speech, which neither in matter nor manner would he have changed
in the smallest particular. But into Miss Anthony's private
correspondence one must look for examples of her most effective writing.
Verb or substantive is often wanting, but you can always catch the
thought, and will ever find it clear and suggestive. It is a strikingly
strange dialect, but one that touches, at times, the deepest chords of
pathos and humor, and, when stirred by some great event, is highly
eloquent.
From being the most ridiculed and mercilessly persecuted woman, Miss
Anthony has become the most honored and respected in the nation. Witness
the praises of press and people, and the enthusiastic ovations she
received on her departure for Europe in 1883. Never were warmer
expressions of regret for an absence, nor more sincere prayers for a
speedy return, accorded to any American on leaving his native shores.
This slow awaking to the character of her services shows the abiding
sense of justice in the human soul. Having spent the winter of 1882-83
in Washington, trying to press to a vote the bill for a Sixteenth
Amendment before Congress, and the autumn in a vigorous campaign through
Nebraska, where a constitutional amendment to enfranchise women had been
submitted to the people, she felt the imperative need of an entire
change in the current of her thoughts. Accordingly, after one of the
most successful conventions ever held at the national capital, and a
most flattering ovation in the spacious parlors of the Riggs House, and
a large reception in Philadelphia, she sailed for Europe.
Fortunate in being perfectly well during the entire voyage, our traveler
received perpetual enjoyment in watching the ever varying sea and sky.
To the captain's merry challenge to find anything so grand as the ocean,
she replied, "Yes, these mighty forces in nature do indeed fill me with
awe; but this vessel, with deep-buried fires, powerful machinery,
spacious decks, and tapering masts, walking the waves like a thing of
life, and all the work of man, impresses one still more deeply. Lo! in
man's divine creative power is fulfilled the prophecy, 'Ye shall be as
Gods!'"
In all her journeyings through Germany, Italy, and France, Miss Anthony
was never the mere sight-seer, but always the humanitarian and reformer
in traveler's guise. Few of the great masterpieces of art gave her real
enjoyment. The keen appreciation of the beauties of sculpture, painting,
and architecture, which one would have expected to find in so deep a
religious nature, was wanting, warped, no doubt, by her early Quaker
training. That her travels gave her more pain than pleasure was,
perhaps, not so much that she had no appreciation of aesthetic beauty,
but that she quickly grasped the infinitude of human misery; not because
her soul did not feel the heights to which art had risen, but that it
vibrated in every fiber to the depths to which mankind had fallen.
Wandering through a gorgeous palace one day, she exclaimed, "What do you
find to admire here? If it were a school of five hundred children being
educated into the right of self-government I could admire it, too; but
standing for one man's pleasure, I say no!" In the quarters of one of
the devotees, at the old monastery of the Certosa, at Florence, there
lies, on a small table, an open book, in which visitors register. On the
occasion of Miss Anthony's visit the pen and ink proved so unpromising
that her entire party declined this opportunity to make themselves
famous, but she made the rebellious pen inscribe, "Perfect equality for
women, civil, political, religious. Susan B. Anthony, U.S.A." Friends,
who visited the monastery next day, reported that lines had been drawn
through this heretical sentiment.
During her visit at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Sargent, in Berlin, Miss
Anthony quite innocently posted her letters in the official envelopes of
our Suffrage Association, which bore the usual mottoes, "No just
government can be formed without the consent of the governed," etc. In a
few days an official brought back a large package, saying, "Such
sentiments are not allowed to pass through the post office." Probably
nothing saved her from arrest as a socialist, under the tyrannical
police regulations, but the fact that she was the guest of the Minister
Plenipotentiary of the United States.
My son Theodore wrote of Miss Anthony's visit in Paris: "I had never
before seen her in the role of tourist. She seemed interested only in
historical monuments, and in the men and questions of the hour. The
galleries of the Louvre had little attraction for her, but she gazed
with deep pleasure at Napoleon's tomb, Notre Dame, and the ruins of the
Tuileries. She was always ready to listen to discussions on the
political problems before the French people, the prospects of the
Republic, the divorce agitation, and the education of women. 'I had
rather see Jules Ferry than all the pictures of the Louvre, Luxembourg,
and Salon,' she remarked at table. A day or two later she saw Ferry at
Laboulaye's funeral. The three things which made the deepest impression
on Miss Anthony, during her stay at Paris, were probably the interment
of Laboulaye (the friend of the United States and of the woman
movement); the touching anniversary demonstration of the Communists, at
the Cemetery of Père La Chaise, on the very spot where the last
defenders of the Commune of 1871 were ruthlessly shot and buried in a
common grave; and a woman's rights meeting, held in a little hall in the
Rue de Rivoli, at which the brave, far-seeing Mlle. Hubertine Auchet was
the leading spirit."
While on the Continent Miss Anthony experienced the unfortunate
sensation of being deaf and dumb; to speak and not to be understood, to
hear and not to comprehend, were to her bitter realities. We can imagine
to what desperation she was brought when her Quaker prudishness could
hail an emphatic oath in English from a French official with the
exclamation, "Well, it sounds good to hear someone even swear in old
Anglo-Saxon!" After two months of enforced silence, she was buoyant in
reaching the British Islands once more, where she could enjoy public
speaking and general conversation. Here she was the recipient of many
generous social attentions, and, on May 25, a large public meeting of
representative people, presided over by Jacob Bright, was called, in our
honor, by the National Association of Great Britain. She spoke on the
educational and political status of women in America, I of their
religious and social position.
Before closing my friend's biography I shall trace two golden threads in
this closely woven life of incident. One of the greatest services
rendered by Miss Anthony to the suffrage cause was in casting a vote in
the Presidential election of 1872, in order to test the rights of women
under the Fourteenth Amendment. For this offense the brave woman was
arrested, on Thanksgiving Day, the national holiday handed down to us by
Pilgrim Fathers escaped from England's persecutions. She asked for a
writ of habeas corpus. The writ being flatly refused, in January, 1873,
her counsel gave bonds. The daring defendant finding, when too late,
that this not only kept her out of jail, but her case out of the Supreme
Court of the United States, regretfully determined to fight on, and gain
the uttermost by a decision in the United States Circuit Court. Her
trial was set down for the Rochester term in May. Quickly she canvassed
the whole county, laying before every probable juror the strength of her
case. When the time for the trial arrived, the District Attorney,
fearing the result, if the decision were left to a jury drawn from Miss
Anthony's enlightened county, transferred the trial to the Ontario
County term, in June, 1873.
It was now necessary to instruct the citizens of another county. In this
task Miss Anthony received valuable assistance from Matilda Joslyn Gage;
and, to meet all this new expense, financial aid was generously given,
unsolicited, by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Gerrit Smith, and other
sympathizers. But in vain was every effort; in vain the appeal of Miss
Anthony to her jurors; in vain the moral influence of the leading
representatives of the bar of Central New York filling the courtroom,
for Judge Hunt, without precedent to sustain him, declaring it a case of
law and not of fact, refused to give the case to the jury, reserving to
himself final decision. Was it not an historic scene which was enacted
there in that little courthouse in Canandaigua? All the inconsistencies
were embodied in that Judge, punctilious in manner, scrupulous in
attire, conscientious in trivialities, and obtuse on great principles,
fitly described by Charles O'Conor--"A very ladylike Judge." Behold him
sitting there, balancing all the niceties of law and equity in his Old
World scales, and at last saying, "The prisoner will stand up."
Whereupon the accused arose. "The sentence of the court is that you pay
a fine of one hundred dollars and the costs of the prosecution." Then
the unruly defendant answers: "May it please your Honor, I shall never
pay a dollar of your unjust penalty," and more to the same effect, all
of which she has lived up to. The "ladylike" Judge had gained some
insight into the determination of the prisoner; so, not wishing to
incarcerate her to all eternity, he added gently: "Madam, the court
will not order you committed until the fine is paid."
It was on the 17th of June that the verdict was given. On that very day,
a little less than a century before, the brave militia was driven back
at Bunker Hill--back, back, almost wiped out; yet truth was in their
ranks, and justice, too. But how ended that rebellion of weak colonists?
The cause of American womanhood, embodied for the moment in the liberty
of a single individual, received a rebuff on June 17, 1873; but, just as
surely as our Revolutionary heroes were in the end victorious, so will
the inalienable rights of our heroines of the nineteenth century receive
final vindication.
In his speech of 1880, before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard,
Wendell Phillips said--what as a rule is true--that "a reformer, to be
conscientious, must be free from bread-winning." I will open Miss
Anthony's accounts and show that this reformer, being, perhaps, the
exception which proves the rule, has been consistently and