Eighty Years and More; Reminiscences 1815-1897
summer residence of Lord and Lady Carlisle and their ten children. So
large a family in high life is unusual. As I had known Lord and Lady
Amberley in America, when they visited this country in 1867, I enjoyed
meeting other members of their family. Lady Carlisle is in favor of
woman suffrage and frequently speaks in public. She is a woman of great
force of character, and of very generous impulses. She is trying to do
her duty in sharing the good things of life with the needy. The poor for
miles round often have picnics in her park, and large numbers of
children from manufacturing towns spend weeks with her cottage tenants
at her expense. Lord Carlisle is an artist and a student. As he has a
poetical temperament and is aesthetic in all his tastes, Lady Carlisle
is the business manager of the estate. She is a practical woman with
immense executive ability. The castle with its spacious dining hall and
drawing rooms, with its chapel, library, galleries of paintings and
statuary, its fine outlook, extensive gardens and lawns was well worth
seeing. We enjoyed our visit very much and discussed every imaginable
subject.
When we returned to Basingstoke we had a visit from Mrs. Cobb, the wife
of a member of Parliament, and sister-in-law of Karl Pearson, whose
lectures on woman I had enjoyed so much. It was through reading his
work, "The Ethic of Free Thought," that the Matriarchate made such a
deep impression on my mind and moved me to write a tract on the subject.
People who have neither read nor thought on this point, question the
facts as stated by Bachofen, Morgan, and Wilkeson; but their truth, I
think, cannot be questioned. They seem so natural in the chain of
reasoning and the progress of human development. Mrs. Cobb did a very
good thing a few days before visiting us. At a great meeting called to
promote Mr. Cobb's election, John Morley spoke. He did not even say
"Ladies and gentlemen" in starting, nor make the slightest reference to
the existence of such beings as women. When he had finished, Mrs. Cobb
arose mid great cheering and criticised his speech, making some
quotations from his former speeches of a very liberal nature. The
audience laughed and cheered, fully enjoying the rebuke. The next day in
his speech he remembered his countrywomen, and on rising said, "Ladies
and gentlemen."
During August, 1891, I was busy getting ready for my voyage, as I was to
sail on the _Ems_ on August 23. Although I had crossed the ocean six
times in the prior ten years I dreaded the voyage more than words can
describe. The last days were filled with sadness, in parting with those
so dear to me in foreign countries--especially those curly-headed little
girls, so bright, so pretty, so winning in all their ways. Hattie and
Theodore went with me from Southampton in the little tug to the great
ship _Ems_. It was very hard for us to say the last farewell, but we all
tried to be as brave as possible.
We had a rough voyage, but I was not seasick one moment. I was up and
dressed early in the morning, and on deck whenever the weather
permitted. I made many pleasant acquaintances with whom I played chess
and whist; wrote letters to all my foreign friends, ready to mail on
landing; read the "Egotist," by George Meredith, and Ibsen's plays as
translated by my friend Frances Lord. I had my own private stewardess, a
nice German woman who could speak English. She gave me most of my meals
on deck or in the ladies' saloon, and at night she would open the
porthole two or three times and air our stateroom; that made the nights
endurable. The last evening before landing we got up an entertainment
with songs, recitations, readings, and speeches. I was invited to
preside and introduce the various performers. We reached Sandy Hook the
evening of the 29th day of August and lay there all night, and the next
morning we sailed up our beautiful harbor, brilliant with the rays of
the rising sun.
Being fortunate in having children in both hemispheres, here, too, I
found a son and daughter waiting to welcome me to my native land. Our
chief business for many weeks was searching for an inviting apartment
where my daughter, Mrs. Stanton Lawrence, my youngest son, Bob, and I
could set up our family altar and sing our new psalm of life together.
After much weary searching we found an apartment. Having always lived in
a large house in the country, the quarters seemed rather contracted at
first, but I soon realized the immense saving in labor and expense in
having no more room than is absolutely necessary, and all on one floor.
To be transported from the street to your apartment in an elevator in
half a minute, to have all your food and fuel sent to your kitchen by an
elevator in the rear, to have your rooms all warmed with no effort of
your own, seemed like a realization of some fairy dream. With an
extensive outlook of the heavens above, of the Park and the Boulevard
beneath, I had a feeling of freedom, and with a short flight of stairs
to the roof (an easy escape in case of fire), of safety, too.
No sooner was I fully established in my eyrie, than I was summoned to
Rochester, by my friend Miss Anthony, to fill an appointment she had
made for me with Miss Adelaide Johnson, the artist from Washington, who
was to idealize Miss Anthony and myself in marble for the World's Fair.
I found my friend demurely seated in her mother's rocking-chair hemming
table linen and towels for her new home, anon bargaining with butchers,
bakers, and grocers, making cakes and puddings, talking with enthusiasm
of palatable dishes and the beauties of various articles of furniture
that different friends had presented her. All there was to remind one of
the "Napoleon of the Suffrage Movement" was a large escritoire covered
with documents in the usual state of confusion--Miss Anthony never could
keep her papers in order. In search of any particular document she roots
out every drawer and pigeon hole, although her mother's little spinning
wheel stands right beside her desk, a constant reminder of all the
domestic virtues of the good housewife, with whom "order" is of the
utmost importance and "heaven's first law." The house was exquisitely
clean and orderly, the food appetizing, the conversation pleasant and
profitable, and the atmosphere genial.
A room in an adjoining house was assigned to Miss Johnson and myself,
where a strong pedestal and huge mass of clay greeted us. And there, for
nearly a month, I watched the transformation of that clay into human
proportions and expressions, until it gradually emerged with the
familiar facial outlines ever so dear to one's self. Sitting there four
or five hours every day I used to get very sleepy, so my artist
arranged for a series of little naps. When she saw the crisis coming she
would say: "I will work now for a time on the ear, the nose, or the
hair, as you must be wide awake when I am trying to catch the
expression." I rewarded her for her patience and indulgence by summoning
up, when awake, the most intelligent and radiant expression that I could
command. As Miss Johnson is a charming, cultured woman, with liberal
ideas and brilliant in conversation, she readily drew out all that was
best in me.
Before I left Rochester, Miss Anthony and her sister Mary gave a
reception to me at their house. As some of the professors and trustees
of the Rochester University were there, the question of co-education was
freely discussed, and the authorities urged to open the doors of the
University to the daughters of the people. It was rather aggravating to
contemplate those fine buildings and grounds, while every girl in that
city must go abroad for higher education. The wife of President Hill of
the University had just presented him with twins, a girl and a boy, and
he facetiously remarked, "that if the Creator could risk placing sexes
in such near relations, he thought they might with safety walk on the
same campus and pursue the same curriculum together."
Miss Anthony and I went to Geneva the next day to visit Mrs. Miller and
to meet, by appointment, Mrs. Eliza Osborne, the niece of Lucretia Mott,
and eldest daughter of Martha C. Wright. We anticipated a merry meeting,
but Miss Anthony and I were so tired that we no doubt appeared stupid.
In a letter to Mrs. Miller afterward, Mrs. Osborne inquired why I was
"so solemn." As I pride myself on being impervious to fatigue or
disease, I could not own up to any disability, so I turned the tables on
her in the following letter:
"New York, 26 West 61st Street,
November 12, 1891.
"Dear Eliza:
"In a recent letter to Mrs. Miller, speaking of the time when we
last met, you say, 'Why was Mrs. Stanton so solemn?' to which I
reply: Ever since an old German emperor issued an edict, ordering
all the women under that flag to knit when walking on the highway,
when selling apples in the market place, when sitting in the parks,
because 'to keep women out of mischief their hands must be busy,'
ever since I read that, I have felt 'solemn' whenever I have seen
any daughters of our grand Republic knitting, tatting,
embroidering, or occupied with any of the ten thousand digital
absurdities that fill so large a place in the lives of Eve's
daughters.
"Looking forward to the scintillations of wit, the philosophical
researches, the historical traditions, the scientific discoveries,
the astronomical explorations, the mysteries of theosophy,
palmistry, mental science, the revelations of the unknown world
where angels and devils do congregate, looking forward to
discussions of all these grand themes, in meeting the eldest
daughter of David and Martha Wright, the niece of Lucretia Mott,
the sister-in-law of William Lloyd Garrison, a queenly-looking
woman five feet eight in height, and well proportioned, with
glorious black eyes, rivaling even De Staël's in power and pathos,
one can readily imagine the disappointment I experienced when such
a woman pulled a cotton wash rag from her pocket and forthwith
began to knit with bowed head. Fixing her eyes and concentrating
her thoughts on a rag one foot square; it was impossible for
conversation to rise above the wash-rag level! It was enough to
make the most aged optimist 'solemn' to see such a wreck of
glorious womanhood.
"And, still worse, she not only knit steadily, hour after hour, but
she bestowed the sweetest words of encouragement on a young girl
from the Pacific Coast, who was embroidering rosebuds on another
rag, the very girl I had endeavored to rescue from the maelstrom of
embroidery, by showing her the unspeakable folly of giving her
optic nerves to such base uses, when they were designed by the
Creator to explore the planetary world, with chart and compass to
guide mighty ships across the sea, to lead the sons of Adam with
divinest love from earth to heaven. Think of the great beseeching
optic nerves and muscles by which we express our admiration of all
that is good and glorious in earth and heaven, being concentrated
on a cotton wash rag! Who can wonder that I was 'solemn' that day!
I made my agonized protest on the spot, but it fell unheeded, and
with satisfied sneer Eliza knit on, and the young Californian
continued making the rosebuds. I gazed into space, and, when alone,
wept for my degenerate countrywoman. I not only was 'solemn' that
day, but I am profoundly 'solemn' whenever I think of that queenly
woman and that cotton wash rag. (One can buy a whole dozen of these
useful appliances, with red borders and fringed, for twenty-five
cents.) Oh, Eliza, I beseech you, knit no more!