MISS ANTHONY'S EUROPEAN LETTERS.
1883.
No pen so well as Miss Anthony's own, can describe her delightful tour
abroad, and although her letters were dashed off while travelling from
point to point, or at the close of a hard day's sight-seeing, and the
entries in the diary are a mere word, they tell in a unique way her
personal impressions. Because of limited space descriptions of scenery
will be omitted in order to leave room for opinions of people and
events.
ON BOARD THE BRITISH PRINCE, February 24.
MY DEAR MRS. SPOFFORD: Here we are at noon, Friday, steaming down
Delaware Bay. We got along nicely until 3 P. M. yesterday, when we
came to a standstill. "Stuck in the mud," was the report. There we
lay until eight, when with the incoming tide we made a fruitless
attempt to get over the bar; then had to steam back up the river to
anchor, and lie there until nine this morning--twenty-four hours
almost in sight of the loved ones! It is a break from all
fastenings to friends to be thus cut loose from the wharf and
wafted out into the waters. These long hours of delay have given me
time to think of those left behind, and how very far short I have
come of doing and saying all I should have done and said....
From the diary:
Feb. 24.--The weather lovely; saloon cozy and pleasant with piano,
flowers and canaries. There are only seven passengers, among them a
Catholic priest, a dear little three-year-old child and a baby. We
sent twenty letters on shore, written during the day we have been
detained.
Feb. 25.--Today dawns with no possibility of communicating with a
soul outside the ship, a lonely feeling indeed; but I am determined
to get all the good I can to mind and body out of this trip, and as
little harm as possible.
Feb. 26.--I sit at the captain's right hand at table. The sea is
perfectly smooth; I wonder if this broad expanse can be rolled up
into mountains.
4 P.M.--The wind and waves are beginning to roar. The priest shows
signs of surrender.
Mar. 2.--Sea calm and dishes no longer have to be fastened to
table. It seems like freedom again. I can think of nothing beyond
shipboard, can see no moves to be made when we reach Liverpool.
Mar. 4.--Winds fair, sea smooth, whole company at breakfast.
Captain Burton read the church service. Rachel played the piano and
led the singing.
ON BOARD THE BRITISH PRINCE, March 5.
MY DEAR SISTER MARY: At lunch the captain said, "I'll soon show you
land! It will be Mizzenhead, the farthest southwest point of
Ireland." This is the first pen put to paper since I wrote you at
the Delaware breakwater, eleven days ago. Think of it, oh, ye
scribbling fairies, almost two weeks and not a letter written by S.
B. A.!
Well, we are thus far and have had no more than what the sailors
call a "stiff breeze" and only two whiffs of that sort. Since
Thursday the weather has been lovely--bright sun and crisp air.
Rachel succumbed one night when the "stiff breeze" first opened
upon us, and I felt a little squalmy. The next morning a sudden
lurch of the ship took both feet from under me and I was flat on my
back. The following day while I was lying on a seat, reading and
half-dozing, the first I knew I was in a heap on the floor. Then I
learned it wasn't safe to lie down without a board fence in front.
Again, in the evening I had taken the one loose chair in the
saloon, drawn it under a lamp and seated myself very complacently
to read, when lo, I was pitched over as if propelled from a
ten-pounder! Three times and out--all in rapid succession--taught
me to trust not to myself at all, but always to something fast to
the ship. I haven't lost a meal during the whole trip. Another time
I should take a larger stock of oranges, lemons and other fruit.
3 P. M.--We have just been up on the bridge for a first sight of
the Emerald Isle. So long as there was no immediate prospect of
setting foot on land, I could get up no spirit to write or think. I
have worn the old velvet-trimmed black silk dress right through,
and it is pretty well salted. I should love to have Lucy and Louise
and Maud along on this trip, with sister Mary, too. What a jolly
lot of tramps we would make! Well, their one ray of hope is to
"pull through" the free academy and get on their own feet. There is
plenty of good in store for all who can bring themselves in line to
get it. Holding a dish right side up to catch the shower is the
work for each one of us. How much I do think and hope for the three
nieces now entering womanhood. For Susie B. Jr., and little Anna O.
and Gula, I shall think and hope by and by. As for the nephews, I
do not forget them, but they'll fight their way through somehow, as
have all boys before them....
Dinner is over and an hour's talk at table after it. The Englishman
Mr. Mullinor, summed up: "Your country will come to ruin from such
doctrines as you woman's rights folks advocate;" and I have put the
case to him to the best of my sea-brain's ability. This is the very
first time I have let my tongue loose. We expect to be in Liverpool
tomorrow early, and then I will write you. Just take it for granted
all is well with me, and I will try to do the same with you.
Miss Anthony found at Liverpool a cordial letter from Mrs. A. A.
Sargent, whose husband was now United States Minister to Germany. She
welcomed her to Europe, saying: "You always have the entree to our home
and hearts. Come and stay as long as you will." A note from Mrs. Stanton
to her "beloved Susan" said: "I came up to London the moment I heard of
the arrival of the British Prince. To think of your choosing a 'Prince'
when a 'Queen' was coming! I am on the tiptoe of expectation to meet
you.... I write in the suffrage rooms surrounded with ladies."
A week later the diary records: "Left London at 10 A. M. for Rome,
Rachel and self, also Hattie Daniels, Alice Blatch and Mrs. Fanny
Keartland, five in all, three of the Eagle and two of the Lion, each
glorying in her own nationality!"
ROME, NO. 75 VIA NAZIONALE, March 22.
MY DEAR SISTER: Here it is a whole month tomorrow since we took a
last glimpse of each other and scarce a decent letter have I
written you; but it is fearfully hard work to find the minutes.
There is so much to tell, and the spelling and pronunciation of the
names are so perfectly awful.... At Liverpool we drove two hours in
the Princess and Sefton parks and then went to the city museum,
where the most interesting things to us were the portraits of all
the Bonapartes--men and women, old and young--Josephine's very
lovely; and to the city library, which is free. There is also an
immense free lecture hall, which was built for an aquarium but
found impracticable, so it is an enormous circle, seated from the
circumference down to the center, with a large platform at one side
and every step and seat cut out of solid stone. Here the most
learned men of the English colleges give free lectures, the city
fund being ample to meet all expenses. The librarian, on hearing we
were Americans, took great pains to show us everything. Of course
when he said, "We have over 80,000 volumes," I asked, "Have you
among them the History of Woman Suffrage, by Mesdames Stanton,
etc., of America?" And lo, he had never heard of it!
Thursday morning we took train--second-class carriage--for London.
Mrs. Stanton was at the station, her face beaming and her white
curls as lovely as ever, and we were soon landed at our
boarding-house. Lydia Becker came to dinner by Mrs. Stanton's
invitation, so she was the first of England's suffrage women for us
to meet. Friday afternoon we glanced into the House of Commons and
happened to see Gladstone presenting some motion. Spent the evening
chatting with Mrs. Stanton--a world of things to talk over....
Saturday we went again to Bayswater to see Mrs. Rose--found her
very lonely because of the death of her devoted husband a year ago.
She threw her arms around my neck and her first words were: "O,
that my heart would break now and you might close my eyes, dear
Susan!" She is vastly more isolated in England because of her
non-Christian views than she ever was in America. Sectarianism
sways everything here more now than fifty years ago with us.
That afternoon I left for Basingstoke, the new home of darling
Harriot Stanton, now with Blatch suffixed. Her husband is a fine
specimen of a young Englishman of thirty. Sunday morning he took me
in a dog-cart through two gentlemen's parks, a pleasant drive
through pasture and woodland, thousands of acres enclosed by a
stone wall. When I said, "What a shame that all these acres should
thus lie waste, while myriads of poor people are without an inch of
ground whereon to set foot," he replied: "They would be no better
off if all should be cut up into forty-acre farms and divided among
the poor, for no man could possibly support a family upon one. The
owners of these parks are actually reduced to poverty trying to
keep them up." So you see it is of no use to talk of giving every
Englishman a farm, when the land is so poor no one can make a
living off of it. Of course this is not true of all England, but
evidently its inhabitants must be fed from other countries. On our
return I was conducted through the garden and green-house of Mr.
Blatch's father, where I saw peach trees in blossom and grape vines
budding. The tree-trunks were not larger than my arm and I
exclaimed, "How many peaches can you get off these little trees?"
"Why, last year, we had 250," said he. How is that by the side of
our old farm harvest of 1,000 trees? And yet these English people
talk as if they raised fruit!...
The next day I returned to London and Mrs. Stanton and I called on
Rev. William Henry Channing at the West End, and had a two hours'
chat with him.... He was very cordial and on our leaving said, "I
can't tell you how grateful I am for this interview. You have my
blessing and benediction;" so we were glad at heart. Mr. Channing
loves America above all other countries and feels it was a mistake
for him to have left it. His elder daughter is the wife of Edwin
Arnold. March 12 we dined with the son-in-law of William Ashurst,
the friend of Wm. Lloyd Garrison--Mr. Biggs, and his four
daughters. Caroline Ashurst Biggs, the second, is the editor of the
Englishwoman's Review and one of the leading suffrage women of
England.
[Illustration: Autograph: "Very sincerely yours, Caroline A. Biggs."]
After dinner some twenty ladies and gentlemen came in and we had a
delightful evening, but such a continual serving of refreshments!
[Illustration: Mentia Taylor (Signed: "Yours very sincerely Mentia
Taylor")]
Tuesday morning I went again to Mrs. Rose's and finding her
bonneted and cloaked for a chair ride, I walked beside her, holding
her hand, through Kensington Park. I hope and almost believe she
will go back to America with me. I feel sure that we, who have not
forgotten her early and wonderful work for woman and for freedom
of thought, will do all in our power to smooth her last days....
That evening Rachel and I went to see Irving and Ellen Terry in
Much Ado About Nothing. The painting and the lights and shadows of
the scenery were lovely, and I suppose the acting was good, but I
can not enjoy love and flirtation exhibited on the stage any more
than off. All passional demonstrations seem to belong to the two
concerned, not to other persons. The lovemaking, however, was
cooler, more distant and more piquant than usual.
Wednesday afternoon Mrs. Rebecca Moore, our old Revolution
correspondent, took me to a meeting at Mrs. Mueller's, about the
Contagious Diseases Acts--fifty or sixty ladies present--was
introduced, and several invited me to speak for them when I
returned to London. Miss Rye, who has made between thirty and forty
trips across the Atlantic with little girls, taking over more than
10,000 and placing them in good homes in Canada, was there and
spoke. She said all her efforts could accomplish nothing in
thinning out the more than 1,000,000 surplus women of the island.
Not one seemed to dare speak out the whole of the facts and
philosophy. Each promised, "I will not shock you by calling the
names," etc. Mrs. Peter Taylor's reception that evening was an
unusually brilliant affair. She is looked upon as the mother of the
English movement, as Mrs. Stanton is of the American. She is a
magnificent woman and acted the part of hostess most gracefully.
Her husband is a member of Parliament. At eleven we went home and
packed our trunks to be off for Rome on the morrow, half-regretting
that we had planned to leave London....
ROME, March 23.
MY DEAR SISTER: It is noon--Good Friday--and just set in for a
steady rain, so I will give you the goings, seeings and sayings of
our company since leaving London.... We started from Victoria
Station--second-class carriage, no sleeper--for a three days' and
two nights' journey to Rome. It looked appalling, even to so old a
traveller as myself, but I inwardly said, "I can stand it if the
younger ones can." The crossing of the straits of Dover was rough,
the sea dashing over the sides of the boat, but Rachel and I went
through the two hours without a quaver. At Calais we had the same
good luck as at London--a compartment of the car all to ourselves.
Here we were to be settled without change for that night and the
next day, so with bags and shawl-straps, bundles, lunch-baskets and
a peck of oranges, we adjusted ourselves. We breakfasted at Basle,
after having pillowed on each other for the night as best we could.
Now we were in the midst of the Jura mountains, and all day long we
wound up and down their snowy sides and around the beautiful lakes
nestling at their feet--through innumerable tunnels, one of them,
the St. Gothard, taking twenty-three minutes--over splendid bridges
and along lovely brooks and rivers.
We arrived at Milan at 7:50 P. M., when even the bravest of our
party voted to stop over twenty-four hours and try the virtues of a
Christian bed. Rachel and I shared a large old-fashioned room with
a soap-stone stove, where we had a wood-fire built at once.
(Remember that all the houses have marble floors and stairs, and
are plastered on the stone walls, so they seem like perfect
cellars.) We had two single bedsteads (I haven't seen any other
sort on the continent) with the same bedclothes covering both. Our
big room was lighted with just two candles! We "slept solid" till 8
A. M., when Rachel got out her Italian phrase-book, rang the bell
and ordered a fire and hot water.
After fairly good steak and coffee, we five began a day of steady
sight-seeing.... In the evening we went to the station, and here
found a wood-fire in a fireplace and monstrous paintings of Christ
and the saints on the walls. All who had trunks had now to pay for
every pound's weight. I had brought only my big satchel and
shawl-strap. We were not so fortunate as to find a compartment to
ourselves but had two ladies added to our number, while four or
five men in the next one smoked perpetually and the fumes came over
into ours. We growled but that availed nothing, as men here have
the right of way. At Genoa the ladies left us--midnight--and two
men took their places. These proved to be seafarers and could talk
English, so we learned quite a bit from them. At ten we were halted
and rushed in to breakfast. Sunday afternoon we reached the Eternal
City and came direct to the Pension Chapman, tired and hungry, but
later went to St. John's Cathedral to vespers.... After dinner we
were glad to lay ourselves away. We have a pleasant room, with
windows opening upon a broad court and lovely garden and fountain.
Monday we drove around the city for bird's-eye views from famous
points. Such wonders of ruins upon ruins!
Sunday Evening.--It is of no avail that I try and try to write-when
the sight-seeing is done for the day I am too tired.... Last
evening the Coliseum was illuminated--a weird, wonderful sight.
Today, Easter Sunday, I have seen crowds of people reverently
kissing St. Peter's big toe. Tomorrow we go to Naples for a week
and then return and finish Rome.
NAPLES, March 27.
Here we are, Rachel and I, at the Pension Brittanique, far up a
high hill, in a room overlooking the beautiful bay of Naples. It is
lovely, lovely! The little island of Capri, the city, the bold
shores and mountain setting--a perfect gem.... We have a little bit
of wood-fire with the smallest sticks--twigs we should call
them--two sperm candles to light our bedroom and no matches except
what we furnish. But 8 o'clock is here and we are all to meet for
breakfast....
Yesterday was a lovely _May_ day, and our party drove to the
village of Resina, which is built forty feet above the ruins of
Herculaneum. There, with a guide, we descended a hundred steps and
walked through the old theater, over the same stone stairs and
seats which two thousand years ago were occupied by the gayest of
mortals. Then we went to the ruins of Pompeii and ate our lunch
under large old trees growing upon the debris left by the great
eruption. We passed through the narrow streets, over stone
pavements worn by the tread of long-buried feet, through palaces,
public gardens and baths, temples, the merchants' exchange,
customhouse and magnificent theater....
I have just received John Bright's splendid address before the
2,000 students of Glasgow University on being made Lord Rector. It
fired my soul beyond all the ruins and all the arts in Rome or
Naples. It is grand indeed, and reminds one of our own Wendell
Phillips' address to the Harvard students two years ago.[14]
ROME, March 29.
_To Madam Susan B. Anthony, of New York, U. S. A._
MADAM: We had the honor to announce your coming to Rome some three
weeks ago in the Italian Times. While we ourselves have an
impressive appreciation of your distinguished mental acquirements,
yet we would wish to carry to our numerous English-speaking
subscribers on this continent some testimony of your presence in
our midst. Therefore we place our columns at your disposal, and
will esteem the privilege of presenting to the public any topic
your facile pen may write. To this end we will wait upon you or be
pleased to see you at our sanctum. With much respect, we are,
Madam, your obedient servants,
THE PROPRIETORS OF THE ITALIAN TIMES.
[Only English newspaper published in Italy.]
ROME, April 1.
DEAR BROTHER D. R.: We have climbed Vesuvius. One feels richly paid
when the puffing and exploding and ascending of the red-hot lava
meet the ears and eyes. The mountains, the Bay of Naples, the sail
to Capri and the Blue Grotto are fully equal to my expectations....
The squalid-looking people, however, and their hopeless fate make
one's stay at any of these Italian resorts most depressing. Troops
of beggars beset one all along the streets and roads, and with
tradesmen there is no honesty. For instance, a man charged some
twenty francs for a shell comb, then came down to seven, six, five,
and finally asked, "What will you give?" I, never dreaming he would
take it, said, "two francs," and he threw the comb into the
carriage.... Saturday we took the cars from Naples to Palermo.
Every mountainside having a few seven-by-nine patches of soil in a
place, is terraced and covered with grape vines and lemon trees,
the latter now yellow with fruit. On many I counted twenty and
thirty terraces, each with a solid stone wall to hold the earth in
place. It is wonderful what an amount of labor it costs to earn
even the little the natives seem to care for. Our hotel here is an
old monastery, and on one side of the court is the cathedral with
its grotesque paintings. One becomes fairly sickened with the
ghastly spectacle of the dead Christ. It is amazing how little they
make of the living Christ.
On Monday morning we drove back over that magnificent road, and
took the train to Naples. In the afternoon we went to Lake Avernus
and into the grotto of the sibyls, the entrance to Dante's Inferno.
It was a dark, cavernous passage and with the flaring candles
making the darkness only more visible, we could not but feel there
was reason for the old superstition. The narrowness of the streets
of Naples--and they are without the pretense of a sidewalk--leave
the men, women and children, horses and carriages, funny little
donkeys with their big loads, the cows and goats (which are each
night and morning driven along and halted at the doors while the
pint cupful, more or less, is milked to supply the people within)
all marching along together in the filthy road, jostling each other
at every step.
But we are back in Rome now and this forenoon we spent in the
galleries of the Vatican. One is simply dazed with the wealth of
marble--not only statuary, but stairs, pillars and massive
buildings. We stop here till the 9th, then go to Florence.[15]
It is good for our young civilization to see and study that of the
old world, and observe the hopelessness of lifting the masses into
freedom and freedom's industry, honesty and integrity. How any
American, any lover of our free institutions based on equality of
rights for all, can settle down and live here is more than I can
comprehend. It will be only by overturning the powers that
education and equal chances ever can come to the rank and file. The
hope of the world is indeed in our republic; so let us work to make
it a _genuine_ democracy, where every citizen--woman as well as
man--shall be crowned with the one symbol of equality--the
ballot....
ROME, April 5.
MY DEAR SISTER: How these anniversary days of our dear mother's
illness and death bring back to me everything, even at this
distance and amid these strange surroundings. How she would have
enjoyed these sights because of her knowledge and love of history.
She could have told the Bible story of every one of these great
frescoes. What a woman she would have been, could she have had the
opportunities of education and culture which her granddaughters are
having....
Tell Mrs. Lewia Smith her lovely piece of lace has been honored
with the wearing in London and Rome several times and has been
pronounced beautiful; but I prize it most of all for the giver's
sake. No one but she would have trudged through the slush and rain
to get those splendid names to that testimonial. Nothing which came
to me gave so much pleasure as those signatures of my own townsmen
and women, from President Anderson all the way to the end of the
list.... This evening Rachel has gone to a friend's to study German
so as to make our way with that nationality. What a jumble, that by
just crossing an imaginary line one finds people who can't
understand a word one says!
Last evening we heard the grand Ristori render a part of Dante's
Inferno and a selection from Joan of Arc. Of course I couldn't
understand a word she said, but her voice, her gestures, her
expression told the whole story. Then the music, vocal and
instrumental, was the softest and sweetest....
ZURICH, April 23.
MY DEAR SISTER: We spent Friday night at Milan--there took our last
look at Italian cathedrals, as we did our first, and its own still
holds highest place as to beauty. We left early next morning and
very soon were among the Alps.... The eleven hours' stretch was
tiresome and disgusting inside our compartment, with from three to
five stalwart men puffing away at their pipes all day long, and at
every station rushing out for a drink of wine or beer. Our only
chance of a free breath was to open the window, and then all the
natives were in consternation!
We reached Zurich at six and, after a splendid dinner of roast
chicken, green peas and lettuce, took a cab and called on Elizabeth
Sargent, who is studying medicine at the university, and found her
very happy and glad to see us. In the afternoon we took a
delightful drive, as it was too cold and misty for the lake
excursion we had intended. The highest Alps are still lost to us by
fog and clouds. After supper we called at the American consulate.
Think of our government supporting a consul in most of the
twenty-two cantons of Switzerland!
Tuesday.--At Munich. We saw princes and princesses galore out
driving this afternoon, but not the king. We leave tomorrow morning
for Nuremberg, and reach Berlin Saturday, and there I hope to rest
at least a week--but then the Emperor William must be seen, and
lots of other curiosities.... If I could command the money, as soon
as each of our girls graduated, I would take her first on a tour of
her own continent and then through the old world, before she
settled down to the hard work of life either in a profession or in
marriage. Thus she would have much to think of and live over, no
matter how heavy might be the burdens and sorrows of her after
life....
COLOGNE, May 8.
MY DEAR SISTER: We left Berlin yesterday morning after a delightful
week with the Sargents. I do not believe our nation ever has been
represented at any foreign court by such genuine republican women,
in the truest and broadest sense, as are Mrs. Sargent and her
daughters. Mr. Sargent, too, touches the very height of democratic
principle. Their association with monarchial governments and
subjects but makes them love our free institutions the more.[16]
Our last evening was spent with the Frau Dr. Liburtius--formerly
Henriette Hirschfeldt--a practicing dentist in Berlin since 1869,
who studied at the Philadelphia Dental College. No college in
Germany will admit women. Frau Libertius is dentist for various
members of the royal family as well as for the Sisters of Charity.
She says there are no dental colleges in the world equal to those
of America....
May 10.--At Worms--where Martin Luther made his glorious
declaration for the right of private judgment. There is a
magnificent monument in a beautiful square; Luther's is the central
statue--a standing one; below, at the corners, are sitting Huss,
Savonarola, Wycliffe and Peter Waldo, and on a still lower pedestal
are four more worthies--one of them Melancthon.... We spent Tuesday
at Cologne--visited the splendid cathedral and the church of St.
Ursula. The latter contains the bones of 11,000 virgins martyred at
Cologne in the fifth century. Whole broadsides of chapels are lined
with shelves of skulls, which the noble ladies of the twelfth
century partly covered with embroidery. Wednesday we took steamer
up the Rhine at six in the morning and landed at Mayence at eight.
It was a beautiful panorama, but not surpassing all others I have
seen. The vine-clad hillsides, the ruins of the old castles
(nothing like as many of them as I had thought) and the winding of
the river were all very lovely. We visited the cathedral, the
monuments of Gutenberg and Schiller, and then the fortress and the
remains of a Roman monument erected nine years before Christ....
HEIDELBERG, May 11.
DEAR BROTHER D. R.: As I clambered among the ruins of Heidelberg
Castle today, I wished for each of my loved ones to come across old
ocean and look upon the remains of ancient civilization--of art and
architecture, bigotry and barbarism. I am enjoying my "flying,"
though I would not again make such a rush, but I am getting a good
relish for a more deliberate tour at some later day. All of life
should not be given to one's work at home, whether that be woman
suffrage, journalism or government affairs.
After being perpetually among people whose language I could not
understand, it was doubly grateful to be in the midst of not only
my countrymen but my dearest friends, and I enjoyed their society
so much that I almost forgot there were any wonders to be seen in
Berlin. But we did make an excursion to Potsdam--a jolly company of
us, Mr. and Mrs. Sargent and their gifted daughter Ella, also the
professor of Greek in your Kansas State University, Miss Kate
Stephens. She interpreted the utterances of the ever-present
guides, whose jabber was worse than Greek.
At Potsdam we were shown the very rooms in which Frederick the
Great lived and moved and had his being, plotted and planned to
conquer his neighbors. In the little church are myriads of tattered
flags, taken in their many wars, and two great stone caskets in
which repose the bodies of Frederick the Great and his father,
Frederick William, peaceful in death, however warlike in life. We
also visited the new palace where the present Emperor spends the
summer. We saw parlors, dining-rooms, bedrooms, the plain, narrow
bedstead the Emperor sleeps upon, the great workshop, in which are
maps and all sorts of material for studying and planning how to
hold and gain empires. I even peered into the kitchen and saw the
pitchers, plates, coffee-pots and stew-pans. It was my first chance
of a real mortal living look of things, so I enjoyed it hugely.
There are rooms enough in these palaces for an army of people. All
of these magnificent displays of wealth in churches, palaces and
castles, citadels, fortifications and glittering military shows of
monarchial governments, only make more conspicuous the poverty,
ignorance and degradation of the masses; and all pleasure in seeing
them is tinged with sadness.
From the diary for May:
12.--Showering, but I walked up the mountain to pay a last visit to
Heidelberg Castle, the most magnificent ruin in Germany. Its
ivy-covered towers always will be pictured in my memory.
13.--At Strasburg. We have driven over the city, looked at the
wonderful fortifications and explored the great cathedral with its
famous clock. We heard the grand organ and saw 250 priests conduct
the services before an audience of 2,000 people, nine-tenths women.
Then to St. Thomas' church and the monument to Marshal Saxe.
14.--Left for Paris and had a beautiful ride through Alsace and
Lorraine, the lost kingdoms of France. It made me sad all day; I
wanted them returned to their own mother country. Theodore Stanton
and his wife Marguerite met us at the station.
15.--Madam de Barron has invited me to be her guest while here.
Such a delightful home and intelligent hostess! I have a charming
room, and this morning the sun is shining bright and warm and the
robins are singing in the trees. My continental breakfast--rolls,
butter and coffee--was sent to my room and, for the first time in
my life, I ate it in bed. What would my mother have said?
16.--Went to grand opera last night; magnificent house, scenery,
toilets, equipages; but with my three "lacks," a musical ear, a
knowledge of French and good eyesight, I could not properly
appreciate the performance.
17.--Theodore took me to the Chamber of Deputies to see how
Frenchmen look in legislative assembly--very like Americans. Then
we called on friends at the American Exchange and the Hotel
Normandie, and I was too tired to go to U. S. Minister Morton's
reception at night.
22.--Called and had a good chat with Charlotte B. Wilbour, of New
York; called also on Grace Greenwood; visited the Hotel des
Invalides and walked in the gardens.
23.--Theodore and Marguerite took me to St. Cloud by boat and back
on top of tram-car. Delightful!
27.--Today, Sunday, we went to Pere la Chaise and saw great crowds
of Communists hanging wreaths on the wall where hundreds of their
friends were shot down in 1871--a sorrowful sight.
28.--At noon we went to the College of France to witness the last
honors to Laboulaye, the scholar and Liberal. Saw his little study
and sadly watched the priests perform the services over his coffin.
29.--Left Paris at 9 A. M., Theodore and his little Elizabeth Cady
going with me to the station. The parks and forests are green and
lovely, the homes cozy and pretty, France is a beautiful country. I
have enjoyed the last three months exceedingly, but I am very, very
tired; and yet it is a new set of faculties which are weary, and
the old ones, so long harped upon, are really resting.
_To Miss Susan B. Anthony_, PARIS.
MADAM: Having been informed of your arrival in Paris, I take the
liberty of writing to ask from your courtesy the favor of a short
interview. I have since several years heard of all the work you
have done in behalf of womankind, and I need not say how happy I
would be to meet a person who has so often been praised in my
presence. Hoping you will forgive my intrusion, and have the great
kindness to let me know when I may have the honor to call, I am,
madam, very respectfully, your obedient servant,
[Of Le Soir.] A. SALVADOR.
PARIS, May 20.
MY DEAR MRS. SPOFFORD: I have just come from a call on Mademoiselle
Hubertine Auclert, editor of La Citoyenne. I can not tell you how I
constantly long to be able to speak and understand French. I lose
nearly all the pleasure of meeting distinguished people, because
they are as powerless with my language as I with theirs. We called
also on Leon Richer, editor of La Femme. He thinks it inopportune
to demand suffrage for women in France now, when they are yet
without their civil rights. I wanted so much to tell him that
political power was the greater right which included the less....
Miss Foster has gone to London for presentation at Court. She had
the "regulation" dress made in Berlin--cream-white satin, low neck,
_no sleeves at all_, and a four-yard train!... I have not decided
when I shall go home, but before many months, for I long to be
about the work that remains undone. The fact is, I am weary of mere
sight-seeing. Amidst it all my head and heart turn to our battle
for women at home. Here in the old world, with its despotic
governments, its utter blotting out of woman as an equal, there is
no hope, no possibility of changing her condition, so I look to our
own land of equality for men, and partial equality for women, as
the only one for hope or work.
PARIS, May 24.
MY DEAR RACHEL: I am glad to hear that you were not cheated out of
teetering through the palace halls in front of the princess, and
that you are not utterly prostrated by it.... I attended the
suffrage meeting last evening, and heard and saw several men
speak--_well_, I inferred from the cheering and shouting of
"bravo!"
This afternoon I visited the tomb of Napoleon. It surpasses every
mausoleum I have ever seen, not excepting that of Frederick the
Third and Queen Louise in Berlin. It is well that his memory should
be thus honored, for had he been born a hundred years later, when
the march of civilization had pointed to some other goal to gratify
his great nature than that of bloody conquest of empire, I believe
he would have stood at the head of those who strive to make free
and independent sovereigns of all men and all women. Everywhere
here are reminders of the ravages of war, the madness of ignorance
and unreason. I want to get away from them and their saddening
associations. You will think I am blue. So I am, from having lived
a purposeless life these three months. I don't know but the women
of America, myself in particular, will be the greater and grander
for it, but I can not yet see how this is to be....
LONDON, June 7.
MY DEAR SISTER: For the hundredth time I am going to beg you to
shut up the house and come over here. It does seem as if now we two
sisters, left so alone, ought to be able to travel and enjoy
together. You can not know how I long to have you with me; it hurts
every minute to think of you treading round and round, with never a
moment of leisure or enjoyment. Surely you have given a mother's
love and care to our nieces for eight years, and now you can let
them go out from under your eye....
Rachel and I came up from Basingstoke on Sunday to attend a small
reception at Mrs. Jacob Bright's. Her husband has championed woman
suffrage in Parliament for years, and she has led the few who have
dared say, "And married women, too, should have the franchise."
When the powers that be forbade her to include married women in the
Parliamentary Suffrage Bill now pending, Mrs. Bright withdrew and
started a bill for their property rights, which was passed last
session and is now in force.
[Illustration: Autograph: "With kindest regards from Mr. Bright and
myself, yours very truly, Ursula M. Bright"]
Monday morning we went to Bedford Park and spent two hours at
Moncure D. Conway's. His charming wife read us what a delegate here
from the American Unitarians says of Emerson, Alcott, Frothingham
and George Ripley--that all are wearying of their early theories
and theologies and returning to the old faith. Today I had an hour
with William Henry Channing, and he virtually told me this was true
of himself! I exclaimed: "Do you mean to say that you have returned
to the belief in the immaculate conception of Jesus and in the
miracles--that you no longer explain all these things as you used
to do in your Bible readings at Rochester?" He replied: "I never
disbelieved in miracles. Man's levelling and tunnelling the
mountains is a miracle." Well, I was stunned and left. Even if all
these grand men, in old age, or when broken in body, decide that
the conclusions of their early and vigorous manhood were false,
which shall we accept as most likely to be true--the strong or the
weakened thought? It is very disheartening if we are so constituted
that with our deepest, sincerest study we grope and dwell in error
through our threescore and ten, and after those allotted years find
all we believed fact to be mere hallucination. It is--it must
be--simply the waning intellect returning to childish teachings.
That evening we visited the House of Commons and heard several
members speak as we peeped through the wire latticework of the
ladies' cage. The next afternoon we attended a large reception at
Mrs. J. P. Thomasson's, daughter of Margaret Bright Lucas and wife
of a member of Parliament. There we met the leading suffrage women.
Wednesday morning I went to Tunbridge Wells--thirty miles--to see
Mrs. Rose, who is trying the waters there in hope of relief.... I
should have told you that I dined on Sunday with Margaret
Lucas--John Bright's sister--and lunched today with Mrs. Mellen,
mother-in-law of General Palmer, of Colorado, president of the Rio
Grande R. R.--an elegant and wealthy woman.
LONDON, June 22.
MY DEAR SISTER: ... Sunday morning we went to hear Stopford Brooke,
a seceder from the established church. I could see no diminution in
the poppings up and down, nor in the intonings and singsongs, but
when, after a full hour of the incantations, he came to his sermon
on the Christian duty of total abstinence, he gave us a splendid
one. Before commencing he said that, from his request the previous
Sunday, twenty members out of his congregation of 600 came to the
meeting to form a Church Total Abstinence Society, and ten of those
made special and earnest protest against the formation of such a
society! Can you imagine the chilliness of the spiritual air in
that church as he laid down the Christian's duty of denying himself
that he might save his fellow who had not the power to drink
moderately?
Afterwards, we called on Hon. William D. Kelley, wife and daughter
Florence, of Philadelphia. We also attended a reception at Emily
Faithfull's and met a number of nice people; then took underground
railway for Bedford Park and had tea with Eliza Orme, England's
first and only woman lawyer--or as nearly one as she can be and not
have passed the Queen's Bench. Her mother was lovely and so proud
of her daughter and glad to see me. Miss Orme has a partner, Miss
Richardson, who is a member of the London school board and has
visited our schools in America. She says London has none, public or
private, to compare with those of the United States.
The next morning we went to hear Laura Curtis Bullard read her
sketch of Mrs. Stanton, which is to go into Famous Women, the same
book for which Mrs. Stanton is writing me up. In the afternoon we
called on Miss Mueller, who purchased a house and lives in it that
she may be a householder, as is necessary to hold office. She too
is a member of the school board. Miss Mueller insisted that I should
talk to the ladies there, about thirty of them, and so I did,
sitting under the trees in her garden, where we had our tea. Thence
we went to the women's suffrage parlors and met some fifty or
sixty, and then to the Albemarle Club of both ladies and gentlemen,
the only one of the kind in London. Then came a meeting at the
Somerville Club--all ladies. A paper was read on the topic,
"Sentiment is not founded on reason and is a hindrance to
progress," and followed by a bright discussion, in which both
Rachel and I were invited to take part. A pretty full afternoon and
evening!
Wednesday morning I studied on my speech for the 25th under the
auspices of the National Women's Suffrage Society. Harriot has so
divided the subject, that Mrs. Stanton is to take the educational,
social and religious departments, and S. B. A. the industrial,
legal and political. That evening we went to the Court Theater with
Mrs. Florence Fenwick Miller, another member of the London school
board. The nights are all days here now--daylight till after 9
o'clock and again at 3. Rachel and I lunched with Mr. and Mrs.
Jacob Bright, and had a splendid visit; then went to the school
board meeting.
[Illustration: Priscilla Bright McLaren (Signed: "Your loving friend
Priscilla Bright McLaren.")]
[Illustration: Autograph: "Cordially yours, Helen Taylor"]
Saw there five of the seven women members, among them Miss Helen
Taylor, stepdaughter of John Stuart Mill, and the senior woman
member of the board. Today I spent an hour with Mrs. Lucas, sister
of John and Jacob Bright, and this afternoon Rachel and I are going
to a Women's Poor Law Guardian meeting, at which Mrs. Lucas is to
preside and other ladies to speak....
Just back from the meeting. In all England there are thirty-one
women poor law guardians. There are 19,000 of the guardians elected
and 1,000, mainly clergymen, are honorary. They have over 1,000,000
paupers to look after. The secretary, Mrs. Chamberlain, stated that
in her section of London there were 16,000. The guardians overlook
everything about the workhouses and asylums, get no pay, and yet
the public hesitates to put women on the board. One man stirred up
the handful present by saying, "suffrage not only for widows and
spinsters, but for married women."
June 26.--Well, the ordeal is over and everybody is delighted.
Moncure D. Conway said: "I have learned more of American history
from your speech than I ever dreamed had been made during the past
thirty years." Even the timid ones expressed great satisfaction.
Mrs. Stanton gave them the rankest radical sentiments, but all so
cushioned they didn't hurt. Mrs. Duncan McLaren came down from
Edinburgh and Mrs. Margaret Parker from Dundee. Rachel said I made
a good statement of the industrial, legal and political status of
women in America. We went to tea with Mrs. Jacob Bright; then I
took dinner with Mrs. Stanton at Mrs. Mellen's, getting up from
table at 9:15 P. M.
[Illustration: Autograph: "Most sincerely yours, Jane Cobden"]
Saturday Rachel and I drove four hours in Miss Mueller's carriage
and called on Lady Wilde, a bright, quaint woman. Sunday morning I
went to Friends' meeting and had a look at John Bright, though I
was not sure it was he until after the meeting was over; then he
was gone, and I not introduced to him! In the afternoon I called on
Miss Jane Cobden, daughter of Richard Cobden, a charming woman.
Yesterday I presented her with a set of our History in memory of
her noble father, and for her own sake also. I will not foreshadow
the coming days but they are busy indeed. You will see that the
Central Committee have put both my name and Mrs. Stanton's on the
card for the meeting of July 5....
LONDON, June 28.
MY DEAR SISTER: It is now just after luncheon and at 4 o'clock we
are to be at Mrs. Jacob Bright's reception, tomorrow evening at one
at Mrs. Thomasson's, which she gives to friends for the special
purpose of meeting Stanton and Anthony, and Saturday at Frances
Power Cobbe's--and so we go. Yesterday morning Miss Frances Lord--a
poor law guardian--escorted us through Lambeth workhouse. It has
1,000 inmates and 700 more in the infirmary, and gives out-door
relief to 2,000 besides.
[Jacob Bright presided over the Prince's Hall meeting, and William
Woodall over that at St. James' Hall.[17] All of the prominent
newspapers in Great Britain contained editorials on the meetings, and
noted especially the addresses of Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton,
speaking of them in a dignified and respectful manner.]
LONDON, July 13.
MY DEAR SISTER: My last letter was mailed the 3d. That afternoon I
was at Rebecca Moore's reception. We dined at Miss Mueller's and
afterwards went to Horn's assembly rooms to a suffrage meeting. Her
sister Eva, wife of Walter McLaren, M.P., was one of the
speakers.... At 9 P. M., we went to a Fourth of July reception at
Mrs. Mellen's, given in honor of Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony, and
a brilliant affair it was. About 150 were there; she had elegant
refreshments; and the young American girls gave songs, recitations,
violin music, etc. Grace Greenwood recited her "Mistress
O'Rafferty"--a woman's rights poem in Irish brogue--very rich and
racy; her daughter Annie sang, also Mrs. Carpenter, of Chicago;
Kate Hillard, of Brooklyn, Adelaide Detchon, the actress, and
Mildred Conway recited; Frank Lincoln impersonated; Nathaniel
Mellen sang a negro jubilee melody; Maude Powell played the violin.
She is not fifteen yet and is a charming player. The company did
not disperse until after one.
July 5, drove to Mrs. Mellen's to a 10 o'clock breakfast, and
worked on Rachel's report of my Prince's Hall speech--you'll find
it in full in the Englishwoman's Review. In the evening Mrs.
Thomasson gave a splendid dinner-party, and afterwards took us all
in carriages to the St. James' Hall suffrage demonstration, where
there was a fine audience of about 2,000.... Next morning I went to
a meeting of the suffrage friends from various towns who had come
up for the demonstration. At 8 P. M. Mrs. McLaren took me to the
House of Commons, to witness Mr. Hugh Mason present the Women's
Suffrage Bill; so I heard all the speeches pro and con, up to 1:30
A. M., and how tired I was! Mr. Jacob Bright's was the strongest
and most earnest.
The morning of July 7, at the suffrage rooms, I heard strong
protests against the way Mr. Mason disclaimed all intention of
enfranchising married women. He carried the matter too far even for
the most timid. In the afternoon, we went to the Somerville Club,
and Rachel spoke beautifully on the need of union and co-operation
among women. I followed her, and Mrs. McLaren moved a vote of
thanks.... Rachel left for Antwerp this evening, to meet her mother
and sister, and I returned to my room, lonesome enough. Sunday I
lunched with Mrs. Lucas and Mrs. McLaren. I had calls from three
factory-women, who told a sad story of the impossibility of getting
even a dollar ahead by the most frugal and temperate habits.
Have I told you that I have a new dark garnet velvet? I wore it
with my point lace at Mrs. Mellen's reception on the Fourth, and
the India shawl I have worn today for the first time.... Tuesday I
went with Mrs. Lucas to the Crystal Palace at Sydenham to a great
national temperance demonstration. More than 50,000 people passed
the gates at a shilling apiece, and we saw a solid mass of 5,000
boys and girls from all parts of the kingdom seated in a huge
amphitheater, singing temperance songs--a beautiful sight. Then in
another part of the palace was an audience of 2,000 listening to
speeches. Among the speakers was Canon Wilberforce, a grandson of
the great Abolitionist but a degenerate one. He said the reason the
temperance movement was now progressing so rapidly was because the
persons who led it were praying people, and that the Lord had
willed it, and all depended on whether it was kept in the Lord's
hands--if not, then it would fall back like the old Washingtonian
movement in America. Mrs. Lucas was very wroth, and so was I. He
never spoke of woman except as "maiden aunt" or "old grandmother,"
and advised the boys to take a little wine for the stomach's sake.
At 6 o'clock we went to Miss Mueller's where I remained until today.
She took me to the Gaiety Theater to see Sarah Bernhardt. What a
magnificent actor! I never saw any man or woman who so absolutely
buried self out of sight and became the very being personated.
Though I couldn't understand a single word, I enjoyed it all until
the curtain fell at half-past eleven. I was tired beyond telling,
but felt richly repaid by the seeing. She must be master of her
divine art thus to impress one by action alone. Today Mrs. McLaren
invites me to dine at her son's, Charles McLaren, M.P. All this is
written in a hurry but is perhaps better than nothing. It is so
difficult to clutch a moment to write.
LONDON, July 19.
MY DEAR RACHEL: ... I am to attend a suffrage meeting at the
Westminster Palace Hotel Hall this afternoon, and tomorrow at 10:25
A. M. I start for Edinburgh with Mrs. Moore. I am bound to suck all
the honey possible out of everybody and everything as they come to
me or I go to them. It is such unwisdom, such unhappiness, not to
look for and think and talk of the best in all things and all
people; so you see at threescore and three I am still trying always
to keep the bright and right side up. I am expecting a great
ferment at the meeting today, for those who agree with Mrs. Jacob
Bright have asked Mrs. Stanton to confer with them about what they
shall do now. She advises them to demand suffrage for all women,
married and single; but I contend that it is not in good taste for
either of us to counsel public opposition to the bill before
Parliament....
I wrote you about Miss ----. She is settled in the conviction that
she never will marry any man--not even the one with whom she has
had so close a friendship for the past ten years. She feels that to
do the work for the world which she has mapped out she must eschew
marriage, accepting platonic friendship but no more. I tell her she
is giving her nature a severe trial by allowing herself this one
particular friend, that if he does not in the end succeed in
getting her to marry him, it will be the first escape I ever have
heard of. She is a charming, earnest, conscientious woman, and I
feel deeply interested in her experiment.
[After being royally entertained in London and making many little trips
into the beautiful country around, Miss Anthony left for Edinburgh July
20, carrying with her many pleasant remembrances of friends.]
EDINBURGH, July 22.
MY DEAR SISTER: Here I am in Huntley Lodge, the delightful home of
Mrs. Elizabeth Pease Nichol, whose name we so often used to see in
the Liberator and the Anti-Slavery Standard, and of whom we used to
hear from Mr. Phillips and others who had visited England. We had a
most cordial welcome from Mrs. Nichol--a queenly woman. She is now
seventy-seven, and lives in this handsome house, two miles from the
center of the city, with only her servants....
Mrs. Nichol has gone to her room to rest and Mrs. Moore and I are
writing in the little, sunny southeast parlor. I have an elegant
suite of three rooms, the same Mr. Garrison occupied when he
visited here in 1867 and in 1877. Mrs. Nichol is one of the few
left of that historic World's Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840. We
are going to a "substantial tea" with Dr. Agnes McLaren, daughter
of Duncan McLaren. She is very bright--spent four years in France
studying her profession--has a good practice, takes a house by
herself, and invites to it her friends. So many young Englishwomen
are doing this, and indeed it is a good thing for single women to
do.
The suffrage society--Eliza Wigham, president, Jessie M. Wellstood,
secretary--has invited a hundred or more of the friends to an
afternoon tea on Tuesday next in honor of my visit, and I am to
make a brief speech, so what to say and how to say it come
uppermost with me again....
[Illustration: Elizabeth Pease Nichol (Signed: "Elizabeth Pease
Nichol")]
THE RAVEN HOTEL, DROITWICH, August 5.
MY DEAR FRIEND SUSAN B. ANTHONY: I have often wished to write thee
since we parted in London, my heart has been so full of loving
thought. It has been a greater trial than I can describe that I
have been denied the pleasure of receiving thee in my home in
Edinburgh. If it had been only for an hour, I should have looked
back on that hour as one of great privilege. But even if we should
not meet again, I have had a pleasure which seems almost like a
dream to me, in having made the personal acquaintance of thyself
and dear Mrs. Stanton....
That thou shouldst have been on the 1st of August with the
Elizabeth Pease of those grand anti-slavery times, revived in me
the thought I expressed in moving a vote of thanks to thee and Mrs.
Cady Stanton for the noble addresses you gave at the Prince's Hall
Meeting in London; ... that you had been brought here to give us
the hand of rejoicing fellowship; and that it gave me great faith
to believe the God of Justice was leading us on, and had brought
England and America together by your presence amongst us at this
most critical and hopeful time of our agitation....
I have addressed thee in the dear singular person, because it
seemed to me in harmony with the noble simplicity of thy character,
and also more affectionate--just as I feel toward thee. Believe me,
dear friend--I love so to call thee--thine very affectionately,
PRISCILLA BRIGHT MCLAREN.
[The diary notes many teas and luncheons in Edinburgh, drives to Melrose
Abbey, Holyrood Palace, Roslyn Castle, to the celebrated monuments, the
old cathedrals and the university; calls from distinguished professors
and those interested in philanthropic movements, visits to public
institutions, and lovely gifts from the new friends. Every day of the
month was filled with pleasant incidents. The scenery through the lake
and mountain regions Miss Anthony found so beautiful that, although
there was a steady downpour of rain for days, she sat on the outside of
boat or stage in order not to miss a moment of it. She hunted up the old
home of Thomas Clarkson but could not find there a person who ever had
heard of him. She went also to the Friends' meeting house at Ulverston,
presented to the Society by George Fox and completed in 1688. To her
such spots as these were more interesting and hallowed than towering
castles and vine-clad abbeys.]
BALLACHULISH HOTEL, August 13.
MY DEAR SISTER: Miss Julia Osgood and I are here, waiting for
sunshine.... While in Edinburgh Mrs. Nichol drove us out to
Craigmillar Castle, where I saw the very rooms in which Queen Mary
lived. We bought for a shilling a basket of strawberries
plucked--no, "pulled"--the old man who sold them said, from the
very garden in which berries and vegetables were "pulled" for Queen
Mary three hundred years ago. One evening Professor Blackie, of the
Edinburgh University, dined with Mrs. Nichol. At my reception he
had said he did not want to "see refined, delicate women going down
into the muddy pool of politics," and I asked him if he had ever
thought that, since the only places which were too filthy for women
were those where men alone went, perhaps they might be so from lack
of women. At dinner Mrs. Nichol rallied him on the report that he
had been converted, and he admitted that it was true; so as he was
leaving I said, "Then I am to reckon an Edinboro' professor among
my converts?" He seized my hand and kissed it, saying, "I'll seal
it with a kiss." Don't be alarmed--he is fully eighty years of age
but blithe and frolicsome--sang and acted out a Scotch war-song in
the real Gaelic.
On August 1 we saw 200 medical students capped--and not a woman
among them, because the powers ruled that none should be admitted.
That afternoon we called on Professor Masson, a great champion of
co-education. We took tea with Mrs. Jane and Miss Eliza Wigham. The
stepmother, now eighty-two, was Jane Smeale in 1840. In their house
have visited Henry C. Wright, Parker Pillsbury, and of course Mr.
Garrison. Mrs. Nichol went with us to Melrose by rail, from which
we drove to Abbotsford....
Tuesday at 2 o'clock Miss Osgood and I landed at Stirling. At 4:30
we reached Callander, where I found no trunk, and not a man of them
could give a guess as to its whereabouts. They give you no check
here, but just stick a patch on your trunk. I had expected not to
find it at every stop, and now it was gone for sure; but the
station-master was certain he could find it and forward it to me,
so he wrote out its description and telegraphed in every direction.
Meanwhile we went to a hotel for luncheon and there in the hall was
my trunk! Nobody knew why or how it got there and all acknowledged
our American check system superior. I was raging at their
stupidity, and no system at all, but laughingly said, "You ought to
send this trunk free a thousand miles to pay for my big scold at
you." The man good-naturedly replied, "Where will you have it
sent?" I answered "Oban," and he booked it.
At 6 o'clock we took the front seat with the driver on a great high
stage which we mounted by a ladder--they call the stage the
"machine"--and drove a few miles to the Trossachs Hotel, past Loch
Achray and Loch Vennachar.... While the rain rested this noon I
took a walk up the ravine and it seemed very like going up the
mountain at Grandfather Anthony's. Indeed, there is nothing here
more beautiful than we have in America, only everything has some
historic or poetic association....
BRUNTSFIELD LODGE, WHITEHOUSE LOAN, EDINBURGH, August 23.
MY DEAR SISTER: Here am I, back in Edinboro' again, at Dr.
Jex-Blake's delightful home--at least one hundred and fifty years
old, with an acre or more of garden all enclosed with a six-foot
wall. Lodge means a walled-in house; loan means lane, and the
street took its name from a white house which two hundred and fifty
years ago stood in this road. Every day the doctor has taken me a
long and beautiful ride in her basket-carriage, driving her own
little pony, White Angel, or her hay horse, while her boy-groom
rides in his perch behind. Today she drove me through Lord
Rosebery's park of thousands of acres. It is lovely as a native
forest--the roads macadamized all through--and a palace-like
residence set deep within....
AMBLESIDE, August 27.
MY DEAR SISTER: Last Thursday I left Edinburgh for Penrith, which
has a fine view of the lake and the hills beyond. Next morning I
took steamer at Pooley Bridge. The trip the whole length of the
lake was beautiful, but can not compare with Lake George--indeed,
nothing I have seen equals that--but the hills (mountains, they
call them here), the water and the sky all were lovely. At
Patterdale I had a cup of tea, with bread and butter and the
veritable orange marmalade manufactured at Dundee. Thence I took a
stage over Kirkstone Pass, and walked two miles up the hills to a
small hotel with a signboard saying it is the highest inhabited
house in England, 1,114 feet above the sea--not very much beside
Denver's 6,000 and others in Colorado 10,000 or 12,000. Arrived at
Ambleside to find the hotel overflowing, so they sent me to a
farmer's house where I had a good bed, splendid milk and sweet
butter. Saturday morning I went by coach to Coniston, then railway
to Furness Abbey, a seven-hundred-year-old ruin of magnificent
proportions. After four hours there, I took a train to Lakeside and
then steamer up Lake Windermere back to Ambleside. The hotel still
being full, "the Boots," as they call the porter or runner, found
me lodgings at a private house, where I am now. It is the tiniest
little stone cottage, but they have a cow, so I am in clover. My
breakfasts consist of a bit of ham, cured by the hostess, a boiled
egg, white and graham bread with butter and currant jam, and a cup
of tea.
Saturday evening I strolled out and entered the gate of Harriet
Martineau's home. On the terrace I met the present occupants, Mr.
and Mrs. William Henry Hills. They invited me to call in the
morning, when they would be happy to show me over the house. In
naming the hour they said: "We never go to church--we are Liberal
Friends--_real_ Friends." At that I immediately felt at home with
them. I called and spent two hours sitting and chatting in the
drawing-room where Harriet Martineau received her many
distinguished guests, and in the kitchen saw the very same table,
chairs and range which were there when she died, and sitting on the
doorsill was the same black-and-yellow cat, said to be fourteen
years old now. The Hills invited me to 5 o'clock tea, which we took
in the library, where Miss Martineau used to sit and study as well
as entertain her guests at dinner. It seemed impossible to realize
that I was actually in her house. It is not large and is covered
with ivy, which grows most luxuriantly everywhere. It fronts on a
large field, much lower than the knoll on which it stands, and fine
hills stretch off beyond. The old gardener, who has been here more
than thirty years, still lives in a little stone cottage just under
the terrace.
[Illustration: Autograph: "Yours affectionately, H. Martineau."]
Mr. Hills is a great lover of America and its institutions. He is
one of the very few I have met here who really love republicanism.
Nearly every one clings to the caste and class principle, thinks
the world can not exist if a portion of the people are not doomed
to be servants, and that for the poor to have an ambition to rise
and become something more than their parents makes them
discontented. "Yes," I answer, "and that is just what I want them
to be, because it is only through a wholesome discontent with
things as they are, that we ever try to make them any better."...
DUBLIN, September 10.
MY DEAR SISTER: ... I stayed in Belfast some days, and visited the
Giant's Causeway with Miss Isabella Tod, amidst sunshine and
drenching showers; still it was a splendid sight, fully equal to
Fingal's Cave. The day before, we went nearly one hundred miles
into the country to a village where she spoke at a temperance
meeting. Here we were guests of the Presbyterian minister--a cousin
of Joseph Medill, of the Chicago Tribune--and a cordial greeting he
and his bright wife gave me. They have three Presbyterian churches
in that one little village. All welcomed the woman speaker most
kindly, but not a person could be urged to vote down the whiskey
shops, as these are licensed by a justice of the peace, appointed
by the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, who receives his appointment
from the Queen of England!
[Illustration: Autograph: "Yours most truly, Isabella M. S. Tod"]
So all she could ask was that every one should become a total
abstainer. I do not see how they can submit to be thus voiceless as
to their own home regulations.
Saturday I took tea with Mrs. Haslam, a bright, lovely "come-outer"
from the Friends. She had invited some twenty or thirty to be
present at eight, and I spoke, they asking questions and I
answering. Among them were a son of the Abolitionist Richard D.
Webb, and ever so many nephews and nieces. Eliza Wigham's brother
Henry and his wife had come ten miles to be there.... This
afternoon I am going to the common council meeting with Alfred
Webb, who is a member and a strong Home Ruler. The question of
electing their own tax collector is to be discussed.
CORK, September 16.
MY DEAR SISTER: ... Your heart would break if you were here to see
the poverty and rags, and yet the people seem cheerful under it
all. Something surely must be wrong at the root to bear such fruit.
I have had an awfully "hard side of a board time" of ten hours in a
third-class car, paying therefor just as much as I would on the N.
Y. Central for a first-class ticket. I not only saved $4.25 by
going third-class, but I saw the natives. Men, women, boys and
girls who had been to the market towns with their produce were on
the train, and to see them as they tumbled in toward evening, at
town after town, one would think that whiskey and tobacco were the
main articles they bought. Any number of men and boys, and at least
four women, were drunk enough, and they brought bottles with them
and added to their puling idiocy as they went on. Nothing short of
a pig-sty could match the filth, but it is only in that class of
cars that you see anything of the vast number of poor farmers and
laborers. If they can not pay exorbitant rates, refined, educated
men and women are thrust into pens and seated face to face with the
smoking, drinking, carousing rabble. I have everywhere protested
against this outrage and urged the women to demand that the railway
companies should give them separate cars, with no smoking
allowed....
LEAMINGTON, October 1.
MY DEAR RACHEL: ... I must have told you of my good times at
Belfast with Miss Tod, who gave a reception for me and I had a
welcome all round.
Miss Osgood met me at Cork, and we went by rail to Macroom. Tuesday
morning we visited the convent, nuns' schools, and the poorhouse
with 400 helpless mortals, old and young; then took an Irish
jaunting-car, and were driven some forty miles through "the Gap" to
Glengariff. It rained almost all the way, much to our disgust. Next
morning we packed into two great stages with thirty or more others,
and started for the lakes of Killarney; but soon the rain poured
again, and as we were losing so much of the scenery we stopped
half-way at Kenmare. We visited the convent and the Mother Abbess
showed us every cranny. Thirty girls were at work on beautiful
Irish point and Limerick lace. These nuns have 400 pupils, and give
200 of the poorest their breakfast and lunch--porridge and a bit of
bread. At two we took stage again, the sky looked promising, but
alas! for half an hour it fairly poured. Then it grew lighter, and
we got very fine views of hills and dales. Killarney _is_
lovely....
Saturday I sauntered along the streets of Killarney, passed the
market, and saw all sorts of poor humanity coming in with their
cattle to sell or to buy. Many rode in two-wheeled carts without
seat or spring, drawn by little donkeys, and nearly all the women
and girls were bareheaded and barefooted. On the bridge I saw some
boys looking down. I looked too and there was a spectacle--a
ragged, bareheaded, barefooted woman tossing a wee baby over her
shoulders and trying to get her apron switched around to hold it
fast on her back. I heard her say to herself, "I'll niver do it,"
so I said, "Boys, one of you run down there and help her." At that
instant she succeeded in getting the baby adjusted, and to my
horror took up a bundle from the grass and disclosed a second baby!
Then _I_ went down. I learned that she had just come from the
poorhouse, where she had spent six weeks, and before going further
had laid her two three-weeks-old boys on the cold, wet grass, while
she washed out their clothes in the stream. The clothing was the
merest rags, all scrambled up in a damp bundle. She had heard her
old mother was ill in Milltown and had "fretted" about her till she
could bear it no longer, so had started to walk ten miles to her. I
hailed a boy with a jaunting-car--told her to wait and I would take
her home--got my luncheon--fed the boy's horse, bought lunch for
boy and woman--and off we went, she sitting on one side of the car
with her two babies, wet bundle, two milk bottles and rubber
appendages, bare feet and flying hair, and I on the other, with the
boy in front.
For a long way both babies cried; they were blue as pigeons, and
had on nothing but little calico slips, no socks even. She had four
children older than these--a husband who went to fairs selling
papers and anything he could to support them all--and an aged
father and mother who lived with them. She said if God had given
her only one child, she could still help earn something to live on,
but now He had given her two, she couldn't. When we reached
Milltown I followed her home. It was in a long row of one-room
things with a door--but no window. Some peat was smouldering under
a hole in the roof called a chimney, and the place was thick with
smoke. On the floor in one corner was some straw with a blanket on
it, which she said was her bed; in another were some boards
fastened into bed-shape, with straw packed in, and this belonged to
her father and mother. Where the four other children, with the
chickens and the pig, found their places to sleep, I couldn't see.
I went to the home of another tenant, and there again was one room,
and sitting around a pile of smoking-hot potatoes on the cold, wet
ground--not a board or even a flag-stone for a floor--were six
ragged, dirty children. Not a knife, fork, spoon or platter was to
be seen. The man was out working for a farmer, his wife said, and
the evidences were that "God" was about to add a No. 7 to her
flock. What a dreadful creature their God must be to keep sending
hungry mouths while he withholds the bread to fill them!...
I went back to Killarney heart-sick; wrote letters Sunday, and
Monday took train for Limerick, where I rushed round for an hour or
two.... Then went on to Galway. Tuesday morning took the mail-car
to Connemara, and had company all the way--a judge, an Irish M.P.,
and two Dublin drummers--with whom I talked over the Irish problem.
I had meant to make the tour of the western coast up to
Londonderry, but my courage failed. It was to be the same
soul-sickening sight all the way--only, I was assured, worse than
anything yet seen. I took the stage back to Galway, every one
saying it was sure to be a fine day, but it proved to be terrific
wind and rain, and before I had gone ten miles my seat was a pool
of water and it took all my skill to keep my umbrella right side
out.... Once while the driver changed horses I stood in front of a
big fire on the hearth of the best farmer's house I have seen here.
Everything was clean and cheerful--two rooms--a bed made up with a
spotless white spread--the old father smoking and the wife cooking
dinner. She lifted a wooden cover from a jar and proudly showed me
her butter--patted down with her hands, I could see--and near by
was another jar with milk. Think of butter being made in a room
full of tobacco-smoke! Then I went my last ten out of the fifty
miles, having been soaking wet for eight hours. At my hotel I had
room and fire on a "double-quick," bath-tub and hot water, and put
myself through a regular grooming. In the morning I rode around
Galway, saw Queen's College and the bay, and then took train for
Belfast.
From the diary:
Sept. 11.--In Dublin. The Professor of Arabic took me through
Trinity College, with its library of 200,000 volumes. Thence to the
old Parliament House, now the Bank of Ireland. In the afternoon
Alfred Webb went with me to the National League rooms and from
there to Thomas Webb's for tea, where I saw the names of Garrison
and N. P. Rogers written in 1840. We called on Michael Davitt, the
leader of the Irish Land League, who impressed me as an earnest,
honest man, deeply-rooted in the principles of freedom and
equality, and claiming all for woman that he does for man.
Sept. 16.--At Youghal. Visited the home of Sir Walter Raleigh, Lady
Hennessy, eighty years old, showing me around. Found in a library
Children of the Abbey, and read again the story of Lord Mortimer
and Amanda. Once it thrilled my young soul, but now it seems
inexpressibly thin.
Sept. 20.--While I was talking in the car today with an Irishwoman
about the poverty here, another behind me shouted: "It is very ill
manners for an American to come over here and abuse the English
government."
Sept. 29.--In Belfast. O, how I would like to purchase _all_ the
linen I want for myself and my friends! Have bought as much as I
dared and after all perhaps I'm cheated--but it's done, so I won't
worry.
Sept. 30.--Landed at Fleetwood and went direct to Rugby. Walked all
around the famous school, but had not courage to go in and
introduce myself to Doctor Jex-Blake, whose sister's guest I had so
recently been.
Oct. 1.--At Leamington. Went direct to Kenilworth Castle, a grand
old ruin; the home of Leicester, where Queen Elizabeth visited him
in the olden days.
Oct. 2.--Mrs. Mullinor called at our hotel and accompanied us to
Warwick Castle, a splendid pile. We lunched with her, and when Mr.
M. put fork into the roast he remarked: "Wife asked me what she
should order for dinner and I said, 'a leg of mutton, for Americans
never see such a thing at home.'" We smiled and ate it with a
relish.
Oct. 3.--At Stratford on Avon, and we have visited every spot
sacred to the memory of Shakespeare, and walked through the meadows
and down by the riverside....
Oct. 4.--In Oxford. I have visited many of the colleges, and as I
saw where all the millions of dollars had been expended for the
education of boys alone, I groaned in spirit and betook me to
Somerville and St. Margaret's Halls, where at least there is a
shelter for girls, and a beginning.
Oct. 5.--In London; and how almost like getting home it seems to
come back here.
LONDON, October 7.
MY DEAR SISTER: Mrs. Stanton feels that she must stay with Hattie
till the baby is a month old, and then have a week for farewell
visits in London. Cousins Fannie and Charles Dickinson are here.
Today I learned that I should have a chance to see and hear John
Bright at a convention of the Liberal Party at Leeds, October 17;
all these together have made me put off leaving a little longer.
Since yesterday we have been in the midst of a genuine London fog.
It is now 10 A. M. and even darker than it was two hours ago, when
we dressed and breakfasted by gaslight. I saw smoky, foggy days
here last March but they could not compare with this, and yet the
people say, "O, this is nothing to what November will bring."...
LONDON, October 27.
MY DEAR SISTER: Since I last wrote you I have visited Leeds where I
was the guest of Mrs. Hannah Ford, who has an elegant home--Adel
Grange. There were several other guests who had come to attend the
great Liberal demonstration, among them Mrs. Margaret Priestman
Tanner, a sister-in-law of John Bright, and his son Albert. Mrs.
Alice Scatcherd, of Leeds, was the person who had the sagacity to
get women sent as delegates and secure them admission on terms of
perfect equality. The amendment was a great triumph. She invited
the friends to meet next day at her house, where I saw John
Bright's daughter, Mrs. Helen Clark, and Richard Cobden's, Miss
Jane Cobden. Both made speeches at the convention, and most fitting
it was they should--the daughters of the two leading Radicals of a
half century ago.
On Saturday, Mrs. Ford took me to Haworth, the home of the Bronte
sisters. It is a bleak enough place now, and must have been even
more so forty or fifty years ago when those sensitive plants lived
there. A most sad day it was to me, as I looked into the little
parlor where the sisters walked up and down with their arms around
each other and planned their novels, or sat before the fireplace
and built air-castles. Then there were the mouldering tombstones of
the graveyard which lies in front and at one side of the house, and
the old church-pew, directly over the vault where lay their loved
mother and two sisters. And later, when Emily and Anne and the
erring brother Branwell had joined the others, poor Charlotte sat
there alone. The pew had to be removed every time the vault was
opened to receive another occupant. Think of those delicate women
sitting in that fireless, mouldy church, listening to their old
father's dry, hard theology, with their feet on the cold,
carpetless stones which covered their loved dead. It was too
horrible! Then I walked over the single stone pathway through the
fields toward the moor, opened the same wooden gates, and was, and
still continue to be, dipped into the depths of their utter
loneliness and sadness, born so out of time and place. How much the
world of literature has lost because of their short and
ill-environed lives, we can guess only from its increased wealth in
spite of all their adverse conditions.
From Leeds I went to Birmingham to attend an Anti-Contagious
Diseases Acts conference, and there heard the serene, lovely
Josephine E. Butler.
[Illustration: Autograph: "Josephine E. Butler"]
Miss Mueller has invited Mrs. Stanton and me to spend the rest of
our time with her. Mrs. Lucas and some others are going to
Liverpool to say good-by to us. The cordiality, instead of
decreasing, grows greater and greater as the day of departure draws
near.... I dread stepping on shipboard, but long to set foot upon
my native soil again. Only think, I shall have been gone over nine
months when I land in New York!
From the diary:
Oct. 13.--Last evening at Mrs. Rose's I met the daughter of Charles
Bradlaugh, a talented young woman, whom the college refused to
admit to botany lectures because of her father's atheism.
Oct. 18.--At Leeds. Liberal party convention; went this evening to
hear John Bright remember to forget to mention the extension of
suffrage to women in 1869 and 1870, and the property law for
married women in 1882. He did not meet my expectations as a
speaker, but far surpasses any other Englishman I have heard. None
of them can touch Wendell Phillips.
Oct. 28.--Had a four hours' row on the Thames today with some
friends. This evening went to hear Mrs. Annie Besant.
Nov. 2.--Have been out to Basingstoke to see the new baby. Mrs.
Mona Caird lunched with us. Have heard Michael Davitt, Mr. Fawcett
and Helen Taylor, all masterly speakers.
[Illustration: Autograph: "Sincerely Yours, Frances Power Cobbe"]
LONDON, November 6.
MY DEAR SISTER: ... As soon as I finish this scribble I am to have
5 o'clock tea with Frances Power Cobbe. Tomorrow I go shopping,
Thursday Millicent Garrett Fawcett is to dine with us, and Mrs.
Peter Taylor is to call here, and all are to take "substantial tea"
with dear, noble Mrs. Lucas, and then go to hear Henry Fawcett on
the political issues. Friday afternoon we receive at Miss Mueller's.
Saturday morning I leave for Bristol to visit Miss Mary Estlin,
Mrs. Tanner and the Misses Priestman, three sisters-in-law of John
Bright, who give a reception in my honor. The 12th I visit Margaret
E. Parker, at Warrington, and the next afternoon Mrs. Stanton and I
both go to Alderley Edge, near Manchester, to the home of Mr. and
Mrs. Jacob Bright.[18] On the 14th we attend the annual meeting of
the Manchester Women's Suffrage Association, and on the 16th go to
Liverpool where a reception will be given us in the afternoon. That
evening we shall spend at our hotel with the friends who go to see
us off, and on the 17th we give ourselves to old ocean's care in
the Cunarder Servia.
[Illustration: Autograph: "Believe me, yours very truly, M. G.
Fawcett."]
Don't worry now if you do not hear from me again until I touch
Yankee soil; and don't worry if the wind blows or if you learn the
vessel is late or lost. If the Servia fail to land me safe and
sound, don't repine or stop because I am not, but buckle on a new
and stronger harness and do double work for the good cause of
woman. You have the best of judgment in our work and are capable of
doing much if only you had confidence in yourself, so whatever
comes to me, do you be all the more for the less that _I_ am.
Half of Miss Anthony's nine-months' trip abroad had been spent in Great
Britain. To her all the other attractions of the old world were as
nothing compared with its living, breathing humanity. On the continent
she was deprived of any exchange of thought with its people because she
spoke no language but her own, and this made her prefer England; but
there was another and a stronger interest--the great progressive
movement which was going forward in regard to woman. Here she found
women of fine intellect and high social position engaged in the same
work to which she had given more than thirty years of her own life; and
here she met sympathy and recognition which would have been impossible
in any other country in Europe. Her central thought in going to Great
Britain had been to secure the co-operation of Englishwomen in holding
an international suffrage convention. At first her proposition met with
no response. The most radical of English women were conservative
compared to those of America, but after they had become thoroughly
acquainted with Mrs. Stanton and herself and prejudice had been
supplanted by confidence, the idea began to be more favorably regarded.
One serious difficulty in the way of the proposed convention lay in the
fact that the suffrage women of England and Scotland were not themselves
in thorough unison as to plans and purposes. No definite action was
taken until the last afternoon of their stay, when, at the reception
given in their honor by Dr. Ewing Whittle, in Liverpool, with the hearty
concurrence of Mrs. McLaren, Mrs. Lucas, Mrs. Scatcherd and Mrs. Parker,
who had accompanied Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton to see them safely on
board their vessel, a strong committee was formed to promote
international organization.
[Illustration: Margaret Bright Lucas (Signed: "Yours affectionately
Margaret Bright Lucas")]
They sailed from Liverpool on the Servia, November 17, 1883. Among their
fellow voyagers were Mrs. Cornelia C. Hussey, of Orange, N. J., to whom
the cause of woman suffrage and Miss Anthony personally are deeply
indebted; and Mrs. Margaret B. Sullivan, of Chicago, the distinguished
editorial writer. There was some lovely weather, which was greatly
enjoyed, but heavy fogs impeded the ship and it was just ten days from
the time of starting when, on November 27, they steamed into New York
harbor and stepped again on the shores of loved America.
FOOTNOTES:
[14] The many inquiries and directions in regard to the suffrage work,
and the loving messages to friends and relatives at home, are omitted in
the extracts made from Miss Anthony's letters; but they are of constant
occurrence, and show that these were never absent from her thoughts.
[15] While in Florence, Miss Anthony was entertained by the Countess de
Resse, daughter of Elizabeth B. Phelps, of New York, and by the Princess
Koltzoff-Massalsky, the distinguished author and artist, known through
Europe by her pen-name of Dora d'Istria.
[16] Miss Anthony occupied some rainy days, while here, in wrapping up
papers and writing letters which she put in her official envelopes,
bearing the revolutionary mottoes, "No just government can be formed
without the consent of the governed," "Taxation without representation
is tyranny." After a few days a dignified official appeared at the
American legation with a large package of mail bearing the proscribed
mottoes, and said, "Such sentiments can not pass through the post-office
in Germany." So in modest, uncomplaining wraps the letters and papers
started again for the land of the free.--E. C. S.
[17]
WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE.
A Public Meeting will be held in
ST. JAMES' HALL, PICCADILLY,
Thursday, July 5th, 1883,
In Support of the Resolution to be moved by Mr. Mason in the House of
Commons, on July 6th, for extending the Parliamentary Franchise to Women
who possess the qualifications which entitle men to Vote.
Doors open at 7. Organ Recital 7 to 8. The Chair will be taken at 8
o'clock by
WILLIAM WOODALL, ESQ., M.P.
Mrs. Fawcett.
Dr. Cameron, M.P.
Miss Tod.
J. P. Thomasson, Esq., M.P.
Mrs. Beddoe.
Mrs. E. Cady Stanton.
Miss Susan B. Anthony.
W. S. Caine, Esq., M.P.
Mrs. Fenwick Miller.
Arthur Arnold, Esq., M.P.
Miss Becker.
A. Illingworth, Esq., M.P.
Miss Mueller.
C. H. Hopwood, Esq., M.P.
Mrs. Oliver Scatcherd.
R. P. Blennerhassett, Esq., M.P.
Miss Eliza Sturge.
Thos. Roe, Esq., M.P.
J. A. Blake, Esq., M.P.
W. Summers, Esq., M.P.
Thos. Burt, Esq., M.P.
Mrs. Ashford, Miss Bewicke, Miss C. A. Biggs, Miss Cobden, Mrs. Cowen,
Mrs. Ormiston Chant, Mrs. J. R. Ford, Mrs. Hoggan, M.D., Mrs. Lucas,
Miss Frances Lord, Miss Lupton, Mrs. McLaren, Mrs. Paterson, Miss E.
Smith, Miss Stacpoole, Mrs. J. P. Thomasson, Miss Laura Waittle, and
other Ladies and Gentlemen are expected to be present.
Numbered Sofa Stalls, 2s. 6d. Balcony and Reserved Seats, 1s. Body of
the Hall and Gallery Free.
[18] A pleasant letter was received afterwards from Mrs. Bright, in
which she made this playful reference to Miss Anthony's always
depreciating herself in favor of Mrs. Stanton:
"We have thought of you often and hoped that the wind, which has been
rough here, has been tempered on the Atlantic for your sakes. Apropos of
the very beautiful allusion you made to Mrs. Cady Stanton's popularity
and the effect produced by her personal appearance, I must tell you of a
remark made by my little son John immediately after your departure. I
found him sitting on the sofa in my bedroom, thinking deeply. 'Mamma,'
he said, 'I wish you could get me a photograph of Miss Anthony. I think
she has such a fine face. There is something about it so firm and yet so
kind.' I said, 'Do you like her better than Mrs. Stanton?' 'Oh dear,
yes, much better,' replied Johnnie. So you see she does not monopolize
all the admiration!"