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MARGARET SANGER
[Illustration]
[Illustration: _Margaret Sanger_]
MARGARET
SANGER
_An Autobiography_
NEW YORK W·W·NORTON & COMPANY PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1938, by
W. W. NORTON & COMPANY, INC.
70 Fifth Avenue, New York
_First Edition_
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
FOR THE PUBLISHERS BY THE VAIL-BALLOU PRESS
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TO ALL THE PIONEERS
OF NEW AND BETTER WORLDS TO COME
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
_My thanks are due especially to Rackham Holt for her discerning aid in
organizing material and for her untiring and inspired advice during the
preparation of this book; as well as to Walter S. Hayward whose able
assistance has helped to make the task lighter._
_In the course of preparing this narrative many books have been
consulted. I trust their authors will agree with me that a bibliography
in a personal history is cumbersome and accept a general but none the
less grateful acknowledgment._
_My admiration has always gone out to the person who can put himself in
print and set down for historical purposes an exact record of his honest
feelings and thoughts, even though they may seem to reflect upon many of
his friends and helpers. I have not in this story hurt any one by
intent. Because its thread has, of necessity, followed dramatic
highlights, many people who played prominent parts have not been
mentioned. These I have not forgotten, nor those numerous others who
made smaller offerings. Some have pioneered in their special fields and
localities; some have given generously and unfailingly of their
financial help; some have volunteered in full measure their time and
efforts as officers and Committee members; some have fought and labored
by my side throughout the years; some have stepped in for only a brief
but significant role. Although on the outskirts of the army, it is to
these last as well as to those in the vanguard that the advance has been
made. And particularly do I wish to thank those co-workers and members
of the various staffs whose contributions can in no way be measured by
their duties, and whose indefatigable, loyal devotion has been a bulwark
of strength to me at all times._
_It has been impossible to carry out my sincere desire to give personal
and individual recognition and expression of gratitude to all. Neither a
history of the birth control movement nor the part I have taken in it
could be complete, however, did I not pay tribute to the integrity,
valiance, courage, and clarity of vision of the men and women who, year
after year, maintained their principles, and never swerved from them in
a cause which belongs to all of us._
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. FROM WHICH I SPRING 11
II. BLIND GERMS OF DAYS TO BE 24
III. BOOKS ARE THE COMPASSES 33
IV. DARKNESS THERE AND NOTHING MORE 46
V. CORALS TO CUT LIFE UPON 58
VI. FANATICS OF THEIR PURE IDEALS 68
VII. THE TURBID EBB AND FLOW OF MISERY 86
VIII. I HAVE PROMISES TO KEEP 93
IX. THE WOMAN REBEL 106
X. WE SPEAK THE SAME GOOD TONGUE 121
XI. HAVELOCK ELLIS 133
XII. STORK OVER HOLLAND 142
XIII. THE PEASANTS ARE KINGS 153
XIV. O, TO BE IN ENGLAND 169
XV. HIGH HANGS THE GAUNTLET 179
XVI. HEAR ME FOR MY CAUSE 192
XVII. FAITH I HAVE BEEN A TRUANT IN THE LAW 210
XVIII. LEAN HUNGER AND GREEN THIRST 224
XIX. THIS PRISON WHERE I LIVE 238
XX. A STOUT HEART TO A STEEP HILL 251
XXI. THUS TO REVISIT 268
XXII. DO YE HEAR THE CHILDREN WEEPING? 280
XXIII. IN TIME WE CAN ONLY BEGIN 292
XXIV. LAWS WERE LIKE COBWEBS 306
XXV. ALIEN STARS ARISE 316
XXVI. THE EAST IS BLOSSOMING 327
XXVII. ANCIENTS OF THE EARTH 337
XXVIII. THE WORLD IS MUCH THE SAME EVERYWHERE 349
XXIX. WHILE THE DOCTORS CONSULT 358
XXX. NOW IS THE TIME FOR CONVERSE 369
XXXI. GREAT HEIGHTS ARE HAZARDOUS 376
XXXII. CHANGE IS HOPEFULLY BEGUN 392
XXXIII. OLD FATHER ANTIC, THE LAW 398
XXXIV. SENATORS, BE NOT AFFRIGHTED 413
XXXV. A PAST WHICH IS GONE FOREVER 431
XXXVI. FAITH IS A FINE INVENTION 447
XXXVII. WHO CAN TAKE A DREAM FOR TRUTH? 461
XXXVIII. DEPTH BUT NOT TUMULT 478
XXXIX. SLOW GROWS THE SPLENDID PATTERN 493
INDEX 497
MARGARET SANGER
_Chapter One_
FROM WHICH I SPRING
“_‘Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?’ he asked.
‘Begin at the beginning,’ the King said, very gravely,
‘and go on till you come to the end: then stop.’_”
LEWIS CARROLL
The streets of Corning, New York, where I was born, climb right up from
the Chemung River, which cuts the town in two; the people who live there
have floppy knees from going up and down. When I was a little girl the
oaks and the pines met the stone walks at the top of the hill, and there
in the woods my father built his house, hoping mother’s “congestion of
the lungs” would be helped if she could breathe the pure, balsam-laden
air.
My mother, Anne Purcell, always had a cough, and when she braced herself
against the wall the conversation, which was forever echoing from room
to room, had to stop until she recovered. She was slender and straight
as an arrow, with head well set on sloping shoulders, black, wavy hair,
skin white and spotless, and with wide-apart eyes, gray-green, flecked
with amber. Her family had been Irish as far back as she could trace;
the strain of the Norman conquerors had run true throughout the
generations, and may have accounted for her unfaltering courage.
Mother’s sensitivity to beauty found some of its expression in flowers.
We had no money with which to buy them, and she had no time to grow
them, but the woods and fields were our garden. I can never remember
sitting at a table not brightened with blossoms; from the first spring
arbutus to the last goldenrod of autumn we had an abundance.
Although this was the Victorian Age, our home was almost free from
Victorianism. Father himself had made our furniture. He had even cut and
polished the slab of the big “marble-topped table,” as it was always
called. Only in the spare room stood a piece bought at a store—a
varnished washstand. The things you made yourself were not considered
quite good enough for guests. Sometimes father’s visitors were doctors,
teachers, or perhaps the village priest, but mostly they were the
artisans of the community—cabinet makers, masons, carpenters who admired
his ideas as well as shared his passion for hunting. In between tramping
the woods and talking they had helped to frame and roof the house,
working after hours to do this.
Father, Michael Hennessy Higgins, born in Ireland, was a nonconformist
through and through. All other men had beards or mustaches—not he. His
bright red mane, worn much too long according to the family, swept back
from his massive brow; he would not clip it short as most fathers did.
Actually it suited his finely-modeled head. He was nearly six feet tall
and hard-muscled; his keen blue eyes were set off by pinkish, freckled
skin. Homily and humor rippled unceasingly from his generous mouth in a
brogue which he never lost. The jokes with which he punctuated every
story were picked up, retold, and scattered about. When I was little
they were beyond me, but I could hear my elders laughing.
The scar on father’s forehead was his badge of war service. When Lincoln
had called for volunteers against the rebellious South, he had taken his
only possessions, a gold watch inherited from his grandfather and his
own father’s legacy of three hundred dollars, and had run away from his
home in Canada to enlist. But he had been told he was not old enough,
and was obliged to wait impatiently a year and a half until, on his
fifteenth birthday, he had joined the Twelfth New York Volunteer Cavalry
as a drummer boy.
One of father’s adventures had been the capture of a Confederate captain
on a fine mule, the latter being counted the more valuable acquisition
to the regiment. We were brought up in the tradition that he had been
one of three men selected by Sherman for bravery. That made us very
proud of him. Better not start anything with father; he could beat
anybody! But he himself had been appalled by the brutalities of war;
never thereafter was he interested in fighting, unless perhaps his Irish
sportsmanship cropped out when two well-matched dogs were set against
each other.
Immediately upon leaving the Army father had studied anatomy, medicine,
and phrenology, but these had been merely for perfecting his skill in
modeling. He made his living by chiseling angels and saints out of huge
blocks of white marble or gray granite for tombstones in cemeteries. He
was a philosopher, a rebel, and an artist, none of which was calculated
to produce wealth. Our existence was like that of any artist’s
family—chickens today and feathers tomorrow.
Christmases were on the poverty line. If any of us needed a new winter
overcoat or pair of overshoes, these constituted our presents. I was the
youngest of six, but after me others kept coming until we were eleven.
Our dolls were babies—living, wriggling bodies to bathe and dress
instead of lifeless faces that never cried or slept. A pine beside the
door was our Christmas tree. Father liked us to use natural things and
we had to rely upon ingenuity rather than the village stores, so we
decorated it with white popcorn and red cranberries which we strung
ourselves. Our most valuable gift was that of imagination.
We had little time for recreation. School was five miles away and we had
to walk back and forth twice a day as well as perform household duties.
The boys milked the cow, tended the chickens, and took care of Tom, the
old white horse which pulled our sleigh up and down the hill. The girls
helped put the younger children to bed, mended clothes, set the table,
cleaned the vegetables, and washed the dishes. We accepted all this with
no sense of deprivation or aggrievement, being, if anything, proud of
sharing responsibility.
And we made the most of our vacations. There were so many of us that we
did not have to depend upon outsiders, and Saturday afternoons used to
put on plays by ourselves in the barn. Ordinarily we were shy about
displaying emotions; we looked upon tears and temper in other homes with
shocked amazement as signs of ill-breeding. Play-acting, however, was
something else again. Here we could find outlet for histrionic talent
and win admiration instead of lifted eyebrows. I rather fancied myself
as an actress, and often mimicked some of the local characters, to the
apparent pleasure of my limited audience of family and neighbors. It was
not long before I slipped into declaiming. _The Lady of Lyons_ was one
of my specialties:
This is thy palace, where the perfumed light
Steals through the mist of alabaster lamps,
And every air is heavy with the sighs
Of orange groves, and music from the sweet lutes
And murmurs of low fountains, that gush forth
I’ the midst of roses!
All outdoors was our playground, but I was not conscious at the time of
my love for the country. Things in childhood change perspective. What
was taken for granted then assumes great significance in later life. I
knew how the oak tree grew and where the white and yellow violets could
be found, and with a slight feeling of superiority I showed and
expounded these mysteries to town children. Not until pavements were my
paths did I realize how much a part of me the country was, and how I
missed it.
We were all, brothers and sisters alike, healthy and strong, vigorous
and active; our appetites were curtailed only through necessity. We
played the same games together and shared the same sports—baseball,
skating, swimming, hunting. Nevertheless, except that we all had red
hair, shading from carrot to bronze, we were sharply distinct
physically. The girls were small and feminine, the boys husky and
brawny. When I went out into the world and observed men, otherwise
admirable, who could not pound a nail or use a saw, pick, shovel, or ax,
I was dumfounded. I had always taken for granted that any man could make
things with his hands.
I expected this even of women. My oldest sister, Mary, possessed, more
than the rest of us, an innate charm and gentleness. She could do
anything along domestic lines—embroidery, dress making, tailoring,
cooking; she could concoct the most delicious and unusual foods, and mix
delicate pastries. But she was also an expert at upholstering,
carpentry, painting, roofing with shingles or with thatch. When Mary was
in the house, we never had to send for a plumber. She rode gracefully
and handled the reins from the carriage seat with equal dexterity; she
could milk a cow and deliver a baby; neighbors called her to tend their
sick cattle, or, when death came, to lay out the body; she tutored in
mathematics and Latin, and was well-read in the classics, yet she liked
most the theater, and was a dramatic critic whose judgment was often
sought. In all that she did her sweetness and dearness were apparent,
though she performed her many kindnesses in secret. She left the home
roof while I was still a child, but she never failed to send Christmas
boxes in which every member of the family shared, each gift beautifully
wrapped and decorated with ribbons and cards.
My brothers were ardent sportsmen, although they might not have been
outstanding scholars. They could use their fists and were as good shots
as their father. For that matter, we all knew how to shoot; any normal
person could manage a gun. Father was a great hunter. Our best times
were when friends of his came to spend the night, talking late, starting
early the next morning for the heavy woods which were full of foxes,
rabbits, partridge, quail, and pheasant.
Someone was always cleaning and oiling a gun in the kitchen or carrying
food to the kennels. The boys were devoted to their fox and rabbit
hounds, but father lavished his affection on bird dogs. Our favorite
came to us unsought, unbought, and I had a prideful part in his joining
the family. One afternoon I was sitting alone by the nameless brook
which ran by our house, clear and cool, deep enough in some places to
take little swims on hot summer days. I was engaged in pinning together
with thorns a wreath of leaves to adorn my head when a large, white dog
ambled up, sniffed, wagged his tail, and seemed to want to belong. This
was no ordinary cur, but a well-bred English setter which had evidently
been lost. How father would love him!
Even though the dog had no collar, I was slightly uneasy as to my right
of ownership. One conspicuous brown-red spot on the back of his neck
simplified my problem. Unobtrusively I slipped him into the barn, tied
him up, selected a brush, dipped it in one of the cans of paint always
on hand, and multiplied the one spot by ten. For a day, waiting for them
to dry, I fed him well with food filched from the rations of the other
kennel occupants, then led him forth, his hairy dots stiffened with
paint, and offered him to father as a special present.
Accepting the gift in the spirit in which it was intended, father
admired the dog’s points, and, with an unmistakable twinkle, lent
himself to a deception which, of course, could deceive nobody. When
Saturday night came, the neighborhood looked the animal over; none knew
him so we named him Toss and admitted him to the house. Later he bred
with an Irish setter of no importance, and one of the resultant puppies,
Beauty, shared his privileges.
Toss, as well as everybody else, subscribed to the idea that the
“artist” in father must be catered to. With the first sound of his
clearing his throat in the morning Toss picked up the shoes which had
been left out to be cleaned, and carried them one at a time to the
bedroom door, then stood wagging his tail, waiting to be patted.
Father’s shoes were always polished, his trousers always creased. Every
day, even when going to work, he put on spotless white shirts with
starched collars and attachable cuffs; these were something of a luxury,
because they had to be laundered at home, but they got done somehow.
Father took little or no responsibility for the minute details of the
daily tasks. I can see him when he had nothing on hand, laughing and
joking or reading poetry. Mother, however, was everlastingly busy
sewing, cooking, doing this and that. For so ardent and courageous a
woman he must have been trying, and I still wonder at her patience. She
loved her children deeply, but no one ever doubted that she idolized her
husband, and through the years of her wedded life to her early death
never wavered in her constancy. Father’s devotion to mother, though
equally profound, never evidenced itself in practical ways.
The relation existing between our parents was unusual for its day; they
had the idea of comradeship and not merely loved but liked and respected
each other. There was no quarreling or bickering; none of us had to take
sides, saying, “Father is right,” or, “Mother is right.” We knew that if
we pleased one we pleased the other, and such an atmosphere leaves its
mark; we felt secure from emotional uncertainty, and were ourselves
guided towards certainty in our future. We were all friends together,
though not in the modern sense of familiarity. A little dignity and
formality were always maintained and we were invariably addressed by our
full names. The century of the child had not yet been ushered in.
In those days young people, unless invited to speak, were seen and not
heard. But as soon as father considered us old enough to have ideas or
opinions, we were given full scope to express them, no matter how
adolescent. He hated the slavery of pattern and following of examples
and believed in the equality of the sexes; not only did he come out
strongly for woman suffrage in the wake of Susan B. Anthony, but he
advocated Mrs. Bloomer’s bloomers as attire for women, though his wife
and daughters never wore them. He fought for free libraries, free
education, free books in the public schools, and freedom of the mind
from dogma and cant. Sitting comfortably with his feet on the table he
used to say, “You should give something back to your country because you
as a child were rocked in the cradle of liberty and nursed at the breast
of the goddess of truth.” Father always talked like that.
Although the first Socialist in the community, father also took single
tax in his stride and became the champion and friend of Henry George.
_Progress and Poverty_ was one of the latest additions to our meager
bookshelf. He laughed and rejoiced when he came upon what to him were
meaty sentences, reading them aloud to mother, who accepted them as fine
because he said they were fine. The rest of us all had to plow through
the book in order, as he said, to “elevate the mind.” To me it still
remains one of the dullest ever written.
Mother’s loyalty to father was tested repeatedly. Hers were the
responsibilities of feeding and clothing and managing on his income,
combined with the earnings of the oldest children. But father’s
generosity took no cognizance of fact. Once he was asked to buy a dozen
bananas for supper. Instead, he purchased a stalk of fifteen dozen, and
on his way home gave every single one to schoolboys and girls playing at
recess. On another occasion he showed up with eight of a neighbor’s
children; the ninth had been quarantined for diphtheria. They lived with
us for two months, crowded into our beds, tucked in between us at the
table. Mother welcomed them as she did his other guests. The house was
always open. She was not so much social-minded as inherently hospitable.
But with her frail body and slim pocketbook, it took courage to smile.
Once only that I can remember did mother’s patience give way. That was
when father invaded her realm too drastically and invited Henry George
to lecture at the leading hotel—with banquet thrown in. From the money
saved for the winter coal he had taken enough to entertain fifty men
whose children were well-fed and well-clothed. This was the sole time I
ever knew my parents to be at odds, though even then I heard no
quarreling words. Whatever happened between them I was not sure, but
father spent several days wooing back the smile and light to her eyes.
After Henry George’s visit we had to go without coal most of the winter.
With more pleasure than _Progress and Poverty_ I recall a _History of
the World_, _Lalla Rookh_, _Gulliver’s Travels_, and _Aesop’s Fables_.
The last-named touched a sympathetic, philosophical chord in father.
“Wolf! Wolf!” and “Sour Grapes” were often used to exemplify the
trifling imperfections to which all human beings were subject. For his
parables he drew also on the Bible, the most enormous volume you ever
laid eyes on, brass bound, with heavy clasps, which was the repository
of the family statistics; every birth, marriage, death was entered
there. The handbooks to father’s work were the physiologies, one of
which was combined with a materia medica. These were especially
attractive to me, perhaps because they were illustrated with vivid
plates, mostly red and blue, and described the fascinating, unknown
interior of the human body.
Neighbors were constantly coming to father for help. “What do you think
is the matter with this child?” Even without a thermometer he could tell
by feeling the skin whether you were feverish. He prescribed bismuth if
the diagnosis were “summer complaint,” castor oil if you had eaten
something which had disagreed with you, and always sulphur and molasses
in the spring “to clean the blood.”
Father’s cure-all was whiskey—“good whiskey,” which “liberated the
spirit.” There was nothing from a deranged system to a depressed mind
that it could not fix up. He never drank alone, but no masculine guest
ever entered the door or sat down to pass the time of day without his
producing the bottle. “Have a little shtimulant?”
The chief value of whiskey to father, however, was medicinal. If mumps
turned into a large, ugly abscess, he put the blade of his jackknife in
the fire, lanced the gland, and cleaned the wound with whiskey—good
whiskey. When my face was swollen with erysipelas, he painted it
morning, afternoon, and evening with tincture of iodine; the doctor had
so ordered. I was held firmly in place each time this torture was
inflicted, and, as soon as released, jumped and ran screaming and
howling into the cellar, where I plunged my burning face into a pan of
cool buttermilk until the pain subsided. This went on for several days,
and I was growing exhausted from the dreaded iodine. Finally father
decided to abandon the treatment and substitute good whiskey. Then I
recovered.
As necessary to father as the physiologies was a book by the famous
phrenologist, Orson Fuller, under whom he had studied. Father believed
implicitly that the head was the sculptured expression of the soul.
Straight or slanting eyes, a ridge between them, a turned-up nose, full
lips, bulges in front of or behind the ears—all these traits had
definite meaning for him. A research worker had to be inquisitive, a
seeker with more than normal curiosity-bumps; a musician had to have
order and time over the eyebrows; a pugilist could not be made but had
to have the proper protuberances around the ears.
One of father’s phrases was, “Nature is the perfect sculptor; she is
never wrong. If you seem to have made a mistake in reading, it is
because you have not read correctly.” He himself seldom made a mistake,
and his reputation spread far and wide. Young men in confusion of mind
and the customary puzzled, pre-graduation state came from Cornell and
other colleges to consult him about their careers. He examined heads and
faces, told them where he thought their true vocations lay, and
supplemented this advice later with voluminous interested
correspondence. I could not help picking up his principles and some of
his ardor, though I have never been able to analyze character so well.
No amount of front or salesmanship could divert him, whereas I have
often been taken in by a person’s self-confidence and estimation of
himself.
In the predominantly Roman Catholic community of Corning, set crosses in
the cemeteries were the rule for the poor and, before they went out of
style, angels in various poses for the rich. I used to watch father at
work. The rough, penciled sketch indicated little; even less did the
first unshaped block of stone. He played with the hard, unyielding
marble as though it were clay, making a tiny chip for a mouth, which
grew rounder and rounder. A face then emerged, a shoulder, a sweep of
drapery, praying hands, until finally the whole stood complete with
wings and halo.
Although Catholics were father’s best patrons, by nature and upbringing
he deplored their dogma. He joined the Knights of Labor, who were
agitating against the influx of unskilled immigrants from Catholic
countries, and this did not endear him to his clientele. Still less did
his espousal of Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll, a man after his own heart,
whose works he had eagerly studied and used as texts. Once when the
challenger was sounding a ringing defiance in near-by towns, father
extended an invitation to speak in Corning and enlighten it. He
collected subscriptions to pay for the only hall in town, owned by
Father Coghlan. A notice was inserted in the paper that the meeting
would be held the following Sunday, but chiefly the news spread by word
of mouth. “Better come. Tell all your friends.”
Sunday afternoon arrived, and father escorted “Colonel Bob” from the
hotel to the hall, I trotting by his side. We pushed through the waiting
crowd, but shut doors stared silently and reprovingly—word had also
reached Father Coghlan.
Some were there to hear and learn, others to denounce. Antipathies
between the two suddenly exploded in action. Tomatoes, apples, and
cabbage stumps began to fly. This was my first experience of rage
directed against those holding views which were contrary to accepted
ones. It was my first, but by no means my last. I was to encounter it
many times, and always with the same bewilderment and disdain. My father
apparently felt only the disdain. Resolutely he announced the meeting
would take place in the woods near our home an hour later, then led
Ingersoll and the “flock” through the streets. I trudged along again, my
small hand clasped in his, my head held just as high.
Who cared for the dreary, dark, little hall! In the woodland was room
for all. Those who had come for discussion sat spellbound on the ground
in a ring around the standing orator. For them the booing had been
incidental and was ignored. I cannot remember a word of what Colonel
Ingersoll said, but the scene remains. It was late in the afternoon, and
the tall pines shot up against the fiery radiance of the setting sun,
which lit the sky with the brilliance peculiar to the afterglows of the
Chemung Valley.
Florid, gray-haired Father Coghlan, probably tall in his prime, came to
call on mother. He was a kindly old gentleman, not really intolerant.
Shutting the hall had been a matter of principle; he could not have an
atheist within those sacred walls. But he was willing to talk about it
afterwards. In fact, he rather enjoyed arguing with rebels. He was full
of persuasion which he used on mother, begging her to exercise her
influence with father to make him refrain from his evil ways. She had
been reared in the faith, although since her marriage to a freethinker
which had so distressed her parents, she had never attended church to my
knowledge. The priest was troubled to see her soul damned when she might
have been a good Catholic, and implored her to send her children to
church and to the parochial school, to stand firm against the intrusion
of godlessness. Mother must have suffered from the conflict.
None of us realized how the Ingersoll episode was to affect our
well-being. Thereafter we were known as children of the devil. On our
way to school names were shouted, tongues stuck out, grimaces made; the
juvenile stamp of disapproval had been set upon us. But we had been so
steeped in “heretic” notions that we were not particularly bothered by
this and could not see ahead into the dark future when a hard childhood
was to be made harder. No more marble angels were to be carved for local
Catholic cemeteries, and, while father’s income was diminishing, the
family was increasing.
Occasionally big commissions were offered him in adjacent towns where
his reputation was still high, and he was then away for days at a time,
coming back with a thousand or fifteen hundred dollars in his pocket; we
all had new clothes, and the house was full of plenty. Food was bought
for the winter—turnips, apples, flour, potatoes. But then again a year
might pass before he had another one, and meanwhile we had sunk deeply
into debt.
Towards orthodox religion father’s own attitude remained one of
tolerance. He looked upon the New Testament as the noble story of a
human being which, because of ignorance and the lack of printing
presses, had become exaggerated. He maintained that religions served
their purpose; some people depended on them all their lives for
discipline—to keep them straight, to make them honest. Others did not
need to be so held in line. But subjection to any church was a
reflection on strength and character. You should be able to get from
yourself what you had to go to church for.
When we asked which Sunday School we should attend, he suggested, “Try
them all, but be chained to none.” For a year or two I made the rounds,
especially at Christmas and Easter, when you received oranges and little
bags of candy. It was always cold at the Catholic church and the wooden
benches were very bare and hard; some seats were upholstered in soft,
red cloth but these were for the rich, who rented the pews and put
dollars into the plate at collection. I never liked to see the figure of
Jesus on the cross; we could not help Him because He had been crucified
long ago. I much preferred the Virgin Mary; she was beautiful,
smiling—the way I should like to look when I had a baby.
Saying my prayers for mother’s benefit was spasmodic. Ethel, the sister
nearest my own age, was more given than I to religious phases and I
could get her in bed faster if I said them with her. One evening when we
had finished this dutiful ritual I climbed on father’s chair to kiss him
good night. He asked quizzically, “What was that you were saying about
bread?”
“Why, that was in the Lord’s Prayer, ‘Give us this day our daily
bread.’”
“Who were you talking to?”
“To God.”
“Is God a baker?”
I was shocked. Nevertheless, I rallied to the attack and replied as best
I could, doubtless influenced by conversations I had heard. “No, of
course not. It means the rain, the sunshine, and all the things to make
the wheat, which makes the bread.”
“Well, well,” he replied, “so that’s the idea. Then why don’t you say
so? Always say what you mean, my daughter; it is much better.”
Thereafter I began to question what I had previously taken for granted
and to reason for myself. It was not pleasant, but father had taught me
to think. He gave none of us much peace. When we put on stout shoes he
said, “Very nice. Very comfortable. Do you know who made them?”
“Why, yes, the shoemaker.”
We then had to listen to graphic descriptions of factory conditions in
the shoe industry, so that we might learn something of the misery and
poverty the workers suffered in order to keep our feet warm and dry.
Father never talked about religion without bringing in the ballot box.
In fact, he took up Socialism because he believed it Christian
philosophy put into practice, and to me its ideals still come nearest to
carrying out what Christianity was supposed to do. Unceasingly he tried
to inculcate in us the idea that our duty lay not in considering what
might happen to us after death, but in doing something here and now to
make the lives of other human beings more decent. “You have no right to
material comforts without giving back to society the benefit of your
honest experience,” was one of his maxims, and his parting words to each
of his sons and daughters who had grown old enough to fend for
themselves were, “Leave the world better because you, my child, have
dwelt in it.”
This was something to live up to.
_Chapter Two_
BLIND GERM OF DAYS TO BE
“_I think, dearest Uncle, that you cannot _really_ wish
me to be the ‘mamma d’une nombreuse famille,’ for I
think you will see the great inconvenience a _large_
family would be to us all, and particularly to the
country, independent of the hardship and inconvenience
to myself; men never think, at least seldom think, what
a hard task it is for us women to go through this _very
often_._”
QUEEN VICTORIA _to_ KING LEOPOLD
Often when my brothers and sisters and I meet we remind each other of
funny or exciting adventures we used to have, but I never desire to live
that early part of my life again. Childhood is supposed to be a happy
time. Mine was difficult, though I did not then think of it as a
disadvantage nor do I now.
It never occurred to me to ask my parents for pocket money, but the day
came during my eighth year when I was desperately in want of ten cents.
_Uncle Tom’s Cabin_ was coming to town. On Saturday afternoon I started
out with one of my playmates, she with her dime, I with nothing but
faith. We reached the Corning Opera House half an hour early. The throng
at the entrance grew thicker and thicker. Curtain time had almost come,
and still no miracle. Nevertheless, I simply had to get into that
theater. All about me had tickets or money or both. Suddenly I felt
something touch my arm—the purse of a woman who was pressed close beside
me. It was open, and I could see the coveted coins within. One quick
move and I could have my heart’s desire. The longing was so deep and
hard that it blotted out everything except my imperative need. I _had_
to get into that theater.
I was about to put out my hand towards the bag when the doors were
thrown wide and the crowd precipitately surged forward. Being small, I
was shoved headlong under the ropes and into the safety of the nearest
seat. But I could take no joy in the play.
As I lay sleepless that night, after a prayer of thanks for my many
blessings, the crack of Simon Legree’s whip and the off-stage hounds
baying after Eliza were not occupying my mind. Their places were taken
by pictures of the devil which had tempted me and the hand of God which
had been stretched out to save me from theft.
Following this experience, which might have been called a spiritual
awakening, I began to connect my desires with reasoning about
consequences. This was difficult, because my feelings were strong and
urgent. I realized I was made up of two Me’s—one the thinking Me, the
other, willful and emotional, which sometimes exercised too great a
power; there was danger in her leadership and I set myself the task of
uniting the two by putting myself through ordeals of various sorts to
strengthen the head Me.
To gain greater fortitude, I began to make myself do what I feared
most—go upstairs alone to bed without a light, go down cellar without
singing, get up on the rafters in the barn and jump on the haystack
thirty feet below. When I was able to accomplish these without flinching
I felt more secure and more strong within myself.
But ahead of me still lay the hardest task of all.
Across the Chemung some friends of ours had a farm. Their orchard, heavy
with delectable apples, seemed to me a veritable Eden. But to reach it
by the wooden wagon bridge was three miles around; my brothers preferred
the shorter route over the high, narrow, iron span of the Erie Railroad,
under which the river raced deep and fast. The spaced ties held no
terrors for their long legs, and they often swung them over the edge
while they fished the stream beneath. When I made the trip father and
brother each gave a hand to which I clung fiercely, and they half lifted
me over the gaps which my shorter legs could hardly compass unaided.
Held tight as I was, I became dizzy from the height, and a panic of
terror seized me. In fact, the mere thought of the journey, even so well
supported, made me feel queer.
The younger children were forbidden to cross the bridge unaccompanied.
But I had to conquer my fear; I had to take that walk alone. I trembled
as I drew near. The more I feared it, the more determined I was to make
myself do it. I can recall now how stoically I put one foot on the first
tie and began the venturesome and precarious passage stretching
endlessly ahead of me. I dared not look down at the water; I wanted
terribly to see that my feet were firmly placed, but could not trust my
head.
About halfway over I heard the hum of the steel rails. My second dread
had come upon me—the always possible train. I could not see it because
of the curve at the end of the bridge. The singing grew louder as it
came closer. I knew I could not get across in time, and turned towards
the nearest girder to which I might cling. But it was six feet away. The
engine with a whistling shriek burst into view—snorting, huge, menacing,
rushing. I stumbled and fell.
In those days I was plump, and this plumpness saved me. Instinctively my
arms went out and curled around the ties as I dropped between them.
There I dangled over space. The bridge shook; the thunder swelled; the
long, swift passenger cars swooped down. I was less than three feet from
the outer rail, and a new terror gripped me. I had seen the sharp,
sizzling steam jet out as locomotives drew near the station. I screwed
my eyes shut and prayed the engineer not to turn on the steam.
After the blur of wheels had crashed by I could feel nothing. I hung
there, I do not know how long, until a friend of my father, who had been
fishing below, came to my rescue. He pulled up the fat, aching little
body, stood me on my feet again, asked me severely whether my father
knew where I was, gave me two brisk thwacks on the bottom, turned my
face towards home, and went back to his rod and line.
After waiting a few moments to think matters over I realized that it
would be impossible for me to retrace my course. Common sense aided me.
The journey forward was no further than the journey back. I stepped
ahead far more bravely, knowing if I could reach the end of the bridge I
would never be so terrified again. Though bruised and sore I continued
my cautious march and had as good a time at the farm as usual.
However, I returned home by the wooden bridge, the long way round, but
the practical one.
When Ethel asked me that night why I was putting vaseline under my arms
I merely said I had scratched myself. Foolhardiness was never highly
esteemed by anyone in the family. Though resourcefulness was taken for
granted, running into unnecessary danger was just nonsense, and I wanted
no censure for my disobedience.
We were seldom scolded, never spanked. If an unpleasant conversation
were needed, no other brother or sister was witness; neither parent ever
humiliated one child in front of another. This was part of the
sensitiveness of both. Mother in particular had a horror of personal
vehemence or acrimonious arguments; in trying to prevent or stop them
she would display amazing intrepidity—separating fighting dogs, fighting
boys, even fighting men.
Peacemaker as she was, on occasion she battled valiantly for her loved
ones, resenting bitterly the corporal punishment then customary in
schools. Once my brother Joe came home with his hands so swollen and
blistered that he could not do his evening chore of bringing in the
wood. Mother looked carefully at them and asked him what had happened.
He explained that the teacher had fallen asleep and several boys had
started throwing spitballs. When one had hit her on the nose she had
awakened with a little scream.
Most children had the trick of burying their faces behind their big
geographies and appearing to be studying the page with the most innocent
air in the world. But Joe had no such technique. He was doubled up with
laughter. The teacher first accused him of throwing the spitball, and,
when he denied it, insisted that he name the culprit. She had been
embarrassed by her ridiculous situation, and had turned her emotion into
what she considered righteous indignation. Joe had paid the penalty of
being beaten for his unwillingness to violate the schoolboy code of
honor.
This was injustice and the surest road to mother’s wrath. She started at
once the long trip to the school. When she found no one there, she
walked more miles to the teacher’s home. Reproof was called for and she
administered it. But that was not enough. She then demanded that father
go to the Board of Education and take Joe with him. There would have
been no sleeping in the house with her had he not done so. An
investigation was promised, which soon afterwards resulted in the
teacher’s dismissal.
The teachers at the Corning School were no worse than others of their
day; many of them were much better. The brick building was quite modern
for the time, with a playground around it and good principals to guide
it. Its superiority was due in part to the influence of the Houghtons,
the big industrialists of the town. For three generations they had been
making glassware unsurpassed for texture and beauty of design, and
hardly a family of means in the country did not have at least one
cut-glass centerpiece from Corning. The factories had prospered during
the kerosene lamp era, and now, with electricity coming into its own,
they were working overtime blowing light bulbs.
Corning was not on the whole a pleasant town. Along the river flats
lived the factory workers, chiefly Irish; on the heights above the
rolling clouds of smoke that belched from the chimneys lived the owners
and executives. The tiny yards of the former were a-sprawl with
children; in the gardens on the hills only two or three played. This
contrast made a track in my mind. Large families were associated with
poverty, toil, unemployment, drunkenness, cruelty, fighting, jails; the
small ones with cleanliness, leisure, freedom, light, space, sunshine.
The fathers of the small families owned their homes; the young-looking
mothers had time to play croquet with their husbands in the evenings on
the smooth lawns. Their clothes had style and charm, and the fragrance
of perfume clung about them. They walked hand in hand on shopping
expeditions with their children, who seemed positive in their right to
live. To me the distinction between happiness and unhappiness in
childhood was one of small families and of large families rather than of
wealth and poverty.
In our home, too, we felt the economic pressure directly ascribable to
size. I was always apprehensive that we might some day be like the
families on the flats, because we always had another baby coming,
another baby coming. A new litter of puppies was interesting but not out
of the ordinary; so, likewise, the cry of a new infant never seemed
unexpected. Neither excited any more curiosity than breakfast or dinner.
No one ever told me how they were born. I just knew.
I was little more than eight when I first helped wash the
fourteen-and-a-half-pound baby after one of mother’s deliveries. She had
had a “terrible hard time,” but father had pulled her through, and, in a
few weeks, tired and coughing, she was going about her work, believing
as usual that her latest was the prize of perfect babies. Mother’s
eleven children were all ten-pounders or more, and both she and father
had a eugenic pride of race. I used to hear her say that not one of hers
had a mark or blemish, although she had the utmost compassion for those
who might have cleft palates, crossed eyes, or be “born sick.”
Late one night a woman rushed into our house, seeking protection,
clutching in her shawl a scrawny, naked baby, raw with eczema. When her
hysteria was calmed sufficiently we learned that her husband had reeled
home drunk and had thrown the wailing infant out into the snow. Father
was all for summoning the police, but mother was too wise for that. She
dispatched him to talk to the man while she gave the weeping woman a
warm supper and comforted her. Father returned shortly to say it was
safe for her to go back to the multitude of other children because her
husband had fallen asleep. Ugly and taciturn though he was I could
picture him coming home after a hard day’s work to a household racked
with the shrieks of the suffering little thing. I could see that he too
was pathetic and a victim; I had sympathy for his rage.
But mother did lose one of her beautiful babies. Henry George McGlynn
Higgins had been named for two of the rebel figures father most admired.
The four-year-old was playing happily in the afternoon; a few hours
later he was gasping for breath. Father heated his home-made croup
kettle on the stove until it boiled, and then carried it steaming to be
put under the blanket which rose like a covered wagon above the bed. As
soon as he realized that home remedies were failing he sent for the
doctor. But events moved too swiftly for him. We had gone to bed with no
suspicion that by morning we should be one less. I was shocked and
surprised that something could come along and pick one of us out of the
world in so few hours.
I had no time, however, to consider the bewildering verity of death. We
all had to turn to consoling mother. Perhaps unconsciously she had
subscribed to father’s theory that the face was the mirror to the soul.
She complained she had no picture of her lovely boy, and kept reminding
herself of the fine shape of his head, the wide, well-set eyes, the
familiar contours which had been wiped forever from her sight, and might
soon be sponged from her memory as well.
Mother’s grief over her lost child increased father’s. Because in part
he blamed himself, he was desperate to assuage her sorrow. The day after
the burial he was constantly occupied in his studio, and when evening
fell he took me affectionately by the hand asking me to stay up and help
him on a piece of work he was about to do. I agreed willingly.
About eleven o’clock we went forth together into the pitch-black night,
father pushing ahead of him a wheelbarrow full of tools and a bag of
plaster of Paris. We walked on and on through the stillness for fully
two miles to the cemetery where the little brother had been buried.
Father knew every step, but it was scary and I clung to his hand.
Just beyond the gateway father hid the lighted lantern in the near-by
bushes over a grave and told me to wait there unless I heard somebody
coming. He expected me to be grown up at the age of ten. Nerves meant
sickness; if any child cried out in the night it was merely considered
“delicate.” Consequently I obeyed and watched, shivering with cold and
excitement, darting quick glances at the ghostly forms of some of
father’s monuments which loomed out of the darkness around me. I could
hear the steady chunk, chunk, chunk of his pick and shovel, and the
sharper sound when suddenly he struck the coffin.
Father had taken it as a matter of course that I should understand and
had not explained what he was about to do. But I never questioned his
actions. I did not know there was a law against a man’s digging up his
own dead child but, even had I known, I would have believed that the law
was wrong.
We traveled back the long, weary way, arriving home in the early hours
of the morning. Nothing was said to mother or to the others about that
amazing night’s adventure; I was not told to keep silent, but I knew
there was mystery in the air and it was no time to talk.
For two evenings I worked with father, helping him break the death mask,
mold and shape the cast. I remember the queer feeling I had when I
discovered some of the hair which had stuck in the plaster. On the third
day, just after supper, father said to us all, “Will you come into the
studio?” With tender eyes on mother he uncovered and presented to her
the bust of the dead little boy.
She was extraordinarily comforted. Though to me the model, perfect as it
was, seemed lifeless, every once in a while she entered the studio, took
off the cloth which protected it from the dust, wept and was relieved,
recovered it and went on.