not old, used to say, “Now, Mrs. Sanger, you’re still violating the law
by sending your pamphlet through the mails. If you keep this up they’ll
put you in jail again.”
I objected, “The Government and I had this out years ago. The Federal
case was dismissed.”
“It never can be settled while we get these protests.”
To prove the Post Office was not having such an easy time of it, he
pulled open a drawer and inside was a little pile of pamphlets and
letters from religious fanatics, self-constituted moralists of one kind
or another, women as well as men, who had received their copies and then
complained. He showed me envelopes addressed to the Governor of New
York, to the President of the United States. I studied the handwriting
to see whether I could recognize it as identical with any that had come
to me. Perhaps the postmark was Wichita, Kansas; there could not be many
from a town of that size, and presently I remembered the request. It was
a shattering thing to see that drawer. I had been earnestly trying to
aid despairing mothers, and had been betrayed.
“Here’s this proof against you, Mrs. Sanger. What are you going to do
about it?”
“Nothing. As long as these women ask me to help them, I’m going to do
so.”
I intended to continue to the limit of my resources whether or not I had
help from those whom I had originally counted upon. In order to make
women’s clubs feel the need as I did I had often gone miles at my own
expense to present a topic that had taken me years to prepare and then
had had to express it to the accompaniment of the clatter of dishes or
the stirring of spoons in after-dinner coffees. The members had seemed
to have their minds on hot rolls or had been fidgeting to get on to the
bridge tables. Sometimes a few, who had come to dabble in
sentimentality, had experienced a pleasant emotional response, “Oh, the
poor things,” but that had been as far as it had gone.
The continued apathy of such organizations disappointed me intensely;
the desire to build up a structure appeared to dominate them all. I had
lost faith in their sincerity, respect for their courage, and at this
time had no reason to anticipate assistance from them. To upbraid,
accuse, or censure them for not doing what I had hoped was useless, but
I resolved that I was never again going to talk to them, and, when it
seemed necessary that they be addressed, I sent others to do it.
My nervousness ahead of lectures continued to be akin to illness. All
through the years it has been like a nightmare even to think of a
pending speech. I promised enthusiastically to go here or there, and
then tried to forget it. The morning it was to be delivered I awakened
with a panicky feeling which grew into a sort of terror if I allowed
myself to dwell on it. It was fatal to eat before a meeting.
Some people can keep an audience rocking with laughter and yet get over
a message. But I cannot. Seldom do my hearers have anything merry from
me. Advisers often say, “Lighten up your subject.” I have always
resented this; I am the protagonist of women who have nothing to laugh
at.
Heywood Broun once remarked that I had no sense of humor. I was
surprised at him, but I could understand his statement in a way; he had
been at only a few meetings as chairman and I had been serious to the
point of deadliness, purposely bringing forth laborious facts and
dramatic statistics. I was grasping at an opportunity to reach his
audience because, whenever he was moved by anything deeply, he wrote a
story in his column which by reason of its effective irony and smooth
prose swayed others to the same extent.
I have had much fun, although it may have penetrated only to the
intimate circle of friends. Once after giving what I thought was a very
up-to-date, spirited talk at the Waldorf-Astoria, a dear old lady, at
least in her middle eighties, tottered towards me with the aid of a cane
and in trembling voice quavered, “I have traveled across the country to
hear you speak, Miss Sangster. My mother used to read your poems to me
when I was a little girl, and I feel this is a great day for me to be
able to clasp your hand.” She had confused me with the poetess, Margaret
E. Sangster, who in the mid-Nineteenth Century had been a regular
contributor to religious magazines.
Inevitably I have been constantly torn between my compulsion to do this
work and a haunting feeling that I was robbing my children of time to
which they were entitled. Back in 1913 I had had some vague notion of
being able to spend all my summers with them at Provincetown. That
visionary hope had been immediately dissipated because too many painters
began to discover it and the place became littered with easels and
smocks. Gene O’Neill’s plays were being produced on the wharf opposite
Mary Heaton Vorse’s house, and these brought many more people. I wanted
to get away even further, and so did Jack Reed, who had also sought
sanctuary there. A real estate agent took him to near-by Truro where the
feet of New Yorkers had not yet trod, and I was invited to come along.
We saw a little house on a little hill, one of the most ancient in the
village. Below it the Pamet River wound like a silver ribbon to the
ocean. An old sea captain had squared and smoothed and fitted the
timbers, brought them up from the Carolinas in a sailing vessel, and
fastened them tightly together with wooden pegs. The kitchen was bright
and warm, and seemed as though many cookies and pies had been baked in
it.
Jack bought the cottage, but he was never able to live there. As a staff
correspondent of the _Metropolitan Magazine_ he was dashing from the
Colorado Fuel and Iron strike to the European War and back again to New
York. In 1917, knowing I, too, had looked at it with longing eyes, he
asked whether I would like to buy it; he was starting for Russia the
next day and had to have ready money. By a lucky chance I had just
received a check for a thousand dollars in payment for some Chicago
lectures. We exchanged check and deed. He left the next day for the land
of promise whither Bill Haywood, his friend, had already gone and whence
neither was to return.
Big Bill, who had steadily advocated resistance to conscription, had
been arrested and freed on bail furnished by Jessie Ashley. She had
forfeited it gladly to have him safely out of the country. I had had a
long talk with him before he had made up his mind definitely to leave.
The conversation brought back to me the picture of the times he and I
had walked up and down the Cape Cod sands and he had given me such good
counsel about not jeopardizing the happiness of the children.
Those who had opposed Bill for his “hands in the pocket” advice at the
Paterson strike were the same who were opposing his jumping his bail.
Since the day we had together visited the C.G.T. meetings in Paris, Bill
had come to see the virtues of expediency; that, rather than languish in
jail where he could accomplish no useful purpose, a revolutionary
should, if he could, exile himself. “He who fights and runs away, will
live to fight another day.” This, according to the American idea, was
cowardice—you should stay and be a martyr. But to Bill it was now merely
shortsighted. He had concluded that the average worker when he went in
for rioting and hand-to-hand combat was beaten before he had begun. He
realized the workers had been split by the War; they had not united and
stood up against conscription with any backbone. They could not as yet
be depended upon as a force, but some day he hoped to return and
reorganize them.
Truro provided the children with three carefree months every summer in
what still seems to me one of the most beautiful spots in the world. For
several years I hung on to this dream of being with them constantly, but
it was only a dream. I used to go down to open the house and perhaps
snatch a week or so there before being obliged to hurry back, but father
and my sister Nan were good foster-parents. This house was eventually to
burn as had the one in Hastings; fate seemed to decree I should not be
tempted to slip back into peaceful domesticity.
Nor did I have all those hoped for years of watching the boys grow from
one stage to another. I had had to analyze the situation—either to keep
them at home under the supervision of servants who might perhaps be
incompetent, and to have no more than the pleasure of seeing them safely
to bed, or else to sacrifice my maternal feelings and put them in
country schools directed by capable masters where they could lead a
healthy, regular life. Having come to this latter decision I sent them
off fairly young, and thereafter could only visit them over week-ends or
on the rare occasions when I was speaking in the vicinity. If the desire
to see them grew beyond control, I took the first train and received the
shock of finding them thoroughly contented in the companionship they had
made for themselves; after the initial excitement of greeting had passed
away they ran off again to their games.
At times the homesickness for them seemed too much to bear; especially
was this true in the Fourteenth Street studio. When I came in late at
night the fire was dead in the grate, the book open on the table, the
glove dropped on the floor, the pillow rumpled on the sofa—all the
same—just as I had left them a day, a week, or a month before. That
first chill of loneliness was always appalling. I wanted, as a child
does, to be like other people; I wanted to be able to sink gratefully
into the warmth and glow of a loving family welcome.
The winter of 1917–18 was particularly hard; the snow drifted high and
lasted long, and it took forced cheer to keep your spirits up. Dr. Mary
Halton assured me that with ceaseless financial worry, inadequate rest,
incessant traveling, improper nourishment, I could not survive long.
When, therefore, a publisher asked me for a book on labor problems, I
snatched ten-year-old Grant out of school and set off for California,
taking a small place at Coronado where I sat myself down for three
months to write and to get acquainted with my son.
I loved the sunshine. It was a pleasure to be out-of-doors, to have
peace and quiet and the leisure to arrange my thoughts and put them on
paper. I had no inclination towards a labor book, but thoroughly enjoyed
letting loose my pent-up feelings on _Woman and the New Race_. It was
good to classify reasons and set them in order. My opinions did emerge,
and it was a great release.
I was vividly reminded of prison one day when Grant came home from the
school he was attending, both his eyes pretty dirty-looking. I asked him
why he had been fighting.
“I don’t want to tell you.”
“I’d like to know.”
“Well, this boy told all the fellows my mother’d been in jail.”
“What did you do?”
“I hit him, and he hit me back. He said, ‘Your mother’s a jailbird,’ and
I said, ‘She’s not.’ Then another fellow said, ‘My mother says your
mother went to jail too.’”
Grant had replied, “That wasn’t my mother, that was another Margaret
Sanger.”
“How could you say that, Grant? You know it wasn’t true.”
“Mother,” he replied profoundly, “you could never make those fellows
understand.”
_Chapter Twenty-one_
THUS TO REVISIT
The event of my visit to London in 1920 was the beginning of my
friendship with H. G. Wells. There was no aloofness or coldness in
approaching him, no barriers to break down as with most Englishmen; his
twinkling eyes were like those of a mischievous boy. I was pleased to
find he had no beard and no white hair, because it seemed to me I had
heard of him since I had begun to think at all.
Wells had ranged every field of knowledge, had dared to invade the
sacrosanct precincts of the historian, the economist, and the scientist
and, though a layman in these fields, had used his extraordinary gifts
to interpret the past and present and even prophesy the future; in novel
after novel he had shocked England by championing women’s right to a
freer life.
We in the United States were just beginning to be affected by
sociological concepts; only Henry George and Edward Bellamy had
previously opened up this new world of the imagination. Now here was
Wells giving a fresh picture of what could be if man had an ideal system
of society that was workable. At Columbia Colony he had been quoted
repeatedly. On my lecture tour in 1916 his name had been on everybody’s
lips, and he had signed the letter to President Wilson protesting
against the Federal indictment. I believed he had influenced the
American intelligentsia more than any other one man.
For good reason countless faithful friends had attached themselves to
Wells, and he included in his varied, intricate, and unpredictable
personality a capacity for loyally loving both individuals and humanity.
People who had never met Wells always thought they knew him best,
especially Londoners. I was stopping with three maiden sisters in
Hampstead Gardens, and a great furor arose as soon as it was known in
the household that Mrs. Wells had sent me an invitation for what was to
be my first week-end at Easton Glebe in Essex. What was I to wear? Was I
going to take the blue net or the flowered chiffon? They were greatly
disappointed when I carried only a small bag in which there was no room
for fluffy evening gowns.
Wells himself was waiting on the platform at Dunmow Station, and we
drove in his little car, called the Pumpkin, to Easton Glebe, a part of
the Warwick Estate on which he held a life lease. The former rectory was
built of old stone, ivy-covered; lovely lawns were spread around it.
Early morning tea was served in your room, shoes put out at night were
properly polished, hot water was plentiful for your bath, and extra
pitchers were brought with towels wrapped around carefully to keep in
the steam.
During the course of the next two days I realized more than ever before
how sensitive H.G. was to the slightest intonation. To be with him meant
you had to be on the alert every second lest you miss something of him.
He could be amusing, witty, sarcastic, brilliant, flirtatious, and yet
profound at once, all in his thin, small voice, speaking high up into
the roof of his mouth, as do many English, instead of back in the throat
as we do.
I returned Monday evening about midnight to my room at Hampstead, having
spent the day in town seeing people. But no sooner had I closed the door
than steps pattered in the hallway and a soft hand tapped. In came the
three ladies, hair in braids, warmly and most modestly swathed in
voluminous, white cotton nighties, long-sleeved and tight around the
neck. They had stayed wide-awake to hear all about my week-end. I told
them as much as I could remember of the place and the stimulating fellow
guests, one in particular with whom I had been having an interesting
discussion. When I had finished the eldest leaned forward and
hesitatingly but loudly whispered, “Did he try to kiss you?”
“What? Who?” I asked, having in mind the man I had just been praising.
“Why—why—don’t you know?”
“Know what?”
She looked a little abashed at this, and another voice explained
apologetically, “Sister means that Wells has a magnetic influence over
women!”
“Was he fascinating?” the youngest eagerly took up the catechism.
For two solid hours I was bombarded with questions; H.G. was the Don
Juan of spinsterhood in England. That there was a Mrs. Wells for whom
Mr. Wells cared deeply did not matter in the least to them.
I wish I could do justice to Jane, as Catherine Wells was affectionately
called. This devoted mother, perfect companion, was the complete
helpmate, managing H.G.’s finances, reading the proofs of his books,
seeing that all editions were up-to-date, letting no publisher be
delinquent in his royalties. She did not pretend to be a Feminist; she
was there to protect him, performing the duties of an English wife
towards her husband and appearing with him so that they might make a
united front to the world. The relationship between them was on a fine
plane.
Although H.G. had told me once “the sun would set if anything ever
happened to Jane” I felt that he had never put her adequately into his
books as the great woman she really was; he was too close to her. After
she died, his touching introduction to _The Book of Catherine Wells_
proved that he realized what she had been in his life.
Jane was always mothering people and looking after their comfort. At a
later time when I happened to be at Easton Glebe, she was distressed and
anxious that I was taking it for granted I had to have an ice-pack on my
neck every night because my tubercular glands were bothering me. She
insisted and insisted something must be done, until finally my tonsils
were removed, the true source of my trouble. I owed this tremendous
relief to Jane’s interest, which would not let me go on being sick.
The gay wit and gift for mimicry were not confined to H.G. alone. On one
of my visits I was shown a new bathroom, and we viewed solemnly the
tiny, almost microscopic, tub. Jane was slight and small, and I was
quite sure it was meant for her and not for H.G.’s rotund frame. She
maintained, however, it had been installed for his convenience, and made
funny suction noises as though a large and deep well were being pumped
dry. I was hilarious, but he, pretending to be irritated, yet laughing
too, growled at her, “What are you trying to do? Make my bathing an
international joke?”
The little things H.G. said, many of them jibes at himself, were always
amusing. Even more so were the drawings with which he decorated his
letters. If he did not want to go somewhere he might perhaps illustrate
his reluctance by picturing himself being dragged off, or, if he desired
the absence rather than the presence of a person at a meeting, he would
portray him being pushed out unceremoniously. These ingenious
caricatures allowed many subtleties which even he would not like to put
into words over his own signature.
Jane was unsurpassed when it came to charades, and never minded having
the house turned upside down in the search for properties. But the Wells
family did not have to depend upon orthodox pastimes; they often made up
their own. H.G. had invented a ball game which was played Sunday
mornings in a barn made over into a sort of indoor court. Unlike tennis,
many could take part at once and the sport was so exhausting that when
they finished they were usually dripping with perspiration. I did not
play; other novices seemed to be doing badly enough without me. If you
did not feel up to anything so strenuous, you could take a short walk
through the charming garden which Jane had so lovingly arranged, or a
long one through the woods, by the lakes, or bordering the streams of
the Warwick Estate, of which H.G. had free use. Every season had its
different aspects of beauty.
Sunday afternoons and evenings were especially merry. The atmosphere at
Easton Glebe was like nothing else, something that does not exist here,
where the elders have their bridge and their conversation and the young
go dancing or to the movies. There, all ages mixed together in fun, in
laughter. The two sons, Frank and “Gyp,” who were then at Cambridge,
might bring from ten to fifteen friends home for tea, a great function
over which Jane so graciously presided. The maids went out after setting
the table for supper and preparing cold meats on the buffet, and the
party then took care of itself, everybody serving everybody else. The
boys were full of devilment and it was most uproarious.
I often wondered how the unexpected arrivals were provided for, but Jane
was a remarkable hostess; I have known her to have a houseful at Easton
Glebe for lunch and give a brilliant dinner in London that same evening.
Every guest was planned for, no one was ever huddled with another,
appropriate games were produced or friends invited who might be
interesting or helpful. When they were ready to leave, all were put on
the most convenient trains and returned to town with as little trouble
to themselves as possible.
From 1920 on I never went to England without spending part of the time
with H.G., and many of the most attractive people I met were at Easton
Glebe. I always came away enriched by these contacts and the talks we
had together. Conversation was a combination of current topics, science,
philosophy, history. The English might not have had the same light
flippancy or such a scattered fund of information as the average
American, who usually qualified his statements with, “I read that—” or
“I know someone who—,” but they did speak out of their own experience.
Furthermore, they could toss the ball of repartee back and forth
objectively and not become irritated or let creep into their voices that
personal note which implied they had now settled the whole thing.
Each one at Easton Glebe had his turn in the spotlight; it was never a
monologue, which a man in H.G.’s position might have made it. No subject
could be mentioned that he did not have its complete history and a
definite opinion on it as well, including Neo-Malthusianism in all its
implications.
These week-ends were inspiration and recreation. The serious duty which
called me to England was lecturing. The Neo-Malthusian League had few
speakers at that time to address women audiences, and wished me to test
out the response to their propaganda.
English public sentiment on birth control had vastly changed since I had
been there in 1915, largely because Marie Stopes’ book had had such wide
circulation during the after-War period; her voice had made articulate
the feelings of the millions of unemployed. That people now knew what
birth control meant was due in part also to Harold Cox, one of the
finest orators of his generation, who had been the first to point out
that its condemnation by medical men and Anglican clergy should carry
little weight, because the birth rates among them were lower than those
of almost any other classes. Notable exceptions who had come out
favorably were Sir James Barr, ex-President of the British Medical
Association, Dr. C. Killick Millard, Health Officer of Leicester in the
North, Dean Inge of St. Paul’s, and the Bishop of Birmingham, who was
Chairman of the English National Birth Rate Commission; England was
accustomed to clarifying new and controversial subjects by such bodies,
summoning experts to testify.
Dr. Alice Vickery arranged for me to give a series of talks, many before
lower middle-class workers’ wives who belonged to the Women’s
Co-operative Guild. In different districts of London they came together,
paying their little bit, perhaps sixpence a month, to listen to
speakers, afterwards serving tea and conversing in a friendly way among
themselves. Though their economic uncertainty made them resigned to
having ten or twelve children, the fact that the Guild had just brought
out a book describing some of the tragic cases of its own members and
the deaths from over-childbearing helped to pave the way.
Of all the slums I visited in trams, on buses, via the Underground, the
one of worst repute at the time was the dockyards section of
Rotherhithe. I held a small demonstration clinic there—in a sense the
first of its kind in England. The eager women who came, amazingly
ignorant of any possible beauty in marriage, were envious of a few in
the community who, though the fathers were receiving no higher wages
than their own husbands, had had only two or three children and
consequently could afford to send them to the trade school. They
themselves were, if not sliding backward, at least no more than holding
their own, but those few families were definitely on the way up in the
social scale. And it had all come to pass because Dr. Vickery and Anne
Martin, a friend of hers who had labored there for two decades as a
social worker, had given some contraceptive information about ten years
earlier.
Although Dr. Vickery had on numerous occasions raised the question of
birth control before gatherings bent on other matters, it fell to my lot
to discuss it first as a public health issue. I was told I might have
three minutes to address a national health Conference on Maternal and
Infant Welfare to be held at Brighton. Considering the four hours
required in transit this might seem a short time, but I was happy to
have even as much as that. So I went.