FINANCE AND DESERTION.
The _Pittsburg Saturday Visiter_ began life with two subscribers, and in
the second year reached six thousand, but was always a heavy drain on my
income. My domestic duties made it impossible I could give any attention
to the business department, and I was glad, at the close of the first
year, to transfer a half interest to Mr. Riddle, who became equal
partner and co-editor. At the end of the second year he proposed to buy
my interest, unite the _Visiter_ with his weekly, and pay me a salary
for editing a page.
Had the proposal been made directly to me, I should have accepted at
once, but it was made through my brother-in-law, William Swisshelm, who
had been clerk and business manager of the _Visiter_ for eighteen
months. He advised me not to accept; said the paper was netting fifteen
hundred a year, and that if I would retain my interest he would purchase
Mr. Riddle's, get type, have all the work done in a separate
establishment, and make it a decided success.
I was afraid of this arrangement, but was anxious to keep up the paper
as a separate publication, and agreed on condition that he would assume
the entire financial responsibility, keep my interest at Mr. Riddle's
valuation, and leave me no further risk than my services. If there were
profits, we would share them; if none, I got no pay, as usual, but sunk
no money. To make the changes he desired, I loaned him money until I had
most of my small estate invested, and supposed the paper was prospering
until suddenly informed that the sheriff was about to sell it. We
transferred it to Mr. Riddle, with my services two years in advance, to
pay the debts, and I wrote for the New York _Tribune_, at five dollars a
column, to meet my personal expenses, as my income from my property was
gone.
I forget at what time the _Visiter_ was united to the weekly _Journal;_
but very soon after the presidential campaign of '52, I learned that my
late partner had endorsed several notes which were not likely to be paid
by the persons who gave them, and that one of these was already entered
as a lien against his interest in the family estate. We had had no
settlement, so I went to my lawyer, William M. Shinn, who said that the
entire interest of my debtor in his father's will was worth less than my
claim since his death, without heirs, before his mother transferred his
share to the other heirs. He advised me, if possible, to get a deed of
that share as the only security for which I could hope. I directed him
to prepare it, went immediately to the office, saw my late partner, and
told him that if he did not execute that deed, I would sue him for a
settlement before I left the city. He did, and I took it home early in
the afternoon. In March '57, I resigned my place on the _Family Journal
and Visiter_, feeling that my public work was over, and that no life
save one of absolute solitude was possible for me.
I had lived over twenty years without the legal right to be alone one
hour--to have the exclusive use of one foot of space--to receive an
unopened letter, or to preserve a line of manuscript
"From sharp and sly inspection."
In the latter half of the nineteenth century, a Pennsylvania court
decided that a husband had a right to open and read any communication
addressed to his wife. Living as I did, under this law I had burned the
private journal kept in girlhood, and the letters received from my
brother, mother, sister and other friends, to preserve their contents
from the comments of the farm laborers and female help, who, by common
custom, must eat at our table and take part in our conversation. At the
office I had received, read and burned, without answer, letters from
some of the most prominent men and women of the era; letters which would
be valuable history to-day; have, therefore, no private papers, and
write this history, except a few public dates, entirely from memory.
Into the mists some rays of light penetrated, and by them I saw that the
marriage contract by which I was bound, was that one which I had made
and which secured my liberty of conscience and voice in choosing a home.
The fraud by which church, and state substituted that bond made for
Saxon swine-herds, who ate boar's heads, lived in unchinked houses and
wore brass collars, in the days when Alfred the Great was king, was
such as would vitiate any other contract, and must annul even that of
marriage; but, granting that it was binding, it must bind both parties,
and had been broken by the party of the other part through failure to
comply with its requirements.
Our marriage had been a mistake, productive of mutual injury; but for
one, it was not too late to repair the wrong. He, a man in the prime of
life, with unspotted reputation, living without labor, on the income of
a patrimonial estate, to which he had made large additions, could easily
find a help-mate for him; one who could pad matrimonial fetters with
those devices by which husbands are managed. My desertion would leave
him free to make a new choice, and I could more easily earn a living
alone.
The much-coveted and long-delayed birth of a living child appeared to
have barred my appeal to this last resort, but the mother's right to the
custody of her infant is one I would defend to the taking of life.
My husband would consent to no separation, and we had a struggle for my
separate, personal property or its equivalent; a struggle in which Wm. M.
Shinn was my lawyer, and Judge Mellon his, and in which I secured my
piano by replevin, Dr. John Scott being my bondsman, and learned that I
might not call a porter into the house to remove my trunk. I therefore
got my clothing, some books, china and bedding by stealth, and the
assistance of half a dozen families of neighbors.
A test suit as to my right to support was decided in 1859, and in it a
judge in my native city, charged the jury that: "If a wife have no
dress and her husband refuse to provide one, she may purchase one--a
plain dress--not silk, or lace, or any extravagance; if she have no
shoes, she may get a pair; if she be sick and he refuse to employ a
physician, she may send for one, and get the medicine he may prescribe;
and for these necessaries the husband is liable, but here his liability
ceases."
The suit was about goods I had purchased by my lawyer's advice--two
black silk dresses, a thirty dollar shawl, a dozen pairs black kid
gloves, stockings, flannel, linen, half dozen yards white Brussels lace,
any one of which would have outlawed the bill, even if I had gone in an
Eden costume to make the purchase; but being clothed when I made my
appearance at the counter, the merchant could not plead that I "had no
dress," and lost his case.
In a subsequent suit carried up to the Supreme Court and decided in '68,
it was proved that my husband had forbidden our merchant to credit me on
his account, and the merchant's books presented in court showed that for
twelve years he had kept two separate accounts, one against my husband
and one against me. On his were charged clothing for himself, mother,
brothers and employes, common groceries, etc.; while on mine were
entered all my clothing, all high-priced tea, white sugar, etc., all
tableware, fine cutlery, table linen, bedding, curtains and towels; on
his were, credits for farm products; on mine, only cash; and he was
credited with butter and eggs on the same day that I was charged with
bed-ticking and towels. My personal expenses from Nov. 18, '36, the date
of our marriage, until Nov. 18, '56, twenty years, averaged less than
fifty dollars a year. All my husband's labor for all his life, and mine
for twenty years, with a large part of my separate property, had gone to
swell his mother's estate, on the proceeds of which she kept her
carriage and servants until she died, aged ninety-four, while I earned a
living for myself and his only child.
I left Pittsburg with my baby about the 20th of May, '57, and went by
boat to St. Paul. Before leaving, I went to settle with Mr. Riddle and
say goodbye, and found him much troubled. He said:
"Why is it I have known nothing of all this? I did not dream there was
anything wrong in your domestic relations, and may have been selfish and
inconsiderate."
My husband, mine no more, came upon the boat while she lay at the wharf,
held baby on his knee and wept over her; when the last bell rang, he
bade me good-bye; carried her to the gangway, held her to the last
moment, then placed her in my arms, sprang ashore and hurried up the
wharf. He would, I think, have carried her off, but that he knew she
would break his heart crying for mother before I could get to her.
He had once taken her away in a fit of anger and walked the floor with
her most of the night, seriously alarmed for her life, and could not
venture on that experiment again. He loved her most tenderly, and his
love was as tenderly returned. Since, as a duty to her, I was careful to
teach her to "honor thy father" on earth as well as in heaven.
Had he and I gone into the pine woods, as he proposed, upon marriage;
had we been married under an equitable law or had he emigrated to
Minnesota, as he proposed, before I thought of going, there would have
been no separation; but after fifteen years in his mother's house I must
run away or die, and leave my child to a step-mother. So I ran away. He
thought I would return; enlarged and improved the house, wrote and
waited for us; could make no deed without my signature; I would sign
none, and after three years he got a divorce for desertion. In '70 he
married again, and I having, voluntarily, assumed the legal guilt of
breaking my marriage contract, do cheerfully accept the legal penalty--a
life of celibacy--bringing no charge against him who was my husband,
save that he was not much better than the average man. Knew his rights,
and knowing sought to maintain them against me; while, in some respects,
he was to me incalculably more than just. Years after I left him, he
said to our neighbor, Miss Hawkins, when speaking of me:
"I believe she is the best woman God ever made, and we would have had no
trouble but for her friends."
My sister had removed with her husband to St. Cloud, Minnesota, and
through him I had secured forty acres of land on the shore of one of a
nest of lovely lakes, lying on the east side of the Mississippi, twelve
miles from St. Cloud. On this little farm I would build a cabin of
tamarac logs, with the bark on and the ends sticking out at the corners
criss-cross. My cabin would have one room and a loft, each with a floor
of broad rough boards well jointed, and a ladder to go from one to the
other. It would have an open fire-place, a rough flag hearth, and a
rustic porch, draped with hop vines and wild roses. I would have a
boat, catch fish and raise poultry. No sound of strife should ever come
into my cabin but those of waves, winds, birds and insects. Ah, what a
paradise it would be!
I had not yet learned that every human soul is a Shunamite, "a company
of two armies," and wherever there is one, there is strife.
To live is to contend,
And life is finished when contentions end.
At St. Paul I took a stage, and night came on when we were still twenty
miles from St. Cloud. The wolves stood and looked at the stage, and I
knew they were between me and my hermitage; but they were only prairie
wolves, and all day my cabin had been growing more and more beautiful.
The lakes, the flowers, the level prairies and distant knolls, but most
of all the oak openings were enchanting, and in one of these my cabin
would stand.
The passengers talked politics and I talked too, and one man said to me:
"Did you say you were going to St. Cloud?
"Yes."
"Well, I tell you, madam, them sentiments of yours won't go down there.
Gen. Lowrie don't allow no abolition in these parts and he lives in St.
Cloud."
I had had many surprises, but few to equal this; had heard of Gen.
Lowrie as a man of immense wealth and influence, but no one had hinted
at this view of his character. I had thought of him as the friend of my
friends; but as the other passengers were confirming this account and I
watching the wolves, there flashed across my mind the thought: "This is
a broad country; but if this be true, there is not room in it for Gen.
Lowrie and me."