The History of Woman Suffrage Volume III Part 137

There, too, I met some Positivists, who, though quite reasonable on religious questions, were very narrow on the sphere of woman. The difference in s.e.x, which is the very reason why men and women should be a.s.sociated in all spheres of activity, they make the strongest reason why they should be separated. Mrs. Hertz belongs to the Harrison school of Positivists. I went with her to one of Mrs. Orr's receptions, where we met Robert Browning, a fine looking gentleman of seventy years, with white hair and mustache. He is frank, easy, playful, and a good talker. Mrs. Orr seemed to be taking a very pessimistic view of our present sphere of action, which Mr. Browning, with poetic coloring, was trying to paint more hopeful.

The next day I dined with Mrs. Margaret Bright Lucas, in company with Mr. John P. Thoma.s.son, member of parliament, and his wife, and afterwards we went to the House of Commons and had the good fortune to hear Gladstone, Parnell, and Sir Charles Dilke. Seeing Bradlaugh seated outside the charmed circle, I sent my card to him, and in the corridor we had a few moments' conversation. I asked him if he thought he would eventually get his seat; he replied, "Most a.s.suredly I will. I shall open the next campaign with such an agitation as will rouse our politicians to some consideration of the changes gradually coming over the face of things in this country."

The place a.s.signed ladies in the House of Commons is really a disgrace to a country ruled by an Empress. This dark perch is the highest gallery immediately over the speaker's desk and government seats, behind a fine wire-work, so that it is quite impossible to see or hear anything. The sixteen persons who can crowd in the front seat, by standing with their noses partly through some open work, can have the satisfaction of seeing the cranial arch of their rulers, and hearing an occasional pean to liberty, or an Irish growl at the lack of it. I was told this net work was to prevent the members on the floor from being disturbed by the beauty of the women. On hearing this I remarked that I was devoutly thankful that our American men were not so easily disturbed, and that the beauty of our women was not of so dangerous a character.

I could but contrast our s.p.a.cious galleries in that magnificent capitol at Washington, as well as in our grand State capitols, where hundreds of women can sit to see and hear their rulers at their ease, with these dark, dingy buildings, and such inadequate accommodations for the people. My son, who had a seat on the floor just opposite the ladies' gallery, said he could compare our appearance to nothing better than birds in a cage. He could not distinguish an outline of anybody. All he could see was the moving of feathers and furs, or some bright ribbon or flower.

In the libraries, the courts, and the House of Lords, I found many suggestive subjects of thought. Our American inventions seem to furnish them cases for litigation. A suit in regard to Singer's sewing machine was just then occupying the attention of the Lord Chancellor. Not feeling much interest in the matter, I withdrew and joined my friends, to examine some frescoes in the ante-room. It was interesting to find so many historical scenes in which women had taken a prominent part. Among others, there is Jane Lane a.s.sisting Charles II. to escape, and Alice Lisle concealing the fugitives after the battle of Sedgemoor. Six wives of Henry VIII.

stand forth a solemn pageant when one recalls their sad fate. Alas!

whether for good or ill, woman must ever fill a large s.p.a.ce in the tragedies of the world.

I pa.s.sed a few pleasant hours in the house where Macaulay spent his last years. The once s.p.a.cious library and the large bay window looking out on a beautiful lawn, where he sat from day to day writing his flowing periods, possessed a peculiar charm for me, as the surroundings of genius always do. I thought as I stood there how often he had unconsciously gazed on each object in sight in searching for words rich enough to gild his ideas. The house is now owned and occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Winckworth. It was at one of their sociable Sunday teas that many pleasant memories of the great historian were revived.

We went with Mrs. Lucas to a meeting of the Salvation army, in Exeter Hall, which holds 5,000 people. It was literally packed--not an inch of standing-room even, seemed to be unoccupied. This remarkable movement was then at its height of enthusiasm in England, and its leaders proposed to carry it round the world, but it has never been so successful in any other lat.i.tude. They not only hold meetings, but they march through the streets, men and women, singing and playing on tambourines. The exercises on this occasion consisted of prayers, hymns, and exhortations by Mr. and Mrs. Booth. When this immense audience all joined in the chorus of their stirring songs, it was indeed very impressive. The whole effect was like that of an old-fashioned Methodist revival meeting.

I purchased their paper, _The War Cry_, and pasted it in my journal to show the wild vagaries to which the human mind is subject. There is nothing too ridiculous or monstrous to be done under the influence of religious enthusiasm. In spite, however, of the ridicule attached to this movement, it is at least an aspiration for that ignorant, impoverished mult.i.tude. The first thing they were urged to do was to give up intoxicating drinks, and their vicious affiliations. If some other organization could take hold of them at that point, to educate them in the rudiments of learning and right living, and supplement their emotions with a modic.u.m of reason and common sense in the practical affairs of life, much greater good might result from this initiative step in the right direction.

One of the most remarkable and genial women we met was Miss Frances Power Cobbe. She called one evening at 10 d.u.c.h.ess street, and sipped with us the five o'clock cup of tea, a uniform practice in England. She is of medium height, stout, rosy, and vigorous looking, with a large, well-shaped head, a strong, happy face, and gifted with rare powers of conversation. I felt very strongly attracted to her. She is frank and cordial and p.r.o.nounced in all her opinions. She gave us an account of her efforts to rescue unhappy cats and dogs from the hands of the vivisectionists. We saw her, too, in her own cozy home and in her office in Victoria Row.

The perfect order in which her books and papers were all arranged, and the exquisite neatness of the apartments were refreshing to behold.

My daughter, having decided opinions of her own, was soon at loggerheads with Miss Cobbe on the question of vivisection. After showing us several German and French books with ill.u.s.trations of the horrible cruelty inflicted on cats and dogs, enlarging on the hypocrisy and wickedness of these scientists, she turned to my daughter and said, "Would you shake hands with one of these vivisectionists?" "Yes," said Harriot, "I should be proud to shake hands with Virchow, the great German scientist, for his kindness to a young American girl. She applied to several professors to be admitted to their cla.s.ses, but all refused except Virchow; he readily a.s.sented, and requested his students to treat her with becoming courtesy. 'If any of you behave otherwise,' said he, 'I shall feel myself personally insulted.' She entered his cla.s.ses and pursued her studies unmolested and with great success. "Now," said she, "would you refuse to shake hands with any of your statesmen, scientists, clergymen, lawyers or physicians, who treat women with constant indignities and insults?" "Oh, no"; said Miss Cobbe.

"Then," said Mrs. Blatch, "you estimate the physical suffering of cats and dogs as of more consequence than the humiliation of human beings. The man who tortures a cat for a scientific purpose is not as low in the scale of being, in my judgment, as one who sacrifices his own daughter to some cruel custom." Though Miss Cobbe weighs over two hundred pounds, she is as light on foot as a deer and is said to be a great walker. After seeing her I read again some of her books. Her theology now and then evidently cramps her, yet her style is vigorous, earnest, sarcastic, though at times playful and pathetic. In regard to her theology, she says she is too liberal to please her orthodox friends and too orthodox to please the liberals, hence in religion she stands quite solitary.

Suffering from the effects of the prolonged fogs, we took our letters of introduction from Dr. Bayard of New York to the two leading high-dilution homeopathic physicians in London, Drs. Wilson and Berridge. We found the former a good talker and very original.

We were greatly amused with his invectives against the quacks in the profession; the "mongrels," as he called the low dilutionists.

The first question he asked my daughter was if she wore high heels; he said he would not attempt to cure any woman of any disease so long as she was perched on her toes with her spine out of plumb.

His advice to me was to get out of the London fogs as quickly as possible. No one who has not suffered a London fog can imagine the terrible gloom that pervades everywhere. One can see nothing out of the windows but a dense black smoke. Drivers carry flambeaux in the streets to avoid running into each other. The houses are full; the gas burns all day, but you can scarcely see across the room; theaters and places of amus.e.m.e.nt are sometimes closed, as nothing can be seen distinctly. We called on Dr. Berridge, also, thinking it best to make the acquaintance of both that we might decide from their general appearance, surroundings, conversation and comparative intelligence, which one we would prefer to trust in an emergency. We found both alike so promising that we felt we could trust either to give us our quietus, if die we must, on the high dilutions. It is a consolation to know that one's closing hours at least are pa.s.sed in harmony with the principles of pure science. On further acquaintance we found these gentlemen true disciples of the great Hahneman.

As we were just then reading Froude's "Life of Carlyle," we drove by the house where he lived and paused a moment at the door, where poor Jennie went in and out so often with a heavy heart. It is a painful record of a great soul struggling with poverty and disappointment; the hope of success as an author so long deferred and never wholly realized. His foolish pride of independence and headship, and his utter obliviousness as to his domestic duties and the comfort of his wife, made the picture still darker. Poor Jennie, fitted to shine in any circle, yet doomed all her married life to domestic drudgery, with no a.s.sociations with the great man for whose literary companionship she had sacrificed herself. It adds greatly to one's interest in Scott, d.i.c.kens, Thackeray, Charlotte Bronte, Bulwer, James and George Eliot, to read them amidst the scenes where they lived and died. Thus in my leisure hours, after the fatigues of sight-seeing and visiting, I re-read many of these authors near the places where they spent their last days on earth.

As I had visited Ambleside forty years before and seen Harriet Martineau in her prime, I did not go with Miss Anthony to Lake Windermere. She found the well-known house occupied by Mr. William Henry Hills, a liberal Quaker named after William Henry Channing.

Mrs. Hills received the party with great hospitality, showed them through all the apartments and pointed out the charming views from the windows. They paused a few moments reverently in the chamber where that grand woman had pa.s.sed her last triumphant days on earth. On the kitchen hearth was still sitting her favorite cat, sixteen years old, the spots in her yellow and black fur as marked as ever. Puss is the observed of all observers who visit that sacred shrine, and it is said she seems specially to enjoy the attention of strangers. From here Miss Anthony drove round Grasmere, the romantic home of Wordsworth, wandered through the old church, sat in the pew he so often occupied and lingered near the last resting-place of the great poet. As the former residence of the anti-slavery agitator, Thomas Clarkson, was on Ulswater, another of the beautiful lakes in that region, Miss Anthony extended her excursion still further and learned from the people many pleasing characteristics of these celebrated personages. On her way to Ireland she stopped at Ulverston and visited Miss Hannah Goad, who was a descendant of the founder of Quakerism, George Fox.

She was in the old house in which he was married to Margaret Fell and where they lived many years; attended the quaint little church where he often spoke from the high seats, looked through his well-worn Bible, and the minutes of their monthly meetings, kept by Margaret Fell two centuries ago.

Returning to London we attended one of Miss Biggs' receptions and among others met Mr. Stansfeld, M. P., who had labored faithfully for the repeal of the Contagious Diseases acts, and in a measure been successful. We had the honor of an interview with Lord Shaftsbury at one of his crowded receptions, and found him a little uncertain as to the wisdom of allowing married women to vote, for fear of disturbing the peace of the family. I have often wondered if men see in this objection what fatal admissions they make as to their own selfishness and love of domination.

Miss Anthony was present at the great Liberal conference at Leeds on October 17, to which Mrs. Helen Bright Clark, Miss Jane Cobden, Mrs. Tanner, Mrs. Scatcherd and several other ladies were duly elected delegates from their respective Liberal leagues, and occupied seats on the floor. Mrs. Clark and Miss Cobden, daughters of the great Corn-law reformers, spoke eloquently in favor of the resolution to extend parliamentary suffrage to women, which was presented by Walter McLaren of Bradford. As these young women made their impa.s.sioned appeals for the recognition of woman's political equality in the next bill for the extension of suffrage, that immense gathering of 1,600 delegates was hushed into profound silence. For a daughter to speak thus in that great representative convention in direct opposition to her loved and honored father, the acknowledged leader of that party, was an act of heroism and fidelity to her own highest convictions almost without a parallel in English history, and the effect on the audience was as thrilling as it was surprising. The resolution was pa.s.sed by a large majority. At the reception given to Mr. John Bright that evening, as Mrs. Clark approached the das on which her n.o.ble father stood shaking the hands of pa.s.sing friends, she remarked to her husband, "I wonder if father has heard of my speech this morning, and if he will forgive me for thus publicly differing with him?" The query was soon answered. As he caught the first glimpse of his daughter he stepped down and, pressing her hand affectionately, kissed her with a fond father's warmth on either cheek in turn. The next evening the great Quaker statesman was heard by the admiring thousands who could crowd into Victoria Hall, while thousands, equally desirous to hear, failed to get tickets of admission. It was a magnificent sight, and altogether a most impressive gathering of the people. Miss Anthony with her friends sat in the gallery opposite the great platform, where they had a fine view of the whole audience. When John Bright, escorted by Sir Wilfred Lawson, took his seat, the immense audience rose, waving hats and handkerchiefs and with the wildest enthusiasm giving cheer after cheer in honor of the great leader. Sir Wilfred Lawson in his introductory remarks facetiously alluded to the resolution adopted by the conference as somewhat in advance of the ideas of the speaker of the evening. The house broke into roars of laughter, while the father of Liberalism, perfectly convulsed, joined in the general merriment.

But when at length his time to speak had come, and Mr. Bright went over the many steps of progress that had been taken by the Liberal party, he cunningly dodged all in the direction of the emanc.i.p.ation of the women of England. He skipped round the agitation in 1867 and John Stuart Mill's amendment presented at that time in the House of Commons; the extension of the munic.i.p.al suffrage in 1869; the partic.i.p.ation of women in the establishment of national schools under the law of 1870, both as voters and members of school-boards; the Married Woman's Property bill of 1882; the large and increasing vote for the extension of parliamentary suffrage in the House of Commons, and the adoption of the resolution by that great conference the day before. All these successive steps towards woman's emanc.i.p.ation he carefully remembered to forget.

During Miss Anthony's stay in Leeds she and her cousin, Dr. Fannie d.i.c.kinson, were guests of Mrs. Hannah Ford at Adel Grange, an old and lovely suburban home, where she met many interesting women, members of the school-board, poor-law guardians and others. The three daughters of Mrs. Ford, though possessed of ample incomes, have each a purpose in life; one had gathered hundreds of factory girls into evening schools, where she taught them to cut and make their garments, as well as to read and write; one was an artist and the third a musician, having studied in London and Florence. It was during this ever-to-be-remembered week that Miss Anthony, escorted by Mrs. Ford, visited Haworth, the bleak and lonely home of the Brontes. It was a dark, drizzly October day, intensifying all the gloomy memories of the place. She sat in the old church pew where those shivering girls endured such discomforts through the fearful services, with their benumbed feet on the very stone slab that from time to time was taken up to deposit in the earth beneath their loved dead! She was shown through the house, paused at the place under the stairs where the imperial Shirley had her fierce encounter with that almost human dog, Keeper; she stood in the drawing-room where the sainted three sisters, arm-in-arm, paced up and down plotting their weird stories. She walked through the same old gate, on the same single stone pavement and over the same stile out into the same heather fields, gazing on the same dreary sky above and the same desolate earth on every side. She dined in the same old "Black Bull"; sat in poor Branwell's chair and was served by the same person who dealt out the drinks to that poor unfortunate--then a young bar-maid, now the aged proprietor.

Miss Anthony crossed from Barrow to Belfast, where she was given a most cordial reception at the house of one of Ireland's distinguished orators, Miss Isabella M. Tod, who took her to one of her Ulster temperance meetings at Garvah, where they were the guests of Rev. Thomas Medill, a cousin of the distinguished Chicago editor. There, as Miss Anthony listened to the prayers and exhortations of the Presbyterian ministers and to the arguments of Miss Tod, and heard no appeals to the audience to join in the work of suppressing the traffic, a realizing sense of the utter powerlessness of the queen's subjects in Ireland dawned upon her for the first time. In all that crowd there was not one who had any voice in the decision of that question. The entire control of the matter rested with three magistrates appointed by the queen, who are in nowise responsible to the tax-paying people to whom they administer the laws. Had Miss Tod been addressing an American audience, she would have appealed to every man to vote only for candidates pledged to no-license. From Garvah they made a pilgrimage to the Giant's Causeway. Miss Anthony had, when at Oban, visited Fingal's Cave, and the two wonders that always fix themselves upon the imagination of the youthful student of the world's geography fully matched her expectations.

At Dublin she visited the Castle, the old parliament building, now a bank; Kings and Queens College, that gives diplomas to women; the parks, the cemeteries, the tomb of Daniel O'Connell. She attended a meeting of the common council, of which Alfred Webb, the only surviving son of the old abolitionist, Richard D. Webb, was a member, and there she listened to a discussion on a pet.i.tion to the queen that the people of Dublin might be allowed to elect their own tax-collector instead of having one placed over them by "the powers that be" at London, as the official thus appointed had just proved a defaulter. In listening to the outrages perpetrated upon a helpless people by foreign officials, the one wonder to her was, not that so many of Ireland's sons are discontented, but that they are not in open rebellion.

There Miss Anthony made the acquaintance of numbers of excellent Friends,[579] and with Mrs. Haslam visited their large free library and attended their First-day meeting. In Dublin, too, she met Michael Davitt, who seemed to her a most sincere champion of liberty for himself and his people. Miss Anthony spent a week with Mr. and Mrs. Haslam in Cork, visiting Blarney Castle, the old walled city of Youghal with its crumbling Quaker meeting-house and fine old mansion in which Sir Walter Raleigh lived, and thence to the beautiful Lakes of Killarney, and in a jaunting-car through the evicted tenants' district, entering the hovels and talking with the inmates. The sad stories poured into her ears, and the poverty and wretchedness she saw, proved to her that none of Mr. Redpath's revelations, so shocking to the humanity of our people, were in the least over-drawn. The circuit through Limerick, Galway, Clifton and Belfast was made in third-cla.s.s cars, that she might talk with the people of the working cla.s.s. This was the season for their county fairs, which gave her an opportunity to see the farmers driving their cattle and taking their meagre products to the fair. The women and girls were uniformly barefooted, while some of the men and boys wore shoes. In reply to her query why this was so, one man said, "It is all we can do to get shoes for them as airnes the money." The same old story; woman's work, however arduous, brings no price in the market.

While in London we attended several large and enthusiastic reform meetings. We heard Bradlaugh address his const.i.tuency on that memorable day at Trafalgar Square, at the opening of parliament, when violence was antic.i.p.ated and the parliament houses were surrounded by immense crowds, with the military and police in large numbers to maintain order. We heard Michael Davitt and Miss Helen Taylor at a great meeting in Exeter Hall, the former on home-rule for Ireland, and the latter on the nationalization of land, showing that in ancient times the people had many privileges long since denied. They even had forests and commons and the road-side, where their cows, sheep and geese could glean something. The facts and figures given in these two lectures as to the abject poverty of the people and the cruel system by which every inch of land had been grabbed by their oppressors, were indeed appalling. A few days before sailing we made our last visit to Ernestine L. Rose and found our n.o.ble coadjutor, though in delicate health, pleasantly situated in the heart of London, as deeply interested as ever in the struggles of the hour.

Dining one day with Mrs. Lucas, we were forcibly impressed with the growing liberality of people of all shades of belief and of all professions. The guests on that occasion were Mrs. Hallock, sister-in-law of Robert Dale Owen, thoroughly imbued with his religious and social ideas; Dr. Mary J. Hall, the only woman practicing homeopathy in England; Miss Henrietta Muller, member of the London school-board; Miss Clara Spence, a young actress from America, who gave us some fine recitations; and such liberals in politics and religion as Mrs. Stanton Blatch and myself, while our hostess was an orthodox Friend. However we were all agreed on one point, the right of women to full equality everywhere. In the evening we went to see Mrs. Hallock's daughter, Ella Deitz, in the play of "Impulse." We urged Mrs. Lucas to accompany us, but she said she had never been to a theater in her life.

A great discomfort in all English homes is the cold draughts through their halls and unoccupied rooms. A moderate fire in the grates in the family apartments is their only mode of heating, and they seem quite oblivious as to the danger of throwing a door open into a cold hall on one's back while the servants pa.s.s in and out with the various courses' at dinner. As we Americans were sorely tried under such circ.u.mstances, it was decided in the Basingstoke mansion to have a hall stove, which, after a prolonged search, was found in London and duly installed as a presiding deity to defy the dampness that pervades all those ivy-covered habitations, as well as the neuralgia that wrings their possessors. What a blessing it proved, more than any one thing making the old English house seem like an American home! The delightful summer heat we in America enjoy in the coldest weather is quite unknown to our Saxon cousins.

Although many came to see our stove in full working order, yet we could not persuade them to adopt the American system of heating the whole house at an even temperature. They cling to the customs of their fathers with an obstinacy that is incomprehensible to us, who are always ready to try experiments. Americans complain bitterly of the same freezing experiences in France and Germany, and in turn foreigners all criticise our over-heated houses and places of amus.e.m.e.nt.

An evening reception at Mrs. Richardson's, in the city of York, gave us an opportunity of a personal greeting with a large circle of ladies identified with the suffrage movement, and a large public meeting the next day in the Town Hall enabled us to judge still further of the merits of English women as speakers. Here I was entertained by Mrs. Lucretia Kendall Clarke, an American, who had spent five years as a student in Dresden, where she made the acquaintance of Mr. Clarke. It is said in England that the American girls capture all the choice young men; that our rich cattle-dealers get all their best horses, cows, sheep, dogs, and that in time we shall rob them of all that is best in the country.

One thing is certain, we shall always regret our hospitable invitation to the sparrows, as they are making war on our native birds instead of fulfilling their mission to the "Diet of Worms."

In company with Mrs. Scatcherd we spent an hour in that magnificent York cathedral, said to be one of the finest in England. Being there at the time for service we had the benefit of the music. To us, lost in admiration of the wonderful architecture and the beautiful carving in wood and stone, the solemn strains of the organ reverberating through those vast arches made the whole scene very impressive. As women in many of the churches are not permitted to take part in the sacred ceremonies, the choir is composed of men, and boys from ten to fifteen who sing the soprano and alto.

But these old ideas, like the old Roman wall that still surrounds that city, time only can remove.

We had a merry trip from York to London. Miss Muller, Mrs. Chant, Mrs. Shearer, Miss Stackpole, in our compartment, discussed freely the silly objections to woman's enfranchis.e.m.e.nt usually made by our legislators. We found on comparing notes that the arguments usually made were the same in the House of Commons as in the halls of Congress. If the honorable gentlemen could only have heard their stale plat.i.tudes with good imitations in voice and manner, I doubt whether they would ever again air their absurdities. I regretted that our Caroline Gilkey Rogers had not been there to have given her admirable impersonation of a Ma.s.sachusetts legislator.

A few days later I attended another meeting in Birmingham and stayed with a relative of Joseph Sturge, at whose home I had visited forty years before. This was called to discuss the degradation of women under the Contagious Diseases acts. Led by Josephine Butler, the women of England have been deeply stirred on the question of repeal, and are very active in their opposition to the law. We heard Mrs. Butler speak in many of her society meetings, as well as on several public occasions. Her style is not unlike that we hear in Methodist cla.s.s-meetings from the best cultivated of that sect; her power grows out of her deeply religious enthusiasm.

In London we met Emily Faithful, who had just returned from a lecturing-tour in the United States, and were much amused with her experiences. Having taken prolonged trips over the whole country from Maine to Texas for many successive years, Miss Anthony and I could easily add the superlative to all her narrations. She dined with us one day at Mrs. Mellen's, where we also had the pleasure of meeting Miss Jane Cobden, a daughter of the great Corn-law reformer, who was much interested in forming Liberal leagues, to encourage the Liberal party and interest women in the political questions under consideration. She pa.s.sed a day with us at Basingstoke, and together we visited Mrs. Caird, the author of "Whom Nature Leadeth," an interesting story of English life. I found the author a charming woman, but in spite of the t.i.tle I really could not find one character in the three volumes that seemed to follow the teachings of nature.

Two weeks again in London, visiting picture-galleries, museums, libraries, going to teas, dinners, receptions, concerts, theaters and reform-meetings; it is enough to turn one's head to think of all the different clubs and a.s.sociations managed by women. It was a source of constant pleasure to me to drive about in hansoms and try to take in the vastness of that wonderful city; to see the beautiful equipages, fine saddle-horses and riders and the skill with which the bicycles were so rapidly engineered through the crowded streets. The general use of bicycles and tricycles all over England, even for long journeys, is fast becoming the favorite mode of locomotion both for ladies and gentlemen.

It was a pleasant surprise to meet the large number of Americans usually at the receptions of Mrs. Peter Taylor.[580] Graceful and beautiful in full dress, standing beside her husband, who evidently idolizes her, Mrs. Taylor appeared quite as refined in her drawing-room as if she had never been "exposed to the public gaze,"

while presiding over a suffrage convention. Mr. Peter Taylor, M.

P., has been untiring in his endeavors to get a bill through parliament against "compulsory vaccination." Mrs. Taylor is called the mother of the suffrage movement. The engraving of her sweet face which adorns the English chapter will give the reader a good idea of her character. The reform has not been carried on in all respects to her taste, nor on what she considers the basis of high principle. Neither she nor Mrs. Jacob Bright has ever been satisfied with the bill asking the right of suffrage for "widows and spinsters" only. To have asked this right "for all women duly qualified," as but few married women are qualified by possessing property in their own right, the result would have been substantially the same without making any invidious distinctions.

Mrs. Taylor and Mrs. Bright felt that as married women were the greatest sufferers under the law, they should be the first rather than the last to be enfranchised. The others, led by Miss Becker, claimed that it was good policy to make the demand for "spinsters and widows," and thus exclude the "family unit" and "man's headship" from the discussion; and yet these were the very points on which the objections were invariably based. They claimed that if "spinsters and widows" were enfranchised they would be an added power to secure to married women their rights. But the history of the past gives no such a.s.surance. It is not certain that women would be more just than men, and a small privileged cla.s.s of aristocrats have long governed their fellow-countrymen. The fact that the spinsters in the movement advocated such a bill shows that they are not to be trusted in extending it. John Stuart Mill, too, was always opposed to the exclusion of married women in the demand for suffrage.

If our English friends had our system of conventions and discussions in which every resolution is subject to criticism, changes could be more readily effected. But as their meetings are now conducted, a motion to amend a resolution would throw the platform into the wildest confusion and hopelessly bewilder the chairman. We saw this experiment made at the great demonstration in St. James' Hall the night before Mr. Mason's bill was to be acted on in the House of Commons. For its effect on their champions some were desirous that a resolution should be endorsed by that great audience proposing higher ground; that instead of "spinsters and widows," the demand should be for "all duly qualified women." After the reading of one of the resolutions Miss Jessie Craigen arose and proposed such an amendment. Mr. Woodhall, M. P., in the chair, seemed quite at a loss what to do. She was finally, after much debate and prolonged confusion, suppressed, whether in a parliamentary manner or not I am unable to say. Here we should have discussed the matter at length if it had taken us until midnight, or adjourned over until next day, "the spinsters and widows" having been the target for all our barbed arrows until completely annihilated.

Spending two months in traveling on the continent, Miss Anthony had many amusing experiences. While visiting our minister and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Sargent, at Berlin, she occupied some rainy days, when sight-seeing was out of the question, in doing up papers and writing a large number of letters on our official paper, bearing the revolutionary mottoes, "No just government can be formed without the consent of the governed," "Taxation without representation is tyranny." For a brief period she was in the full enjoyment of that freedom one has when a pressing duty to family and friends has been thoroughly discharged. But alas! her satisfaction was soon turned to disappointment. After a few days a dignified official appeared at the American Legation with a large package bearing the proscribed mottoes, saying, "such sentiments cannot pa.s.s through the post-office in Germany." So all that form of propagandism was nipped in the bud, and in modest, uncomplaining wraps the letters and papers started again for the land of the free and reached their destination.

But this experience did not satisfy the "Napoleon of our movement"

that the rulers in the old world could securely guard their subjects from those inflammable mottoes to which from long use we are so indifferent. She continued to sow the seeds of rebellion as she had opportunity, in Germany, France, Switzerland and Italy. It is well for us that she did not experiment in Russia, or we should now be mourning her loss as an exile in Siberia. At all points of interest books are kept for visitors to register their names; Miss Anthony uniformly added some of our Pilgrim Fathers' heroic e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns in their struggle for liberty, which friends visiting the same places afterwards informed us were carefully crossed out so as to be quite illegible. But we may hope for their restoration in the near future and that they may yet do an effective work. Thus circ.u.mscribed with her pen and not being able to speak a foreign language, happily no rebellions were fomented by her rapid transit through their borders.

My sense of justice was severely tried with all I heard of the persecutions of Mrs. Besant and Mr. Bradlaugh for their publications on the right and duty of parents to limit population.

Who can contemplate the sad condition of mult.i.tudes of young children in the old world whose fate is to be brought up in ignorance and vice--a swarming, seething ma.s.s whom n.o.body owns--without seeing the need of free discussion of the philosophical principles that underlie these tangled social problems. The trials of Foote and Ramsey, too, for blasphemy, seemed unworthy a great nation in the nineteenth century. Think of well-educated men of good moral standing, thrown into prison in solitary confinement for speaking lightly of the Hebrew idea of Jehovah and the New Testament account of the birth of Jesus! Our Protestant clergy never hesitate to make the dogmas and superst.i.tions of the Catholic church seem as absurd as possible, and why should not those who imagine they have outgrown Protestant superst.i.tions make them equally ridiculous? Whatever is true can stand investigation and ridicule.

The last of April, when the wild-flowers were in their glory, Mrs.

Mellen and her lovely daughter, Daisy, came down to Basingstoke to enjoy its beauty. As Mrs. Mellen had known Charles Kingsley and entertained him at her residence in Colorado, she felt a desire to see his former home. Accordingly, one bright morning Mr. Blatch drove us through Stralfieldsage over the grounds of the Duke of Wellington, well stocked with fine cattle, sheep and deer. This magnificent place was given him by the English government after the battle of Waterloo. A lofty statue of the duke that can be seen for miles around stands at the entrance. A drive of a few miles further brought us to Eversley, the home of Canon Kingsley, where he preached many years and where all that is mortal of him now lies buried. We wandered through the old church, among the moss-covered tombstones and into the once happy home, now silent and deserted, his loved ones scattered in different quarters of the globe.

Standing near the last resting-place of the author of "Hypatia,"

his warning words for woman, in a letter to John Stuart Mill, seemed like a voice from the clouds, saying with new inspiration and power, "This will never be a good world for woman until the last remnant of the canon law is civilized off the face of the earth."

Mrs. Mellen's s.p.a.cious home in Pembroke Gardens, Kensington, was thrown open for her American friends in London to celebrate the Fourth of July. A large number of our English acquaintances were also present, who very kindly congratulated us on the stirring events of that day in 1776. Of the Americans a.s.sembled, many contributed to the general entertainment. Grace Greenwood, Miss Rachel Foster, Miss Kate Hillard and Miss Mildred Conway gave recitations. Miss Lippincott, daughter of Grace Greenwood, sang some fine operatic music; Mrs. Carpenter of Chicago sang sweetly, playing her own accompaniment; Mr. Frank Lincoln gave some of his amusing impersonations; Miss Maud Powell of Chicago, only fourteen years of age, who had been taking lessons in France and Germany for some years, played exquisite airs on the violin; Mrs. Flora Stark, Miss Alice Blatch and Miss Conway gave us some fine cla.s.sical music on the piano, and Nathaniel Mellen sang some pathetic negro melodies.[581] Altogether it was a pleasant occasion and I felt quite proud of the varied talents manifested by our young people.

Some English friends remarked on their cleverness and readiness, all spontaneously called out without any time for preparation.

We heard Mr. Fawcett speak to his Hackney const.i.tuents at one of his campaign meetings. In the course of his remarks he mentioned with evident favor as one of the coming measures the disestablishment of the church, and was greeted with loud applause.

Soon after he spoke of woman suffrage as another question demanding consideration, but this was received with laughter and jeers, although the platform was crowded with advocates of the measure, among whom were the wife of the speaker and her sister, Dr. Garrett Anderson, who sat just behind him. The audience were evidently in favor of releasing themselves from being taxed to support the church, forgetting that women were taxed also not only to support the church, in which they had no voice, but the State, too, with its army and navy. Mr. Fawcett was not an orator, but a simple, straightforward speaker. He made but one gesture, striking his right clenched fist into the palm of the left hand at the close of all his strongest a.s.sertions; but being sound and liberal, he was a great favorite with his const.i.tuents.

A pleasant trip southward through Bath to Bristol brought us to the home of the Misses Priestman and Mrs. Tanner, sisters-in-law of John Bright. I had stayed at their father's house forty years before, so we felt like old friends. I found them all charming, liberal women, and we enjoyed a few days together, talking over our mutual struggles, and admiring the beautiful scenery for which that part of the country is quite celebrated. The women of England were just then organizing political clubs, and I was invited to speak before the one in Bristol. They are composed of men and women alike, for the discussion of all political questions. The next day I spoke to women alone in the church on the Bible view of woman's creation and destiny. It is strange that those who pretend to be well-versed in Scripture do not see that the simultaneous creation of man and woman and the complete equality of the s.e.xes are as clearly taught in the first chapter of Genesis as the reverse is in the allegorical garden-scene in the second. The drive over the suspension-bridge by moonlight to dine with Mrs. Garnet, a sister of John Thoma.s.son, M. P., was a pleasant episode to public speaking and more serious conversation. There, too, we had an evening reception. There is an earnestness of purpose among English women that is very encouraging under the prolonged disappointments reformers inevitably suffer. There is something so determined and heroic in what Mary Priestman does and says that one would readily follow her through all dangers. It added much to my comfort in this visit to have an escort in Mrs. Lucas.

Later Miss Anthony visited Bristol and had a complimentary reception at the Misses Priestman's. She was the guest of Miss Mary Estlin, who had spent some time in America, a dear friend of Sarah Pugh and Parker Pillsbury. Miss Estlin was from home during my visit, so that I did not see her while in England. The order of English homes among the wealthy cla.s.ses is very enjoyable. All goes on from year to year with the same servants, the same surroundings, no changes, no moving, no building even; in delightful contrast with our periodical upheavings, always uncertain where we shall go next, or how long our main dependents will stand by us.

From Bristol we went to Greenbank to visit Mrs. Helen Bright Clark, a daughter of the great orator. In the evening the parlors were crowded, and I was asked to give an account of the suffrage movement in America. Some clergymen questioned me in regard to the Bible position of woman, whereupon I gave quite an exposition of its general principles in favor of liberty and equality. As two quite distinct lines of argument can be woven out of those pages on any subject, on this occasion I selected all the most favorable texts for justice to woman, and closed by stating the limits of its authority. Mrs. Clarke, though thoroughly in sympathy with the views I had expressed, feared lest my very liberal utterances might have shocked some of the strictest of the laymen and clergy.

"Well," I said, "if we who do see the absurdities of the old superst.i.tions never unveil them to others, how is the world to make any progress in the theologies? I am now in the sunset of life, and I feel it to be my special mission to tell people what they are not prepared to hear, instead of echoing worn-out opinions." The result showed the wisdom of my speaking out of my own soul. To the surprise of Mrs. Clark, the primitive Methodist clergyman called on Sunday morning to invite me to occupy his pulpit in the afternoon and present the same line of thought I had the previous evening. I accepted his invitation. He led the services and I took my text from Genesis i., 27, 28, showing that man and woman were a simultaneous creation, endowed with equal power in starting.