The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony Volume II Part 41

Babies are named for her and she is asked to send a letter of acknowledgment and a little keepsake. Requests for autographs outnumber the days of the year.

She is constantly importuned to examine MSS., and not only to do this but to secure a publisher. During the year 1897 one man sent an article of sixty-eight closely typewritten pages of legal cap, asking that she give it a careful reading, revise it, and send it where it would be published; and no postage stamps accompanied this nervy request. A woman whose grammar and rhetoric were most defective announced that she had written a book called "The Intemperate Life of my Father;" also two stories and a play. She would send all of them to Miss Anthony, to 'fix up just as if they were her own and help her sell them; she wanted the proceeds to a.s.sist her brothers who had failed in business.' It is a common occurrence for persons to ask, without so much as enclosing a stamp, that she prepare an address on woman suffrage and send for them to read as their own production. One enthusiastic poem begins:

"When the grain is ripe we will gather the sheaves, And weave a crown for your brow of laurel leaves."

A man from the great Northwest sends a long article ent.i.tled, "Sun and Moon Bathed in Blood! Ring, Ring the Bells!" desiring that it be put in the "index of the biography," meaning the appendix. One writes: "You are said to be very good about a.s.sisting helpless girls; now you could not find one more helpless than I am;" and then requests that she select, have made and pay for a school outfit for her. Another has a great scheme for starting a "workingwoman's home" and wants Miss Anthony to furnish the money. The list might be extended almost indefinitely and, while one is amused and disgusted by turns, there are among this vast correspondence many letters which touch the heart. During the tariff debate in Congress in 1897 a paragraph was widely published that a tax was to be placed on tea, and this note, evidently written by a child, was received: "My mamma goes out to work while I go to school and she loves her cup of tea. Our groceryman tells us we will have to pay more for it now. I have heard how good you are to the poor, do please spare time to write to the President and ask him not to make our tea dearer.

Tell him to put the tax on beer and whiskey."

Miss Anthony is very conscientious about answering letters, too much so, her friends think, for she is a slave to her correspondence. Sometimes, however, she reaches the point of exasperation, as when she opened eight pages of a faintly written scrawl beginning, "My heart goes out to you in sympathy." "Well, I wish it would go out in blacker ink," she exclaimed, and threw it into the waste-basket. Invitations to lecture and to attend all sorts of gatherings pour in, and she often says to the younger workers, "If I might but transfer them to you, how much good you could accomplish." Every mail brings also loving and appreciative letters which illuminate the whole day, take the sting out of the unkind ones and lighten the burdens never entirely lifted. The women who have come into the work in late years continually ask, "How have you borne it so long?" Sometimes when their own endurance ceases they write her that they will have to resign, and she makes answer: "If all the young women fail, then the octogenarian must work the harder till a new reserve comes to the rescue;" and of course they are ashamed and redouble their labors to show their loyalty.

With all her hours of toil she is never satisfied with what she has accomplished, but always feels that she might have done a little more, that something or somebody has been neglected. In looking over the mention made in these chapters of a few of the most valuable gifts and noteworthy letters, she said with sadness: "And no notice has been taken of the hundreds of little tokens of affection which cost far more of sacrifice on the part of the givers, and of the thousands of letters from obscure but faithful women, without which I never could have had the courage to do my work."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ANTHONY FAMILY AT THE REUNION, ADAMS, Ma.s.s., JULY 30, 1897.]

While Miss Anthony has remained at home more days in 1897 than in any previous year for half a century it has been one of the busiest in regard to letter-writing. It is the dream of her life to raise a permanent fund to be placed in the hands of trustees, after the manner of the famous Peabody fund, the income to be used to further the cause of woman suffrage. To accomplish this she is exerting her strongest powers of appeal. During all these years of labor for humanity she has had to beg practically every dollar she has used, and she longs to relieve the workers of the future from this drudgery and humiliation, by providing an a.s.sured income, so they may not be obliged to expend half their time and strength in obtaining the money with which to do the work. In addition to this Standing Fund, she is endeavoring also to secure enough money for the early establishment of a Press Bureau for the purpose of taking up and answering, day by day, the false statements made in regard to woman suffrage, its ultimate aims and actual results; to furnish news and arguments where they are desired; and to enlist the support of the press for this question, which is now acknowledged to be one of the leading issues of the day.

The event of 1897 which gave Miss Anthony more pleasure than all others, in fact one of the happiest incidents of her life, was the Anthony Reunion at Adams, Ma.s.s., the last of July. The Historical and Scientific Society of Berkshire had for many years held an annual meeting at some one of the historic spots for which that county is especially noted. In 1895 this had been held in the dooryard of the old Anthony homestead, and she had been invited to be present, but was otherwise engaged. It had been the custom to eulogize her highly at these gatherings but it was determined that now she must come and speak for herself, therefore the invitation was repeated for 1896, but then she was in California. In 1897 the letter from the president, A. L. Perry, said: "The present writing is to give you a formal and official invitation, in the name of the people of the entire county, whose representatives we are, to be present and partic.i.p.ate in our next meeting. You may be sure of a warm welcome from your old neighbors who remain, and from the generation of Berkshire people, men and women, now on the stage."

The meeting was to be held in Lee, and she wrote that if they would again hold it at the old Anthony homestead she would put aside everything else and come. She soon received this answer from Rev. A. B.

Whipple: "It gives me pleasure, as vice-president of the Berkshire Historical Society, to inform you that we have decided to gratify your 'bit of sentiment' as well as our own inclination to meet again 'in that old dooryard,' to do you honor as one of the natives of Berkshire whose historic lives are finding a deserved and permanent record in our society."

Miss Anthony ever wanted her friends to share in her joys and was anxious that everybody should know her friends, so she wrote that she would like to have the Berkshire people hear Miss Shaw and others among the noted speakers. After some exchange of letters the officers of the society requested her to take charge of the program of the day, and promised to second all her arrangements. As she always combined business with pleasure she appointed a meeting of the national suffrage committee that week, and thus brought to Adams her "body guard," Miss Shaw, Miss Blackwell, Mrs. Catt, Mrs. Avery, Mrs. Upton[132] and, by invitation, Mrs. Sewall, Mrs. Colby and Mrs. Harper. She had decided also to have at this time a family reunion, and for many weeks had been writing far and wide to the Anthonys, the Laphams, the Reads and the Richardsons, bidding all come to Adams on the 29th of July, and as a result the "Old Hive" swarmed as it never had done, even in the early days. She went on a week ahead and joined forces with her cousin, Mrs. Fannie Bates, who lived in the house. Albert Anthony, another cousin and near neighbor, put himself, his horses and vehicles at their service; other relatives came to their a.s.sistance, beds were set up, provisions laid in; and for a week fifteen people picnicked in the old homestead. The overflow was received in the hospitable homes of other relatives in the neighborhood, and even Hotel Greylock, in the village, was pressed into service to entertain the guests, who came from Kansas, Illinois, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New Hampshire and other States.

The suffrage committee meetings were held during several days and evenings preceding the Historical Society celebration. It was a picture always to be remembered, that group of distinguished women, standing at the very head of the greatest progressive movement of the age, gathered in serious conclave in those old-fashioned, low-ceiled rooms built over a century ago, concocting schemes which would have filled their Quaker owners with holy horror. It seemed almost as if they would come back from the dim past to ask what it all meant. And yet, when one recalled that the Quakers never commanded their women to keep silence in the meeting house, but recognized their full equality there and elsewhere, and stood for liberty in a world given over to religious and political tyranny, it seemed indeed most fitting that the representatives of this great a.s.sociation for securing freedom to all, should come together under the roof of one of these old Friends. One felt as if the ancient door-latch should lift, and Aunt Hannah, the wise and gentle Quaker preacher, should glide in and take her seat among these other women whom the Spirit also had moved. But the most remarkable feature of this unique occasion was that the woman presiding over the deliberations of this body of reformers, should have carried on her childish games in this very room, seventy-five years before, and listened with awe to parents and grandparents as they discussed the burning questions of intemperance, slavery and religious intolerance.

An unseasonable storm of several days' duration had made it necessary to transfer the meeting of the Historical Society to the pavilion in Plunkett's Park. The ladies of Adams and vicinity, with Mrs. Susan Anthony Brown at their head, had prepared a bountiful luncheon for the officers of the society and the fifty invited guests, and here, at noon on July 29, Miss Anthony sat at the upper end of the long table with Rev. Anna Shaw on one hand and Rev. A. B. Whipple on the other. At the conclusion of the luncheon, the officers and speakers took seats on the stage in the large pavilion, which soon was filled with an audience that had come from Williamstown, North Adams, Pittsfield, Great Barrington, Lee and other surrounding towns. The Adams Freeman said: "If the group of women speakers were brilliant, the audience that honored them, while less so perhaps in renown, was equal in intellectual attainments. It was a cultured a.s.sembly, including the most progressive people of Berkshire."[133]

[Ill.u.s.tration: AT THE OLD HOMESTEAD, JULY 30, 1897.]

In a few words of welcome Rev. Louis Zahner, the Episcopal minister, spoke of the Anthony family as having laid the foundations of the schools, the industries and the prosperity of Adams, and of the community's indebtedness to them for the best it has today. Mr. Whipple, in a cordial address, then introduced Miss Anthony and placed the meeting in her charge. Can any pen describe her pride and happiness in returning thus to the loved home of her birth and childhood, to meet this warm and appreciative welcome and to introduce in turn her cabinet of eminent women?

After relating some very interesting recollections of her ancestors and of early events, which were especially appreciated by the old residents, she introduced Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, who said in the course of a graceful address:

There is no citizen of this great nation who would not be delighted with the privilege of visiting these Berkshire hills, famed for their beauty, but it is not because of this that most of us have made this pilgrimage to Adams; rather have we come with much of that spirit which led the thousands upon thousands of Christians in the early centuries to Jerusalem, or which later prompted thousands of Mohammedans to make their pilgrimage to the city of Mecca. We have come to Adams because it is the birthplace of the greatest woman of our time.

Many centuries ago, on the 15th of February, there was born a man whose name is familiar to every school-child throughout the civilized world, and yet that man never knew a happy day. He was reviled, persecuted, martyred, tried, condemned, and died sorrowful and broken-hearted. And what was his offense? He declared that this earth turned upon its axis and that it moved around the sun. There were no newspapers in that day, but every pulpit thundered its denunciation against the great Galileo. When he was condemned to die he was compelled to renounce this belief, but under his breath he said, "The world does move!" A century after he had gone, not a pulpit in Christendom, not a scholar, was there but knew that he had told the truth.

It is a curious coincidence that upon the anniversary of the birthday of Galileo there was born Susan B. Anthony. She also perceived a great truth and the world did not agree with her. It reviled her for the belief she had propounded, but in this century she never renounced that belief, but thundered back to the pulpit and to the newspapers that the world does move and the time will come when women shall be free; the time will come when they shall have every right, every privilege, every liberty which any man enjoys.... We, today, are making the first pilgrimage to the birthplace of Susan B. Anthony, but I prophesy that in another quarter of a century there will be many pilgrimages. .h.i.ther, and no child will be so illiterate as not to know that in this county it was this greatest of American women was born.

Mrs. Rachel Foster Avery followed with an entertaining account of her trip abroad with Miss Anthony and the latter's utter indifference to the t.i.tles of the n.o.bility. As she never could get them right she discarded all of them and insisted on calling everybody plain "Mr." and "Mrs." She then related this incident:

We had in our party for a few weeks a couple of English ladies.

When driving in Rome, one of them, a great dame of n.o.ble lineage, was admiring an old palace belonging to some very ancient Roman family and made the statement that this same family owned five other famous palaces in Italy. Miss Anthony seemed to be making a mental calculation, and finally said with enthusiasm, "What a magnificent orphan asylum that would make."

"Why, Miss Anthony, do you mean that you would actually turn the home of this old family into an orphan asylum?"

"Yes," said she, "I think about 700 of these little ragam.u.f.fins could be put in there. Think of the streets just full of them, and all these big houses vacant! I don't see a better use to which these old palaces could be put."

Mrs. Upton in her bright, humorous way related some amusing stories which she had heard from her ancestors, who were born in Berkshire, and adroitly turned them into an argument for woman suffrage. A beautiful poem was read, ent.i.tled "Pioneers," dedicated to Miss Anthony by her old friend John M. Thayer, of Rochester. Col. D. R. Anthony created great mirth by telling among other stories that eighty years ago his father had a cotton mill of twenty-six looms; one day all of them suddenly stopped and, rushing out to ascertain the cause, he found that his wife, in rinsing her mop in the stream, had stopped the power which moved the machinery! He then referred to the Plunkett factories with 2,600 looms, and the other great mills of Adams, as ill.u.s.trating the progress of the century. In an address which glowed with beauty and eloquence, Mrs. May Wright Sewall thus compared Miss Anthony's character with the scenes amidst which she was born:

We, who own and follow our general, know that she goes where Liberty leads, where Justice calls, where Love whispers his divine commands; and we have found in her the gravity of your stately mountains, the yearning for freedom of your lofty hills lifted toward the sky s.p.a.ces. We have found in her the impetuosity of your mountain streams, which, fretting against narrow bounds, broke through them, widening and widening ever the channel of the life of American womanhood; and so we, who love appropriateness, gaze with delight upon this scenery, the environment of her infancy and the nurturing influence of her childhood, as a fine ill.u.s.tration of the eternal fitness of things.

One of the most exquisite addresses of the day was made by Mrs. Clara B.

Colby, who said in part:

Miss Anthony's love of justice links her with the divine. This has been her impelling motive, and her patient endurance has been the secret of her success. No matter how keen might have been her sense of the injustice done to women, no matter how courageously she might have set out to right the wrong, had she lacked endurance, she had never been the one to lead us to victory. As justice is the root of the tree of character, and patience the stalk from which all growth proceeds, so tenderness is the outflowering of the divinity within. By her tenderness Miss Anthony has made herself loved where she might have only been honored.

It was perhaps the drop hardest to swallow from the cup of bitterness which was ever pressed to the lips of the early woman suffragists, that they were destroyers of the home. To Miss Anthony, the home and kindred-lover--homeless only for the sake of the homes of the mother-half of the race--this must have been especially hard to bear. There are such all over the land where she has been a tender and sympathetic friend and where she is enshrined in the hearts of the homekeepers.... Thus Miss Anthony, justice-loving, patient and tender, has erected for herself a lasting monument in the hearts of the women of this nation. May the time be long deferred when she shall pa.s.s from the leadership of her now triumphant host, but when that day comes, let there be, as she has enjoined upon us, no tears, but only glad thankfulness for a great life-work wrought in courage, fidelity and tenderness.

Mrs. Colby urged the Historical Society to purchase the old homestead, if possible, as a depository not only for relics of the Anthony family but for mementoes of suffrage work and workers. No report ever can give an adequate idea of the eloquence of Anna Shaw, so artistically diversified by delicious bits of humor and keen points of satire. A portion of her address was as follows:

Amidst all the eulogy which has surrounded Miss Anthony this afternoon, her brother said to me, "Don't you think they will turn Susan's head?" I answered, "No, she has had so many years of misrepresentation and abuse that if they keep on eulogizing her as long as she lives, it won't balance the other side." There is no danger in this world that the leader of an unpopular cause ever will die of overpraise, for, in America as in Jerusalem, the prophets of G.o.d have always been received with stones. We who know her best love her most, and to me the truest and deepest love of my existence, since my mother entered the life beyond, is that which I cherish for Susan B. Anthony.

The remonstrants today tell us that our movement will destroy the affectionate tenderness of the womanly nature and uns.e.x woman until she becomes a weak man. I believe in men, and I do not believe that all the love, the tenderness, the power to sacrifice is feminine. I believe that the love of man is as true and deep and tender as the love of woman. I will not accept the theory that "man is the head"

and "woman is the heart." I believe that when G.o.d created head and heart for the human race He divided them equally and gave man his part and woman hers, and both have kept their own all the way down the centuries.

The part of Miss Anthony's life which is dearest to us is that into which she has admitted the few who belong to the sacred inner circle, who have seen her toil, her suffering, her soul's anguish and travail for the freedom, the larger growth, the diviner possibilities of womanhood; and if there is any evidence that living in the world, working for its uplift, does not destroy this trait in human character, it is shown in the life of Miss Anthony.

There is no human being whom I have ever known who had more tenderness for the erring and greater willingness to overlook the frailties of human life. In this she shows that contact with the most disagreeable side of the reformer's work, makes the real woman not less but more womanly. I believe that if the principles which she advocates, the ideals for which she stands, were embodied in all womankind, we would have a motherhood diviner than any this world has ever known, a motherhood such as G.o.d had in his thought when he created woman to be the mother of the race....

It is not a name we love today, it is not a person we revere, but a great, an ideal life of a woman who has battled with the world, who has been misunderstood, who has borne its scorn, who has been ostracised, and who, in the midst of all, has kept her life sweet, her heart young, her love tender; and when the best thing shall be said of her which men and women can say, it will be--she was true, she was n.o.ble, she was woman.

The day after the meeting of the Historical Society, occurred the Anthony Reunion at the old homestead, when eighty of the clan sat down at the long tables spread in grandfather's room, the keeping-room and the weaving-room; and what a dinner the famous cooks of the Anthony-Lapham-Read-Richardson families had prepared for this great occasion! Not the least important features were the eighteen apple-pies eaten with the world-renowned Berkshire cheese; and then the sweet bread and b.u.t.ter, the fried chicken, the baked beans, the rich preserves and cream, the delicious cake--but why attempt to describe a New England dinner prepared by New England women? Those who have eaten know what it is; those who have not, can not be made to understand.

Where Susan B. Anthony sat was the head of the table; at her right hand, the brother Daniel R.; at her left, the brother Merritt; and close by, the quiet, smiling sister Mary; and then all along down the line, the cousins, the nephews, the nieces, three and four generations, who had joined so heartily with her for the success of this rare occasion.

Before the dinner began, Miss Anthony asked that, in accordance with the custom of their ancestors, there might be a moment of silent thanks; and at the close of the meal, when the chatter and mirth were stilled, she arose and in touching words paid tribute to the loved and gone who once blessed these rooms by their presence. She then called upon the representatives of the different branches, old and young, who, in prose or poetry, with wit or pathos, made delightful response.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE QUAKER MEETING HOUSE, ADAMS, Ma.s.s. 150 YEARS OLD.

SEVERAL MEMBERS OF THE ANTHONY FAMILY IN THE GROUP OF PIONEERS.]

After all had finished they adjourned to the dooryard and a reception commenced which even the roomy old house could not have accommodated.

For several hours a long line of carriages wound up the hill--the people of Adams and vicinity coming to pay respect to their ill.u.s.trious townswoman and her relatives and friends. The immediate members of the family were photographed in a group on the old porch, as was also the dinner party gathered in the historic dooryard. The mountain air was sweet and invigorating, and the view in every direction most enchanting.

A more picturesque spot scarcely can be imagined: in front, the long range of Berkshire hills, a spur of the Green mountains of Vermont whose faint outlines are visible in the distance; at the back, glorious "Old Greylock," the highest peak in the State; at the right, the steep, winding road leading down to the village a mile below, through a ravine perfectly bewildering in its beauty of overhanging trees, moss-grown rocks and fern-bordered brook tumbling over the ma.s.sive boulders in its rapid descent to join the Hoosac; and then united they flow through the pretty town of Adams, turning the countless wheels of the great mills and factories.

The next day after the reunion a merry party of thirty, the guests of a cousin, William Anthony, started in two great coaches, each drawn by six horses, for the all-day trip to the top of Mount Greylock. The gayest and happiest of them all was Miss Anthony, with her red shawl over her shoulders, and her heart as light as when she used to climb these mountainsides, a little, barefooted girl, more than seventy years ago.

Several days thereafter were spent visiting the pleasant homes of the relatives, and going with her friends to point out the various places of interest. Every spot connected with her early life was as sacred to them as it was dear to her. Together they went to the deserted Quaker meeting house, a century and a half old, and were shown the very spot where sat the grandfather, the father, mother and little ones; and the raised bench occupied by the grandmother, who was a "high-seat Quaker," and Aunt Hannah Hoxie, the preacher. They strolled through the little graveyard, with its lines of unmarked mounds. They visited the site of the old mill, built by Daniel Anthony at the very beginning of the manufacturing industry, where now only a few sunken stones mark the foundation. They rested beneath the great trees which stand like sentinels in front of the girlhood home of the mother, the house long since crumbled away. They gazed curiously at the ancient Bowen's Tavern, the favorite stopping-place of the mountaineers in early days.

And then they went with Miss Anthony into her own old home. They stepped reverently into the very room where she was born. They climbed to the garret and she pointed out the exact spot by the tiny window where she used to sit with her simple playthings. They stood with her by the little stream which still ran merrily through the dooryard, and listened with misty eyes as she recalled many touching incidents of days long past; but, however her own heart might have ached with tender recollections, there were no words of vain longing, no useless tears for those who had fulfilled their mission and pa.s.sed away, leaving to her their legacy of hope and courage and determination. Strong, brave and cheerful, she honored the memory of the dead in showing herself by her works to be the worthy descendant of a n.o.ble race. And here, where the story of this pure, single-hearted, self-sacrificing life began, it shall be ended.

The usual fate of reformers is "praise when the ear has grown too dull to hear, fame when the heart it should have thrilled is numb." Seldom it is, indeed, that they live to see the fulfillment of the end for which they labored, and even recognition usually is deferred until it can be given only to a memory, but there are a few happy exceptions. While true reformers seek no personal reward, those who love them rejoice when they are spared to receive the honors they have earned. Susan B. Anthony's self-imposed task, for almost half a century, has been to secure equal rights for women--social, civil and political. When she began her crusade, woman in social life was "cabin'd, cribb'd, confined," to an extent which scarcely can be conceived by the present independent and self-reliant generation; in law she was but little better than a slave; in politics, a mere cipher. Today in society she has practically unlimited freedom; in the business world most of the obstacles have been removed; the laws, although still unjust in many respects, have been revolutionized in her favor; in four States women have the full franchise, in one the munic.i.p.al ballot, in twenty-five a vote on school questions, and in four others some form of suffrage; while in each campaign their recognition as a political factor grows more marked. Miss Anthony's part in securing these concessions may be judged from the record of these pages. She is the only woman who has given her whole time and effort to this one end, with no division of interest in behalf of husband and children, no diversion of other public questions. Is there an example in all history of either man or woman who devoted half a century of the hardest, most persistent labor for one reform?

"Of the dead naught shall be spoken except good," is a rule so universally observed that post mortem compliments have little weight, but when beautiful things are said of those who still live and toil, they are full of meaning. Not only is it a delight to her contemporaries, but it will be a pleasure to future generations who shall read her history, that Miss Anthony lived to receive her meed of appreciation. While not all of even the enlightened minds of today have progressed far enough to accept her doctrine of perfect equality, which will be universally admitted by the next generation, there are few who do not recognize and honor the splendid character of the woman and the service she has rendered. Just as these closing words are being written, the State superintendent of public works, George W. Aldridge, announces that he has ordered her face to be carved in the Capitol at Albany, one of the magnificent public buildings of the world. Here, wrought in imperishable stone, amidst those of the country's greatest warriors and statesmen, it will look down forever upon that grand staircase whose marble steps were so many times pressed by her weary feet, as she made her annual pilgrimage to plead for liberty.

The sweetest strains in this great oratorio are the tributes of women voicing their love and grat.i.tude. They come from those in all the walks of life, and a distinguishing feature is that they who have known her longest and best are most loyal and devoted. The secret of this is perfectly expressed by May Wright Sewall, when she says:

Mortals with all their consciousness of their own infirmities are exacting of one another. It is a proof of the infinite possibilities involved in the human soul, and a foundation for the infinite hope which sustains us, that we are satisfied with nothing less than perfection in other people. Is a woman great? To please us she must be also good. Is a woman both great and good? We are not satisfied unless she be likewise loving and lovable. No one can come near to the life of Miss Anthony without realizing how responsive she is to personal needs; how lively in her sympathies; how instinctive her outreaching of the helping hand. The same fidelity and single-minded loyalty which have characterized her public career, distinguish her in all private relations. Others may forget us in our griefs, she never forgets. Others may forget us in our pleasures, she never forgets.

It is indeed true that Miss Anthony never forgets. In her letters to hundreds of people, she recollects always to send a message to the different members of the family, to refer to some agreeable incident of their acquaintance, and to express either pleasure or regret over personal affairs which any one else would have failed to remember amidst such a pressure of work and responsibility.