It was an excellent paper; many years later it was spoken of by a competent critic as the best ever published on the coast. It was not propagandist in any line, not exclusively feminist in tone, but varied and interesting. It lasted twenty weeks.
This fiasco was what showed me my standing in that city. Mrs. Campbell, who was honored as a distinguished stranger, made some inquiries as to the rather surprising lack of support, either in subscribers or advertisers, and was answered, “Nothing that Mrs. Stetson does can succeed here,” and, “You risk your own reputation in joining her.” Said a prominent woman doctor, “Yes, it is a brilliant paper, an interesting paper, but after what Mrs. Stetson printed in her first issue no self-respecting woman could have it on her table.”
And what was the marvel of iniquity which so shocked as immoral a city as the country owned? It was a beautiful poem, of a nobly religious tendency — by Grace Ellery Channing! Such was the San Francisco mind.
One somewhat important woman told Mrs. Campbell that it was a pity she should lose by this venture, and that she thought the paper might be supported if a committee of matrons could be assembled who would guarantee that the paper should be kept — there were a number of requirements, but the only one I remember was “clean.” There was really something exquisitely funny in comparing the moral superiority of attitude in the “society” of that city with the stern stoicism, the passion for social improvement and ceaseless effort to serve, of this earnest woman teacher. The Impress, blameless and attractive, was open to all.
One piece of work contributed to California during these years was a share in arranging several annual Woman’s Congresses. These brought together the foremost women of the state, showed what progress was being made, and introduced noted speakers from the east. Among these, as I have said, were Helen Campbell and Jane Addams. Also came Susan B. Anthony, that grand leader of the Equal Suffrage Movement. These all became friends of mine. Mrs. Campbell became like a mother to me, Miss Anthony wanted me as a suffrage worker, Miss Addams’s championship was most valuable.
I used to delight in planning the programs for these congresses, making a balance of the subjects before we invited speakers; and I contributed one feature which I wish could be adopted by all such assemblages. We held three two-hour sessions a day, for a week, four speakers to a session, with this announcement printed on all our letters of invitation, on the programs distributed in the seats, proclaimed from the platform— “Each speaker will be allowed twenty minutes for the reading of the paper. A bell will be rung three minutes before the expiration of that time, to allow the speaker to close.”
Ten minutes of discussion followed each paper, real viva voce discussion from the floor, in two-minute speeches. The sharply limited time, the genuine and not tedious discussion, with the well-related topics, made the meetings continuously interesting. Women came from all over the state and farther; remote school-teachers saved, the year through, to attend this stirring convention. Our meetings were crowded, we always had to move to a larger hall before the week ended.
The speakers, however much displeased, stopped on time, they had to. One good lady, from Santa Rosa, was particularly aggrieved, said she knew her paper only took twenty minutes to read — she had tried it! But she had to stop when her time was up just the same. Persevering soul that she was, she withdrew into the audience, and in each discussion period up she popped and read her paper for two minutes until she finished it — amid wild applause.
Another instance of the pleasant attitude of the San Franscisco newspapers occurs to me. There had been a murder, an unbelievably atrocious murder of a poor woman, somewhat intoxicated, by a man, quite evidently a pervert. The woman’s husband knew me and my work, he came to me pathetically broken, and begged me to make the funeral address.
“I can’t ask any minister,” he said, “they’d blame her. You’ll know, you’ll understand.” He told me how her father had been a dipsomaniac, that she had inherited the craving, that a very little made her irresponsible, that she had never meant—”
It was a painfully difficult thing to do, the dreadful story blazoned in pitiless head-lines far and wide, the ghastly details in every one’s mind. I had not known her beyond a casual introduction. But I could not refuse the broken-hearted husband.
It was in an undertaker’s parlor. One of my friends went with me, and seeing the blank gloom of the place she bought a dollar’s worth of glorious sweet peas — about a bushel of them, and we poured that flood of color over the coffin. There were no mourners but the husband, but there stood like a row of vultures, reporters, ready to make the most of every detail and to make it all as hideous as they could — to keep up the story.
I said what I could, with as much of understanding and sympathy as was possible to me. And the newspapers gave full description of the ghastly scene and stated that I had thrust myself into this congenial limelight for the sake of notoriety....
The summer of 1895 brought my California activities to a close. I had put in five years of most earnest work, with voice and pen, and registered complete failure. Such gain as I had made in England and our eastern states was not known here. Outside of warm support in the labor movement, the best welcome I had met was with a few friends in Stanford University, where I visited a little and addressed the students once or twice. I remember sharply how delightful it was to be among educated people again, bookish people, and to be treated with respect and friendliness. I had warm personal friends, to be sure, but the public verdict was utter condemnation.
Thirty-five years old. A failure, a repeated, cumulative failure. Debt, quite a lot of it. No means of paying, no strength to hold a job if I got one. I decided that it was time to leave. So I gave up the halfhouse, Mrs. Campbell and Mrs. Tyner having gone east again, and gave away enough of my scant furniture to enable a poor woman who had been living in the basement to keep house in a small way again. I remember how astonished she was at some silver which was part of this outfit. “Why it’s silver!” she protested. “Well, why not? You need some spoons and forks, don’t you? What’s silver!” Other things I stored in the house of a good friend.
“I am going east,” I announced. I didn’t know when, nor where, nor how, but I knew I was going. That summer I visited about among various friends and admirers, and lectured a little here and there. There was one trip over the mountains, when I sat on the front seat of the rocking stage, talking to the driver now and then. We had topped the divide, and began swift descent; a narrow road from which one looked down on soaring eagles; and hairpin turns, as we rounded the spreading flanks of the hills. Approaching these sharp turns the driver did not slacken speed, but merely put a big whistle in his mouth and blew to give warning of our approach. But one man coming up must have been deaf, for we whirled around the corner and were upon him — before they could pull up, his horses were trying to climb the side of the mountain and ours had their forefeet over the edge. It was a close shave, but they managed to wriggle out of it in safety, and when we were on our way again I took up the conversation where it had broken off.
The driver looked at me as if I were uncanny, probably thought I was not intelligent enough to be afraid; maybe I wasn’t. That evening in the little town where the trip ended I was strolling about to see the place and passed a Salvation Army mission. There on his knees I saw that driver — he knew danger when he saw it, anyway.
There was one long trip up the central valley; from five in the morning to five at night I think it was, ending in Sacramento; and all day long, on both sides of the track, there ran beside us an unbroken ribbon of flowers. On my arrival I was met by two dingy-looking women, and a tall, handsome, well-dressed man, with two offers of entertainment. I had two lecture engagements, thus represented, but felt shy of the impressive man, and went home with the women for the first night; he was to call for me next day. These women were the wife and mother-in-law of a man I had met who had made the first engagement. He had told me he kept a hotel in Sacramento, and ask
ed me to stay with him when in town. This “hotel” I found to have been a most unsavory sailors’ boarding-house, now purified by the simple expedient of keeping women out of it — but I was a visitor. We ate in what had been the bar, I think; there were decorations on the mirror and windows, drawn in soap. In my bedroom the window sill was furry with old dirt, the bed I slept on, not in; and the washing accommodations were most insufficient.
But I was glad I went with them, though that night’s lecture wasn’t much, for the little woman was very unhappy and I was able to help her. My own various distresses gave me carte blanche in other people’s troubles, it appeared. I found that the closest thing one can say to another is, “I’ve been there!”
Next day came the handsome, finely dressed man, with a prancing pair of horses, and took me to his fine house. Here I had a lovely and luxurious bedroom with its bathroom all shining, a reading-lamp by the bed, with the latest books and magazines, flowers of course, — it was the most sudden and longest leap from bottom to top that I ever took. It was fortunate for me that I chose the poor place first.
After this I waited a little in a friend’s house in San Francisco. Jane Addams had invited me to visit her in Hull House, in Chicago, so I knew where I was going. Another friend had asked to meet me on a certain date, and I accepted — as well then as any time — so I knew when. But in order to keep that engagement I must leave on a certain Tuesday, and up to the Sunday previous I did not know how — for I had no money for the journey.
That Sunday came good Mrs. Sarah B. Cooper, always a friend, with a half-price ticket — as a missionary — which she had somehow obtained from the Southern Pacific! Perhaps they were glad to get rid of me. Perhaps she did not mention who the missionary was. I took it thankfully. Now I had everything but some ready money for the trip, and this I intended to borrow from a man I knew, next morning. He was kind, cordial, willing, but actually hadn’t the money — I had asked for fifty dollars.
This was somewhat of a blow, the next day being Tuesday. But I said to myself, “Never mind, I’ll go if I have to sit up in the day-coach and eat out of a basket. But I will not try to get it of any one else just now, being a little discouraged perhaps. To-night I’m going to a meeting of The Altrurians, some one there will give it to me. I’ll go home and take a nap.” This I did, sleeping peacefully.
These Altrurians, named after Howell’s recent book, were another of California’s thousand little clubs with large purposes. I went, made my little speech, and studied those present with a view to the probability of their having any money. Selecting one who seemed able if willing, and reducing my request by half, I spoke to him as we went out — a total stranger — told him exactly how I was situated, had been disappointed at the last moment, was going anyway, but I’d be glad if he’d let me have twenty-five dollars for a month or two. He promptly produced five little half-eagles, so I had a berth and enough to eat on my journey.
I paid him in due course, paid all those San Francisco debts sooner or later. I remember how astonished the Oakland land-lady was when I turned up, some years after. She opened the door, and stood, staring blankly, as I calmly remarked, “I’ve come to pay the rent.”
That dear lady who had enabled me to pay for Katharine’s ticket and move to Powell Street got hers back just after the earthquake and fire, when a little ready money was most useful.
The sense of hope and power rose up afresh as the train rolled eastward. Failures were nothing, debts were nothing — didn’t most business have to have credit? I was alive and had my work to do; I was escaping from the foulest misrepresentation and abuse I have ever known, and I had a wholly reliable religion and social philosophy.
On the cars I wrote this, not much as poetry, but strong in purpose:
As the strong sweet light of the morning,
As the strong sweet air from the sea,
As the strong sweet music of the wind among the leaves,
Comes the voice of my goodwill to a weary world that grieves, Crying “Be glad! Be free!”
CHAPTER XIII. AT LARGE
ASKED, before leaving the coast that summer, to write my name and address in the visitor’s book of the Friday Morning Club of Los Angeles, I cheerfully inscribed, “Charlotte Perkins Stetson. At large.” For the next five years that was a legitimate address. Back and forth and up and down, from California to Maine, from Michigan to Texas, from Georgia to Oregon, twice to England, I wandered. There were visits, long and short, even residences, very short, but for the most part there was the railroad train, and no address in my little book to which to send “the remains” in case of accident.
“Don’t you feel very much at sea?” some one asked. “I do. Like a sea-gull at sea.” And when inquiring friends would ask, “Where do you live now?” my reply was, “Here.”
The difference is great between one’s outside “life,” the things which happen to one, incidents, pains and pleasures, and one’s “living.” Outside, here was a woman undergoing many hardships and losses, and particularly handicapped by the mental weakness which shut down on her again, utter prostration and misery. But inside her was a conscious humanity, immensely beyond self; a realization of the practical immortality of that ceaseless human life of ours, of its prodigious power, its endless growth.
My “self” I was sorry for. When the suffering was extreme I would look at my self as if it were a little creature in my hand, and stroke it softly, saying, “You poor little thing! You do have a hard time, don’t you.” When the burden seemed more than I could possibly stand I would say, “Huh! You don’t have to. It’s up to God and He can stand it.”
“He” is merely a survival in terminology. This God I was so sure of, was not him or her, not limited by personality, but an inescapable, ever-acting force to be used. Once solidly convinced of this reliable power — nothing else matters much. That workable assumption was at the bottom of my cheerful calmness. But besides this basic strength there was a growing social philosophy which was like a sunrise. One may be contented or reconciled with one’s individual life, yet in misery about the suffering and confusion of the world.
Mr. Howells told me I was the only optimist reformer he ever met. Perhaps because I was not a reformer, but a philosopher. I worked for various reforms, as Socrates went to war when Athens needed his services, but we do not remember him as a soldier. My business was to find out what ailed society, and how most easily and naturally to improve it.
It might be called the effort of a social inventor, trying to advance human happiness by the introduction of better psychic machinery. I was not depressed by the local and temporary misery I saw in the world, any more than by the long centuries of worse misery behind us. When humanity is grasped as a growing thing, one long, unbroken process, one is more impressed by its new advances than by its old mistakes.
Moreover, I had from these childish years of happy castle-building, the mental capacity for keen enjoyment from percepts. To see in my mind a clear, attainable happiness and the way to get it, was a solid joy. What I saw in the world was not its foolish, unnecessary troubles, but its splendid possibilities; as a competent promoter sees in some tottering business the success he can make of it.
As I had planned the programs for those Congresses of Women, I planned programs for the world, seeing clearly the gradual steps by which we might advance to an assured health, a growing happiness. If they did not see it, would not do it, that was not my fault; my job, my one preëminent work, was to “see” and to “say,” and I did it.
The main output was in lecturing and preaching — there was little difference except in using a text. Once, indeed, in the Unitarian Church in Moline, Ill., gazing at the calm resigned faces of the congregation, I announced, “I am not going to give you any text. If you listen carefully you will know what the sermon is about by what I say.” They listened. Furthermore, they paid me a prodigious compliment, by keeping me, after dismissal at twelve, for three-quarters of an hour, to answer questions.
Sick or well, in all the years, preaching was always ready. There was no preparation, simply the choice of some subject in which I was deeply interested — had something to give. I did not use oratory, just talked, talked so that I could be heard without difficulty, understood without effort. Also, being a Beecher, there was plenty of fun, nice little jokes that happened in the soberer part, and at which I chuckled with the audience.
The hearers were always interested, even if they resented the criticisms of present methods and disliked the alternatives offered. I used to love the buzz of excited discussion which followed a lecture, though not assuming it to be favorable. Nor was I misled by the line of handshakers who came up to express approval, but cast my eye upon the far larger group going out, who probably did not like it. To avoid pride, anger, or discouragement, I made it a rule for years never to look at what the papers said of my lectures. This helped to maintain a vivid freshness of presentation....
So I went gaily to Chicago, on Miss Addams’s invitation. Jane Addams was a truly great woman. Her mind had more “floor space” in it than any other I have known. She could set a subject down, unprejudiced, and walk all around it, allowing fairly for every one’s point of view.
At that time the work started by her and Miss Ellen Starr in Hull House was fresh in the public mind, widely known and honored. The wise kindness with which she took me in for a three months’ visit had an immediate effect in counteracting my California newspaper-made reputation. Instead of ridicule and abuse I found myself introduced by sonorous ministers as “One of those consecrated women who have given their lives to the service of the poor and needy.” Which was true enough, except for the limited object, my interest was in all humanity, not merely in the under side of it; in sociology, not social pathology.
The change was sudden and great. To Hull House came distinguished people, humanitarian thinkers from all over the country, and from other countries, too. Here was companionship, fellow feeling, friendly society. My verse was known and liked, new friends were made, there were lecture engagements, and presently I was asked to be the head of another settlement, on the North Side, in a place called “Little Hell.”
Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman Page 262