The loathly river flowed sluggishly near by, thick and ill-smelling; Goose Island lay black in the slow stream. Everywhere a heavy dinginess; low, dark brick factories and gloomy wooden dwellings often below the level of the street; foul plank sidewalks, rotten and full of holes; black mud underfoot, damp soot drifting steadily down over everything.
Knowing the unreliability of my health I did not undertake to manage this settlement, but suggested Mrs. Campbell, who was by this time teaching economics in Wisconsin; and she accepted the position. I did live there, however, and helped as I could with the work, still lecturing as opportunity offered. Two young Harvard men who were interested in sociology were also with us, George Virtue and Hervey White, and later a pleasant Miss Vogel.
Helen Campbell was our beloved “Head” and mother to us all. She even cooked special treats for us when the settlement maid was worse than usual; I remember bringing in some delicious gingerbread with the proclamation, “Made by our Ma! — Not marred by our Maid!” It was a pleasant family life, though planted in the midst of misery. Among so many poor why should I worry over my own poverty?
“Social evolution,” I wrote on some of those everlasting self-reminding pieces of paper, “is as natural as any other kind. It is promoted by individuals. If I am one of them, and needed at this time, I shall be enabled to function. That means living, and that means money — enough to live on.” And though I was many times entirely out of money, there always came some, somehow, so that living went on and some debts were paid. The one important thing was to do the work. As to power, that was God. “There is plenty of God,” I wrote. “Enough for us all. We have but to help ourselves to that illimitable force.”
So I lectured and preached, wherever I was asked, for my expenses or for what they could afford to give. “Will they pay you?” some friend asked. “I don’t know.” “Don’t know — isn’t that your business?” “Oh no, my business is to preach, and I do that whenever I can. It is their business to pay me, that’s not my affair.”
For years I lived on that basis, as propertyless and as desireless as a Buddhist priest, almost, though needing something more than a yellow robe and begging bowl. Once I preached in Battle Creek, Michigan. My pay was to be the collection. The sermon was on heaven, and never did I give a better one, making them see how near it was, our heaven on earth, how real and practical, how well within our power to make. When it was ended the congregation sat breathless, eager, deeply moved. I gave them a benediction and the meeting was over.
I quite forgot the collection. If I had remembered it, I would not have broken the spell that was on them for any money.
Two good old people were entertaining me, and next morning my host asked me, “Do you believe in missionaries?” I said I did, some kinds. “Do you think they ought to be supported?” I agreed that they had to be. Then he told me that they thought I was a missionary, and his wife wanted him to give me ten dollars. So I was paid, even without the collection.
The social philosophy I was teaching included my organic theory of social economics, later developed in Human Work; the theory of the economic independence and specialization of women as essential to the improvement of marriage, motherhood, domestic industry, and racial improvement; with much on advance in child culture.
I worked for Equal Suffrage when opportunity offered, believing it to be reasonable and necessary, though by no means as important as some of its protagonists held; and for Socialism, feeling the real basis of that system to be right, in spite of the mishandling of Marx. It amazes me yet to see how stupidly, how obstinately, people refuse to consider fairly a proposition because of their violent prejudice against some of its interpreters. It is as if Christianity were to be judged by the Doukhobors!
In January, 1896, I attended a Suffrage Convention in Washington, D. C., as a delegate from California, with traveling expenses sent by their W.S.A. There I spoke, read verses, preached, and addressed the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives — while having the mumps! The attack was so light that it was discredited till we heard that my fellow-workers in the Settlement had come down with it, far worse than I.
Most pleasing and important of all the happenings of this visit was meeting Professor Lester F. Ward, quite the greatest man I have ever known. He was an outstanding leader in Sociology, familiar with many sciences, and his Gynæcocentric Theory, first set forth in a Forum article in 1888, is the greatest single contribution to the world’s thought since Evolution.
He had written me before this, being struck with the poem “Similar Cases,” naturally pleased with its scientific background, and now he and Mrs. Ward gave me a reception, where I met many learned and interesting men and women. Having spoken that morning at the Conventions, and in the afternoon at the Capitol, it is no wonder that the day ends, “Am seen home by Dr. Eaton” (one of our delegates) “and put to bed. Says it grip.” It wasn’t. It was mumps.
Back, rather feebly, to Little Hell, where there were several much sicker than I, and among our neighbors, worse trouble. “The Marshall baby died last night.” “Visit Mrs. Marshall. Lend shawl for the funeral. Mr. Virtue lent his coat and other things. We advance money for the funeral.”
Lectures went on. Writing went on. March 10th: “Feel badly again. Just a cold but pulls me down much. Better later and write Burne-Jonesey poem.” As a product of Little Hell this is worth quoting:
THE BEDS OF FLEUR-DE-LYS
High-lying, sea-blown stretches of green turf,
Wind-bitten close, salt-colored from the sea,
Low curve on curve spread far to the cool sky,
And, curving over them as long they lie,
Beds of wild fleur-de-lys.
Wide-flowing, self-sown, stealing near and far,
Breaking the green like islands in the sea;
Great stretches at your feet, and spots that bend
Dwindling over the horizon’s end, —
Wild beds of fleurs-de-lys.
The light keen wind streams on across the lifts,
Thin wind of western springtime by the sea;
The close turf smiles unmoved, but over her
Is the far-flying rustle and sweet stir
In beds of fleur-de-lys.
And here and there, across the smooth low grass,
Tall maidens wander, thinking of the sea;
And bend, and bend, with light robes blown aside,
For the blue lily-flowers that bloom so wide, —
The beds of fleur-de-lys.
As this is one of the very few poems among all my verses, it seems singularly out of place in that environment. “Wed. 11th. Write ‘The Room At The Top.’ “ This last taught me something about my “style” which I had never in the least intended. I noticed this verse:
It is not so hard to stand
And fight on the broad free land,
But to climb in the wind and night,
And fight, and climb — and fight — !
and perceived that all the words were of one syllable. Looking at the rest I found the whole poem had but one or two longer ones. Then among all the others I noted the same unconscious habit, evidently a natural method.
Edward Everett Hale, in his admirable book for young peole, How To Do It, gives as an ideal specimen this political speech: “I do not think that I am fit for this place, but my friends think that I am, and if you put me in, I will do the best I can.” Perhaps I had subconsciously cherished that ideal.
Meanwhile, my health sank lower and lower, the same old misery and exhaustion. “Sunday Mch. 15. Am so bad that ‘mother’ sends me over to Dr. McCracken’s. They take me in joyfully and keep me. Also they recognize that I am in a serious condition.”
This is another instance of the wonderful goodness with which, lacking family, I have been cared for by friends, wherever I went. Good doctors have doctored me for nothing, good dentists have made me a present of their work — Dr. Van Orden of San Francisco gave me a Christmas present of fifty dol
lars’ worth of work, once, and charged next to nothing for more service.
The McCrackens were both physicians. Mrs. McCracken was a member of the Chicago Woman’s Club, had often heard me speak; I had given parlor lectures in her house, we were already friends. And now they rescued me from that black house in Little Hell, welcomed me in their own pleasant house on the south side, and the wife-and-mother-doctor slept on the lounge downstairs and gave me her own bed, with her little girl in it. She well knew what it meant to me to have a child in my arms again, a little girl child, about the age of mine when I had her in Pasadena.
Mr. Doctor took me with him when he made his morning calls, leaving me limp and dolorous in the buggy while he was visiting his patients. March 16. “Sit down in office to talk to Dr. and weep dismally. It is really the beginning of melancholia. Am very weak, can hardly sit up, low appetite, mind a heavy dark gray.” He tried to cheer and encourage me. “You should not dwell on sad things,” he said. “You should think of the pleasant ones — count your mercies.”
To which I wearily replied, “Doctor, I am thirty-six, nearly. I have no father — to speak of, I have lost my mother, my brother is unable to help me, I have lost my husband, I have lost my child — temporarily at least, I have no trade or profession, no ‘job’ and could not hold one if offered; I have no money and am in debt; you know the state of my health, — what do you advise me to think about?”
They concluded that I was on the verge of losing my mind....
But I didn’t. I pulled up again, somewhat, went back to the Settlement, and continued to lecture. Between January 2nd and July 3rd of that year I gave fifty-seven or more sermons and addresses, average of more than two a week. In April I went east again, stopping first in New York, where I made this entry: “Sun. 19th. At Father’s — first experience.” This visit and my later stay there call for a little family history.
When my father was a young man, he became engaged to a pretty and charming damsel called Frankie Johnson, but the engagement was broken, his mother acting as intermediary. The slighted lady presently consoled herself by marrying James Beecher, my father’s youngest uncle, not much older than he. Thereafter, the changeable lover married my mother. In years pursuing, Mr. Beecher died; still later my mother died; and what should father do but return from California and marry the love of his youth, now his widowed aunt! By this combination my father became my great-uncle, my great-aunt became my mother, and I became my own first-cousin-once-removed. Furthermore, good Mrs. Beecher, having no children of her own, had adopted three little orphan girls, all of them pretty, two of them twins, and these I used to call my step-adopted-sisters-in-law-by-marriage!
It was literally the first time I had ever been in my father’s house since infancy, and at that it was only a boarding-house, kept by my stepmother. She was a charming little lady, with curly hair and dimples, the kind which attains vivid attractiveness at sixteen and remains permanently at that period. She had long kept a girls’ school at Cos Cob near New York, but after this second marriage she and her three daughters undertook the boarding-house business — father, unfortunately, was not earning much — if anything. He was already far from well, though at the time of my visit he was in Washington, probably trying to arrange for some employment.
That April day’s entry closes with: “Have $15.00 and a little change. Trunk .50. breakfast .20.” My margin was always narrow. I spoke in Brooklyn, the same night in Providence — after eight years’ absence. It was a pleasure to see relations and friends, and an astonishment to find their children quite grown up. “Address the Com. of Sen. and House in the State House.” In the evening “Reception and banquet. Speak again. $20.00.”
Midnight train back to New York, where I arrived too early for breakfast and beguiled the time by a lovely spring morning walk in Central Park before returning to my stepmother’s. Lectured in Brooklyn again that evening: “W.S.A. $20.25.”
Again at my stepmother’s: “Talk with the boarders a lot, Mr. Funston especially — an interesting man.” He was, becoming General Funston in later years.
The lectures of this spring were somewhat scattered: Chicago of course, Milwaukee, Detroit, Evanston, Washington, Philadelphia, Springfield, Ill., Grand Haven, Mich., Aurora, Ill., Brooklyn, N. Y., Providence, R. I., Lynn, Mass., Boston, Kansas City, Mo., Topeka, Kan. — that Kansas trip will bear enlargement. It is an excellent specimen of the kind of work I was doing. Mrs. Addison, a suffrage delegate from Kansas, had planned it after meeting me in Washington.
Thus the diary, June 5, 1896: “Reach Kansas City, Mo. at 9.35 A.M. Am taken to Almon’s Hotel, K. City, Kan. and stay there a day. Callers, reporters, etc. nap. car-ride, speak in evening on ‘The Goodness of Common Men.’ Made good impression. Uncomfortable hotel, very.”
Next day to Topeka, and to visit a Mrs. Hull: “A delightful place.” Sunday, “Lecture in Hamilton Hall, evening, on ‘How to Get Good and How to Stay So.’ Well received.” Next evening again in the same place, on “The Heroes We Need Now.” “Small but pleased audience.” Tuesday: “Speak on ‘Production and Distribution’ in a small hall to a small audience. Good lecture — folks pleased.” Also, that morning I had addressed the high school for ten minutes on “Educated Bodies.” Wednesday: “Speak in High School, evening, on ‘The Philosophy of Dress.’ Not very good, was too tired.” Thursday, Eleventh: “Spoke P.M. in High School on ‘The New Motherhood.’ Drove out to Tecumseh in evening to address suffrage meeting, in buggy with Miss Julia Seymour and Miss Miriam Church. Converted Miss Seymour. Very funny time — no one there at first — they don’t gather till nearly nine.”
Friday Twelfth: “A reception given The Stedman Club. P.M. Spoke on Club Work for Women. In evening Presbyterian Church on ‘The Goodness of Common Men.’ “ Saturday Thirteenth: “Parlor meeting at Mrs. Wheeler’s. Spoke on ‘The New Motherhood.’ Successful. Stayed to dinner. Stupid evening — the men afraid of me. $10.00.”
Sunday Fourteenth: “Preached in Baptist Church in North Topeka, A.M. on Love. Very good. Slept all P.M. Speak in Congregational Church in evening on Truth. Get faint and have to stop short of half an hour. Pretty much tired out and bad air in church. A splendid week. $20.00.”
June in Kansas is apt to be warm.
Monday Fifteenth: “Go down to Lyndon P.M. and speak on ‘The Good Time Coming’ for the Sweazys. Drive out home with them and stay over night. Nice folks. $15.00.” Tuesday was a day! “Drive over to Osage City and take train for Holton. Stop over in Topeka awhile. See Dr. Harding and Mrs. Hull. Stay at Mrs. Moore’s in Holton. Splendid supper. Speak at the ‘University’ on ‘The Heroes We need Now.’ Change dress again, midnight ‘Hog-train’ — ride in caboose — to Valley Falls.”
I remember that evening well. They sent me to the station in a “hack,” escorted by an unhappy student from the University. This worthy youth had probably never been up so late in his life. He continually relapsed into slumber in spite of the noblest efforts, so I assured him that I was quite safe in the station and sent him home. Kansas is admirably provided with railroads east and west, but very poorly north and south, and to make my next connection I had to wait for what was described to me as the “night freight.” When at last it drew in to that dreary little station, after midnight, behold it was a long, malodorous cattle train!
Car after car jangled by, mooing, baaing, squealing, cackling — and the only place for a human traveler was the caboose at the end, occupied by cattle punchers, trainhands and salesmen. Some were sleeping on the long seat at the side, the others clustered together telling “snappy stories.” I slipped quietly in and sat down next the door, looking nowhere at all.
Then was shown the chivalry and courtesy of western men. When one of the sleepers awoke and began to swear as was his wont, he was softly and promptly hushed— “Shut up! There’s a lady aboard!” And those jovial raconteurs went on with their stories indeed, but told as about their sisters!
I spoke next day in a little church in Madison, Ka
nsas, and on Thursday; eighteenth went to Eureka, where I was met by my good friend Mrs. Addison, and “a deputation.” A reception that night. “Very nice people here, intelligent and progressive.” Friday I spoke twice, $17.00. Saturday, June 20th: “Morning train for Howard. Stay at Mrs. McKay’s. A vague-feeling place. Mrs. Addison and I have one room, small, and a feather bed!!! We remove it. Speak in evening in church on ‘The Heroes We Need Now.’ Well received. Methodist minister calls. $3.50.”
Sunday has a very pleasant happening: “Preach in Methodist church on ‘Whosoever Loseth His Life for My Sake’ — Very well received. A Mr. Barretman — Co. Supt., put into Mrs. McKay’s hand $5.00 for me, and said ‘God bless her, and tell her to keep on preaching that gospel.’ Speak to Christian Endeavorers P.M. a little. Drive to Moline. A dirty mean place. Get crackers and milk at restaurant. $8.39 (I judge that included the extra five).”
Monday, Twenty-second: “Stormy night, up at five. Six A.M. train to Winfield. Breakfast in hotel. Am left in delicious peace and loneliness at Mrs. Albright’s house. Write. Winfield assembly P.M. Hear part of Gov. Hubbard’s address on Japan. A bombastic, egotistic longwinded fat man.”
Tuesday a few words and a poem at the Assembly A.M. and again P.M. lecture on Woman’s Suffrage and Men’s Sufferings. This was evidently the high light of the tour, judging by the fee, $50.00, and I think it was also the occasion when, drawing in my breath for some imposing peroration, I also drew in a fly. It was an out-door auditorium, airy and pleasant, but free to various forms of life. The lecture had made a good impression and was winding up effectively. Should I let all be spoiled by a mere insect? As a few quiet efforts failed to dislodge the little visitor I calmly swallowed it, and finished in fine style. This quick lunch had no ill effect whatever.
Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman Page 263