Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  January 27th: “Tennessee City at 6:40 A.M. Cold. Get breakfast there and take the ‘mail coach’ (!) at 9:30. Six miles to Ruskin. Roads awful.” Well I remember that trip; we forded the winding river over and over — no bridges at all. Arriving, I found one large wooden building, with some heating apparatus, much needed; with some smaller ones, and a general look of undertaking things. I was fortunate enough to be in the heated building, whose comfort was also appreciated by various more than friendly rats.

  Twenty-eighth: “5:30 whistle! Make surreptitious coffee over lamp. Miss C. providing cup, etc. — I brought the coffee.” Monday it snowed. Tuesday it snowed. “Cold. Spend my strength in putting up with the difficulties of this place.” February 1st: “Twelve below zero they say.” “Wrote ‘The Rats of Ruskin’ for the paper.” Third: “Lecture on ‘Ethics and Socialists.’”

  From this uncomfortable resort I went to Nashville: I found me a boarding-house, 302 N. High Street. “Small cold room. $.25 per day — all right.” I cheerfully remark.

  But I was being painfully disappointed in my hopes of escaping the rigors of a northern winter. “Awful,” says the diary. “Below zero.” My room was over a porch, board floor merely. The only means of heating it was a gas stove, and the meter froze in the cellar. I slept in and under all my clothes, with a blanket around my head, like an arctic traveler. In the closed wardrobe, in a closed traveling bag, in my little inkstand — glass, tin, leather, — the ink froze.

  Wednesday, February 8th: “Still awful. Still below zero,” and “it is a terribly cold spell, a fortnight nearly.” Thursday, “Worse and worse.” Friday, “Still severe, still below.” But I went to Memphis that day, visited a Mrs. Anderson, and there I had a room with a fire in it. But it stayed cold. “This is preternatural weather. We all sit shawled and hug the fire.” In spite of fires the milk froze on the mantelpiece, and our hot food was dead cold before we could eat it. The suffering all over the unprotected South was dreadful, the poor Negroes died like flies. It was thirteen below at Memphis, and at New Orleans sunk to only four above. Below all records, for a fortnight or more.

  I spoke once in Nashville, four times in Memphis, then in Birmingham, Alabama, and so to Atlanta, Georgia, February 21st. Here I had a charming time, staying with Mrs. Lowe, then president of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs. I lectured for their local club that night: “Tremendous crowd — standing — lots couldn’t get in. Went well. Great enthusiasm. People fainted, went out, recovered and returned.”

  They were wonderfully kind to me in the South. One soft-voiced lady, introducing me, said, “And to think that a niece of Harriet Beecher Stowe should come down here and make us all love her!” There was a week of this cordial enthusiasm, with six addresses and a sermon, to say nothing of “entertainments.” At one of these I had a little encounter with an earnest temperance advocate. It was a sort of garden-party reception, we sat about at little tables for our refreshments, a smiling spring having followed that arctic period.

  There was coffee, hot, strong and delicious in fragrance. I like coffee better than almost any eatable — or potable, rather, but take it only for breakfast, having a high respect for its stimulating powers. Also, there was punch, a pale pink punch for ladies, the barrel-of-lemonade-and-bottle-of-claret kind. But it was cool and wet, and I took some. Came and sat opposite me a majestic woman, full-bodied, glittering with black beads or spangles which rose and fell on the expanse before her.

  She ordered coffee, gazing on me with unconcealed displeasure. “I see you are not a temperance woman!” quoth she. “How do you see that?” I countered. “You are drinking an alcoholic beverage!” she declared triumphantly. “Bless you,” I gently explained. “There’s not enough alcohol in that to hurt a six-month’s-old baby.” “It is not a question of effects,” she replied with unction, “it is a question of principle.”

  She drank that coffee — and O how good it smelled! — and ordered another cup. “I see you are not a temperance woman,” said I. “Why — what do you mean!” “You are taking two cups of a strong stimulant in the middle of the afternoon just because you like it.” “But it has no intoxicating effect,” she protested, to which I calmly replied, “It is not a question of effects, it is a question of principle.” The conversation lapsed.

  Another visit in Goldsboro, North Carolina, followed, with my friend Mrs. Royall, for a month this time; there were some lectures, a good deal of writing, and a pretty bad “low” period. While there I received a letter of invitation to address the International Council of Women meeting in London that summer, and cabled “Yes.” This was my fourth voyage for fifty dollars or near it, for Houghton telegraphed me about first-class passage on SS. Furst Bismarck, $55.00! I began to write for the Cosmopolitan, having been pursued by eager letters from James Brisbane Walker, its enterprising owner and editor. Also the Philadelphia Saturday Evening Post wrote me, asking for short editorials, of which I wrote a good many — till they left off having any from outside the office.

  So northward again, speaking in Wilson and Raleigh, North Carolina, then Washington, Baltimore, Newark, New York, Cambridge and Boston; also at Bryn Mawr College. While in New York I attended a “dollar dinner” given for Mr. Wm. J. Bryan— “Mayor Jones of Toledo escorts me to the platform, Mr. Bryan gives me his seat, all very grand.”

  Father McGlynn, a Single Taxer, was unfortunately allowed to speak before Mr. Bryan, whose “dinner” it was, and whom every one wished to hear. This fiscal enthusiast, quite ignoring the wishes of the audience or any sense of politeness and fairness to the speaker of the evening, poured forth his special theory so long as almost to break up the meeting.

  Not Single Taxers alone are guilty of such conduct. In London, at a great peace-meeting, Archbishop Ireland chanced to be present, and was politely asked to make a few remarks. He talked for over an hour, and broke up the meeting, people went out in platoons. The brutal rudeness of speakers in disregarding others deserves punishment.

  Mr. Walker continued to make urgent demands for the Cosmopolitan, wanted me to work on it regularly, to send him everything I wrote — was most urgent. But, going there to see him, and observing how he treated his editors, I declined, though readily agreeing to fill certain orders.

  On the fourth of May I embarked for England, this time to attend the Quinquennial Congress of The International Council of Women. My first-cabin accommodation proved to be one bed of four, in a state-room on a low deck, the other berths being occupied by three German Jewesses.

  CHAPTER XVII. OVER THE TOP

  THE International Council of Women is a federated body, composed of many National Councils and a number of other groups, some of great size, as the W.C.T.U. and the W.S.A. It was an important part of the world-wide stir and getting-together of women which so characterizes the last century, representing millions of women, and the noblest upward movements of the age. Fancy the juvenile ignorance that scorns an age in which half the world woke up!

  Women had claimed and won equal education, from the public schools to the universities; professional opportunity, and had made a place in medicine, law, the ministry, and all manner of trades, crafts and businesses; equal suffrage, and had made much progress in that demand. But the most wide-spread and in a way the most important of these various associations was the Woman’s Club, which reached almost every one, and brought her out of the sacred selfishness of the home into the broader contact and relationship so essential to social progress. Once in five years this International Council held a Congress, to which came leading women from many nations, of many religions and purposes; they came together from all parts of the world and learned to know each other and their common needs.

  London was very kind to us. Great houses were opened, invitations poured in, royalty itself was polite. I went as a free lance, invited personally as a speaker, my visit not limited to the Congress. So I went out to Hammersmith, where my friend May Morris lived, and engaged board in Carnforth Lodge. Miss Starr of Hull Ho
use had told me of this place, she stayed there while studying book-binding with “The Dove” experts.

  This was a square old manor house, now a home for nurses, which added to its resources by its “paying guests.” It stood in a large garden, and bore high upon its stately walls a broad band of white, going all the way around, with this inscription— “The Hammersmith and Fulham District Association for Nursing the Sick Poor in Their Own Homes Supported by Voluntary Contributions Only.”

  I was glad to be in England again, to renew friendships made in 1896 and to make new ones. I’ve been there five times, and every time I like it better. Furthermore, since the War, when the various nations stood out so sharply in their true colors, England rose higher than ever in my esteem.

  People were more than kind. I was made a member of the Sesame Club, an international woman’s club of a purely social nature. Of the Fabian Society I was still a member, and saw something of them. Having tea with May Morris, “J. Ramsay MacDonald calls and invites me to dinner.” “Feel pretty low,” as but too usual.

  On a fine May Sunday I visited Mrs. Henry Norman. She was the daughter of my dear Edinburgh friend, Mrs. Dowie. “Very cordial and nice. A lovely country, pure picture. Sleep at Ivy Farm, another picture. I hear and see the skylark, hear the cuckoo too.” Nevertheless, on Monday, “continue very low and miserable,” and Tuesday, “lie flat on the daisies and buttercups and weep — very low indeed.”

  Again in Carnforth Lodge, there presently appeared as fellow-boarder a distant cousin, Miss Foote by name, also studying book-binding. She was a very pleasant companion. We enjoyed the beauties of England together, and smiled as strangers may, at some of its — differences. There came a spell of extremely hot weather, cruelly hot, horses died in London streets. We two Americans sought for ice, and found none. No ice for sale anywhere. Finally we were told, dubiously, “You might find some at the fishmongers.”

  By the fifth of May I proudly record, “Women and Economics has come.” Small and Maynard arranged with Putnam’s for their English publishing. Mr. George Haven Putnam remembered me as a small child in Mrs. Swift’s boarding-house in New York; he was a friend of my father’s. There was a demand for my book, but some inefficiency at the American end delayed its coming. Mr. Putnam complained to me that while there were so many books he could not sell it was pretty hard to have a waiting list for mine and not be able to get it.

  Meanwhile I was writing, always writing, or trying to; with little visits, dinners, and so on in between working days. Presently I met Dr. E. A. Ross, the sociologist, whom I had known at Stanford. He and his pretty wife had a tiny flat in London for a while, and they were intensely interested in Women and Economics. He asked why I had not put in a bibliography. I told him I had meant to, but when it came to making a list of the books I had read bearing on the subject, there were only two! One was Geddes’s and Thompson’s Evolution of Sex, the other only an article, Lester F. Ward’s, in that 1888 Forum.

  Then they were anxious to know how long I had been at work on it, said they thought it must have been ever since they had seen me last, some four years. “If I tell you you will never respect me or the book any more,” I protested. But they were determined to know, and I told him that the first draft, the manuscript the publishers accepted, had been written in seventeen days, while visiting in five different houses. This was a blow to the scientific mind.

  The book was warmly received in London, with long, respectful reviews in the papers. What with my former reputation, based on the poems, this new and impressive book, and my addresses at the Congress and elsewhere, I became quite a lion.

  The Congress opened on June 26, with its week of many meetings, addresses, reports, and so on. Noted women were gathered there from all quarters of the world — which had any. Other women, as yet distinguished by the interest in progress and the courage that brought them, came in their native costumes; the “golden lilies” of high-born Chinese ladies, the Hindu sari, the veils of harem women.

  The most pressing matters of importance to women, to children, to the home, to the peace, purity and health of the world, all were discussed in stirring papers and speeches, and listened to by great and enthusiastic crowds. Most hospitable entertainment was offered us, large cards of invitation, such as I had never seen before; a reception by Lady Battersea at Surrey House on Park Lane, a garden-party at Fulham Palace— “Lord Bishop of London and Mrs. Creighton,” and another at Gunnersbury Park, Baron Rothschild’s place. “Very gaudy bright and splendid,” says the diary.

  The grandest of all was the opening one given at Stafford House by the Duchess of Sutherland. For this, I learned later, our much-impressed American women had prepared with awe, wearing their best and newest, with large outlay. It was an impressive occasion; Stafford House was called the finest private house in London, and as for its Lady — when they asked me, “What has impressed you most in England?” I promptly answered, “The Duchess of Sutherland.” She was so big, so progressive and intelligent, so nobly beautiful.

  If I had been well — if ever I had had a clear, strong head — all this would have been a vivid and pleasant memory. But I moved through meetings and entertainment with a groping mind, doing what I had to do as well as I could, in my usual dreary twilight. It was always a struggle to get necessary work done, to keep up in some degree with the flood of engagements, to try to recognize and remember people. This last effort I have long since given up. I do not, can not, hold in mind a fraction of the innumerable people I have met. In the everlasting traveling, lecturing and being “entertained,” it was my custom, after the lecture, to look feebly about and ask, “Where is the lady I belong to?” Originally a personal limitation, doubtless; added to by the long ruin; made incurable by the professional life.

  Came to me one morning during a session a busy Mrs. Leo Hunter, eager to have me come to dinner. I looked in my little engagement book— “Yes, I can come, thank you,” and I asked the place, the hour, the name. “Don’t you know my name?” she cried amazedly. I owned that I didn’t. “But how can you come to dinner with me if you don’t know my name!” “You asked me to,” said I. If she had but known how many kind persons were nameless to me!

  Before the Congress opened a luncheon was given by the Society of American Women in London, to which I, among many others, was invited. In the waiting-room I saw and admired a particularly English type, tall and generously built, so unlike our slender, nervous American kind, with large blue eyes and glorious hair, heavy golden masses. Presently I learned that she was born in Salem, Massachusetts! The Countess of Warwick was there, and I was warned by a careful lady that this noblewoman “was not a proper person to meet.” I had heard something of the reasons for criticism, and cheerfully replied that so long as the Prince of Wales was in good society I had no objections to meeting the Countess of Warwick, which presently came to pass.

  “Would you mind sitting on the other side of the Countess of Warwick?” asked a worried mistress of ceremonies. “Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett has taken your place by mistake.” I truthfully told her that I did not care in the least where I sat, but was amused when we passed behind the chairs to see that a very large place-card on the President’s left, standing up against a goblet, bearing my name in conspicuous letters, with Mrs. Burnett sitting cheerfully in front of it. On the President’s right was the Countess, and I sat next beyond, pleased to study so closely “the most beautiful woman in Europe.”

  The President held her in converse, and it worried me to see swift waiters taking away her food before she had time to eat. A particularly good plate of chicken was about to be torn from her and I could not bear it. I touched her arm, with some warm commendation of the chicken and protest that she was not getting anything to eat. This seemed to please her as a matter of good-will, we talked a bit, and she asked me to visit her at Warwick Castle — which I took to be merely a general expression of hospitality.

  Next I met her at her sister’s reception, which deserves more de
scription, being high-water-mark in the matter of gorgeousness of all I ever attended. Our delegates went to it in all the state they could muster, in jeweled glory. I went alone on a two-penny bus, having to get off in Piccadilly and scuttle around behind St. James’s Park in the rain and darkness, ducking under the heads of the horses crowding in. Here was mighty Stafford House, here were long lines of knee-breeched liveries, and here was I, giving my waterproof and rubbers to these functionaries as if it were the coatroom at a church fair.

  My dress, the only one I had for evening wear, was a dark plum-colored satin which I had made to suit myself, a “princess dress,” fitted smoothly down the front like a medieval lady’s, with a square neck, trimmed with plain bands of velvet of the same rich color. It cost me about fifteen dollars, and at this writing I am still using some of it — I was fond of that dress. One of the reporters, dilating on the glittering costumes, spoke of “Mrs. Stetson in a plain black dress, with no diamonds but her eyes,” a gentleman reporter, that.

  In the dressing-rooms I saw a woman I had known in Oakland, rich, elderly, accustomed to social occasions, yet looking strangely timid. She was one of those persons who love to patronize budding celebrities, but apt to drop them suddenly upon disapproval. She had been kind to me during some of my Oakland experiences, had dropped me with sudden violence, and when I left the state considered me a wholly objectionable character. Naturally I did not approach her. To my great astonishment she greeted me with effusion and hung upon my arm, that I might take her about! Circumstances alter cases.