Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Page 276
My happiness in Norwich was in my garden, with Houghton as always, and with a few beloved friends.
There were that admirable minister and more admirable man, Alexander Abbott, and his dear family; and Edwin Higgins — Houghton’s close friend and, in time of need, most efficiently mine — and his family. A near neighbor and unfailing comfort, giving restful companionship, was Miss Elizabeth Huntington, and there were others, pleasant and kind.
In January, 1932, I discovered that I had cancer of the breast. My only distress was for Houghton. I had not the least objection to dying. But I did not propose to die of this, so I promptly bought sufficient chloroform as a substitute. Human life consists in mutual service. No grief, pain, misfortune or “broken heart” is excuse for cutting off one’s life while any power of service remains. But when all usefulness is over, when one is assured of unavoidable and imminent death, it is the simplest of human rights to choose a quick and easy death in place of a slow and horrible one.
Public opinion is changing on this subject. The time is approaching when we shall consider it abhorrent to our civilization to allow a human being to die in prolonged agony which we should mercifully end in any other creature. Believing this open choice to be of social service in promoting wiser views on this question, I have preferred chloroform to cancer.
Going to my doctor for definite assurance, he solemnly agreed with my diagnosis and thought the case inoperable.
“Well,” said I cheerfully, “how long does it take?” He estimated a year and a half. “How long shall I be able to type?” I asked. “I must finish my Ethics.” He thought I might be quite comfortable for six months. It is now three and a half years and this obliging malady has given me no pain yet.
Then came what was pain — telling Houghton. He wanted an expert opinion, and we got it. No mistake. Then, since I utterly refused a late operation, he urged me to try X-ray treatment, which I did with good effects. He suffered a thousand times more than I did — but not for long. On the fourth of May, 1934, he suddenly died, from cerebral hemorrhage.
Whatever I felt of loss and pain was outweighed by gratitude for an instant, painless death for him, and that he did not have to see me wither and die — and he be left alone.
I flew to Pasadena, California, in the fall of 1934, to be near my daughter and grandchildren. Grace Channing, my lifelong friend, has come out to be with me. We two have a little house next door but one to my Katharine, who is a heavenly nurse and companion. Dorothy and Walter, her children, are a delight. Mr. Chamberlin, my son-in-law, has made the place into a garden wherein I spend happy afternoons under an orange-tree — the delicious fragrance drifting over me, the white petals lightly falling — in May! Now it is small green oranges occasionally thumping.
One thing I have had to complain of — shingles. Shingles — for six weeks. A cancer that doesn’t show and doesn’t hurt, I can readily put up with; it is easy enough to be sick as long as you feel well — but shingles!
People are heavenly good to me. Dear friends write to me, with outrageous praises. I am most unconcernedly willing to die when I get ready. I have no faintest belief in personal immortality — no interest in nor desire for it.
My life is in Humanity — and that goes on. My contentment is in God — and That goes on. The Social Consciousness, fully accepted, automatically eliminates both selfishness and pride. The one predominant duty is to find one’s work and do it, and I have striven mightily at that.
The religion, the philosophy, set up so early, have seen me through.
On August 17, 1935, Mrs. Gilman fulfilled her intention to end her life as her malady advanced. The letter, left by her, was a part of the text of this final chapter of her autobiography, beginning: “Human life consists in mutual service,” and ending “I have preferred chloroform to cancer.”
The Delphi Classics Catalogue
We are proud to present a listing of our complete catalogue of English titles, with new titles being added every month. Buying direct from our website means you can make great savings and take advantage of our instant Updates service. You can even purchase an entire series (Super Set) at a special discounted price.
Only from our website can readers purchase the special Parts Edition of our Complete Works titles. When you buy a Parts Edition, you will receive a folder of your chosen author’s works, with each novel, play, poetry collection, non-fiction book and more divided into its own special volume. This allows you to read individual novels etc. and to know precisely where you are in an eBook. For more information, please visit our Parts Edition page.
Series One
Anton Chekhov
Charles Dickens
D.H. Lawrence
Dickensiana Volume I
Edgar Allan Poe
Elizabeth Gaskell
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
George Eliot
H. G. Wells
Henry James
Ivan Turgenev
Jack London
James Joyce
Jane Austen
Joseph Conrad
Leo Tolstoy
Louisa May Alcott
Mark Twain
Oscar Wilde
Robert Louis Stevenson
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Walter Scott
The Brontës
Thomas Hardy
Virginia Woolf
Wilkie Collins
William Makepeace Thackeray
Series Two
Alexander Pushkin
Alexandre Dumas (English)
Andrew Lang
Anthony Trollope
Bram Stoker
Christopher Marlowe
Daniel Defoe
Edith Wharton
F. Scott Fitzgerald
G. K. Chesterton
Gustave Flaubert (English)
H. Rider Haggard
Herman Melville
Honoré de Balzac (English)
J. W. von Goethe (English)
Jules Verne
L. Frank Baum
Lewis Carroll
Marcel Proust (English)
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nikolai Gogol
O. Henry
Rudyard Kipling
Tobias Smollett
Victor Hugo
William Shakespeare
Series Three
Ambrose Bierce
Ann Radcliffe
Ben Jonson
Charles Lever
Émile Zola
Ford Madox Ford
Geoffrey Chaucer
George Gissing
George Orwell
Guy de Maupassant
H. P. Lovecraft
Henrik Ibsen
Henry David Thoreau
Henry Fielding
J. M. Barrie
James Fenimore Cooper
John Buchan
John Galsworthy
Jonathan Swift
Kate Chopin
Katherine Mansfield
L. M. Montgomery
Laurence Sterne
Mary Shelley
Sheridan Le Fanu
Washington Irving
Series Four
Arnold Bennett
Arthur Machen
Beatrix Potter
Bret Harte
Captain Frederick Marryat
Charles Kingsley
Charles Reade
G. A. Henty
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Edgar Wallace
E. M. Forster
E. Nesbit
George Meredith
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Jerome K. Jerome
John Ruskin
Maria Edgeworth
M. E. Braddon
Miguel de Cervantes
M. R. James
R. M. Ballantyne
Robert E. Howard
Samuel Johnson
Stendhal
Stephen Crane
Zane Grey
Series Five
Alge
rnon Blackwood
Anatole France
Beaumont and Fletcher
Charles Darwin
Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Edward Gibbon
E. F. Benson
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Friedrich Nietzsche
George Bernard Shaw
George MacDonald
Hilaire Belloc
John Bunyan
John Webster
Margaret Oliphant
Maxim Gorky
Oliver Goldsmith
Radclyffe Hall
Robert W. Chambers
Samuel Butler
Samuel Richardson
Sir Thomas Malory
Thomas Carlyle
William Harrison Ainsworth
William Dean Howells
William Morris
Series Six
(Forthcoming: 2015-2016)
Anthony Hope
Aphra Behn
Arthur Morrison
Baroness Emma Orczy
Captain Mayne Reid
Charlotte M. Yonge
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
E. W. Hornung
Ellen Wood
Frances Burney
Frank Norris
Frank R. Stockton
Hall Caine
Horace Walpole
One Thousand and One Nights
R. Austin Freeman
Rafael Sabatini
Saki
Samuel Pepys
Sir Issac Newton
Stanley J. Weyman
Thomas De Quincey
Thomas Middleton
Voltaire
William Hazlitt
William Hope Hodgson
Ancient Classics
Aeschylus
Apuleius
Apollonius of Rhodes
Aristophanes
Aristotle
Arrian
Bede
Cassius Dio
Catullus
Cicero
Diodorus Siculus
Diogenes Laërtius
Euripides
Herodotus
Hesiod
Hippocrates
Homer
Horace
Josephus
Julius Caesar
Juvenal
Livy
Longus
Lucan
Lucretius
Marcus Aurelius
Martial
Nonnus
Ovid
Pausanias
Petronius
Pindar
Plato
Pliny the Elder
Pliny the Younger
Plutarch
Polybius
Propertius
Quintus Smyrnaeus
Sallust
Sappho
Seneca the Younger
Sophocles
Statius
Suetonius
Tacitus
Terence
Thucydides
Tibullus
Virgil
Xenophon
Delphi Poets Series
A. E. Housman
Alexander Pope
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Andrew Marvell
Beowulf
Charlotte Smith
Christina Rossetti
D. H Lawrence (poetry)
Dante Alighieri (English)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Delphi Poetry Anthology
Edgar Allan Poe (poetry)
Edmund Spenser
Edward Lear
Edward Thomas
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Emily Dickinson
Ezra Pound
Friedrich Schiller (English)
George Herbert
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
John Clare
John Donne
John Dryden
John Keats
John Milton
John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester
Lord Byron
Ludovico Ariosto
Matthew Arnold
Michael Drayton
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Robert Browning
Robert Burns
Robert Frost
Robert Southey
Rupert Brooke
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Sir Philip Sidney
Sir Thomas Wyatt
Sir Walter Raleigh
Thomas Chatterton
Thomas Gray
Thomas Hardy (poetry)
T. S. Eliot
W. B. Yeats
Walt Whitman
Wilfred Owen
William Blake
William Cowper
William Wordsworth
Masters of Art
Caravaggio
Claude Monet
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Gustav Klimt
J. M. W. Turner
Johannes Vermeer
John Constable
Leonardo da Vinci
Michelangelo
Paul Klee
Peter Paul Rubens
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Raphael
Rembrandt van Rijn
Titian
Vincent van Gogh
Wassily Kandinsky
www.delphiclassics.com
Is there an author or artist you would like to see in a series? Contact us at sales@delphiclassics.com (or via the social network links below) and let us know!
Be the first to learn of new releases and special offers:
Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/delphiebooks
Follow our Tweets: https://twitter.com/delphiclassics
Explore our exciting boards at Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/delphiclassics/
Gilman died in Pasadena, California. Her body was cremated and the ashes given to her family or a friend.
Pasadena in 1945