Significant Sisters

by Margaret Forster

  Henry Stanton was a strong, determined character who would not take no for an answer. He proved a fervent suitor, sweeping aside all Elizabeth’s doubts with regular displays of that fine rhetoric and oratory she so admired. His conviction finally persuaded her and she said she would marry him. They became engaged in spite of Judge Cady’s extreme displeasure. Henry Stanton was just the kind of fiery liberal he detested. Her brother-in-law Edward hurt Elizabeth by siding with her father, saying Stanton was unreliable, untrained in any profession even though he was thirty-three, and improvident. In vain Elizabeth produced the letters in which her fiancé spoke of his good financial habits and the 3,000 dollars he had saved. It was useless – her family set their face implacably against Henry Stanton. Depressed and miserable Elizabeth found the doubts she had suppressed rising to the surface again. She was not sure she had the strength to fight for a love to which she was by no means totally committed. So she broke off her engagement. She wrote a sad little letter to her cousin about it – “You have heard dear cousin I suppose that my engagement to S. is dissolved and I know you wonder and so do I. Had anyone told me at Peterboro that what has occurred would come I would not have believed it but much since has convinced me that I was too hasty. We are still friends and correspond as before. Perhaps when the storm blows over we may be dearer friends than ever.”5 Henry worked solidly towards that end. With great patience and understanding he accepted Elizabeth’s scruples and did not allow his disappointment to make him angry or hasty. He went on telling her how much he loved her and said, teasingly, “nor do I believe you will drown yourself like Ophelia but live to bless me. And as to myself I can not only say with Hamlet ‘I did love you, fair Ophelia’ but can add, with all my soul ‘I do love you.’”6 He sensed that it was not feebleness but on the contrary the strength of her own honesty which he valued. He had to make himself an even more attractive proposition in her eyes so that her desire to marry him would override her genuine hesitations.

  At the end of 1839 he wrote to her saying that in the following May he was being sent as a delegate to the anti-slavery convention in London. If she would marry him it could be their honeymoon trip. As he anticipated, the idea excited Elizabeth. It also gave her hope of resolving her family’s opposition by conveniently removing herself. If she married Henry they would be away six months, quite long enough for everyone to adjust. She felt herself responding to Henry’s confidence that everything would then be all right with equal confidence and his ardour stilled her own vacillation. They were married on May 10th, 1840 in a simple, private ceremony in which the word “obey” was not mentioned, although the bride then took the bridegroom’s name, merely preserving her own in the middle. She was not entirely happy about this – “there is a great deal in a name. It often signifies much and may involve a great principle . . . Why are the slaves nameless unless they take that of their master?”7 But she felt she had defied convention quite enough for the time being.

  Once ocean-bound on the Montreal, one of the last great sailing ships, Elizabeth’s feelings of guilt and nervousness vanished. So did her doubts about Henry. She decided she had loved him all along. She enjoyed the voyage and proved a splendid sailor, commented satirically years later that “I have always felt especially in a choppy sea that one of my claims as a woman’s rights leader is based on immunity to sea sickness.”8 She was on deck all day every day alarming the other travellers by her daring. Up and down she marched whether it was blowing a gale or not and once she even had herself hoisted to the masthead in a basket so that she could see as far as possible. When the ship reached the English Channel there was not enough wind to take it into port so the Stantons opted for a longboat rather than waste time waiting. When the longboat could not get near enough to the beach to land because of the shallowness of the water they transferred to a rowing-boat and rowed happily into Torquay. From there they went by coach to London – “a journey into Fairyland” Elizabeth said. Cheapside, where they lodged in London, proved not quite so fairy-like but the young bride was still bubbling over with enthusiasm about everything she saw and heard: As well as feasting her eyes she listened intently to all the conversations that went on between the delegates who shared the lodging-house and began to understand that the convention they had all come to attend was not only about slavery but about all human rights. Religion as well as politics was involved and there were vested interests influencing both. The more she listened the more fascinated Elizabeth became. She heard many of her own resentments voiced, many of her own objections to the status quo stated.

  On June 12th, a brilliantly sunny day, she went with Henry and the others to the Freemasons’ Hall for the opening of the convention. When they reached the hall an announcement was made. Women delegates were to be banned from taking part in the debate. The indignation Elizabeth felt was, she commented in her autobiography, the beginning of her real feminism. All the talk at the Gerrit Smith household, all the arguments in her own home, all the discussion among the delegates on board ship and in the lodging-house had been a mere preparation for this lesson: women were to be treated as subservient just like the slaves they had come to fight for, and this must not be endured.

  But in that instance, it was. The women delegates never did gain access to the debate but were compelled to listen from behind a screen where they were joined by Lloyd Garrison, the great anti-slavery leader, who chose to sit with them as a matter of principle. Each evening, back at the lodging-house, the women made up for lost time by haranguing their men on what they should have said and what they must go on to say. To Henry’s irritation Elizabeth, who was not only not a delegate but much too young to be speaking out at all in such distinguished company, joined in. He kicked her under the table and frowned but she ignored him. She also ignored his uneasiness about her new friendship with one of the women delegates, Mrs Lucretia Mott, whom Henry had been told by his sponsor was “a very dangerous person . . . a disturber of the peace.” Within hours of having met Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth was heavily under her formidable influence. She walked everywhere with her, arm-in-arm, deep in animated talk. In the evening she read the books Lucretia gave her, including Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman. She found for the first time that others had already publicly expressed their belief that the sexes were born equal. As they sat in the entrance hall of the British Museum, oblivious to the treasures they had come to see, the two women, one middle-aged and calm, the other young and excitable, decided that they would “hold a convention as soon as we returned home and form a society to advocate the rights of women.”9

  It was with a sense of relief that Henry Stanton removed his impressionable young wife from such company at the end of the convention. He took her to Paris, toured the north of England, and climbed Ben Nevis with her in Scotland. Although he had objected to her imbibing Lucretia Mott’s ideas on the subject of female rights he showed himself to be an enlightened husband, never for one moment wishing Elizabeth to subscribe to the feminine stereotype of the day. He didn’t mind her wearing a dress to the knee or men’s boots to climb in and he was proud of her hardihood in enduring a twelve-hour descent (they got lost in the mist) better than he did. He was already realizing that the spirit he had admired in his wife was even greater than he had guessed. Elizabeth wrote home mockingly, “I hope cousin Nancy will write me one of her long serious letters often. Henry often wishes that I were more like her. I console him by telling him that cousin Nancy was quite gay and frolicsome once.”10 In November, after a brief trip to Dublin where they dined with Daniel O’Connell, the newly-weds returned to Boston by steamer. From there they returned to Johnstown where Judge Cady had bowed to the inevitable and agreed to take his new son-in-law on as a law student.

  For a year the Stantons lived in the Cady family home while Henry read law and political economy. Elizabeth was very happy. She had grown to feel for Henry what she had once felt for Edward (who was still, uncomfortably, in the same house but careful never to be on
his own with her). She wrote to a friend in England, “It may be that my great love for Henry may warp my judgement in favor of some of his opinions . . .”11 To all outward appearances she had become a loyal wife and in the process forgotten the rebellious thoughts discussed with and agreed to by Lucretia Mott. But she had not quite forgotten. Happiness had indeed made her passive, but she still corresponded with Lucretia, saying things like, “The more I think on the present condition of woman the more I am oppressed by the reality of her degradation. The laws of our country how unjust they are! Our customs, how vicious! What God has made sinful in both man and woman custom has made sinful in woman alone.”12 It was thoughts of organizing any proper, public protest which had vanished not the thoughts themselves. Her husband and then her first baby took precedence.

  In March 1842 she gave birth to her first son named Daniel after her delighted father, and was absorbed in motherhood. She had time for nothing else – motherhood completely engrossed her and required all her attention. It was, she said pompously, “the most important of all professions, requiring more knowledge than any other department of human affairs.”13 It struck her as extraordinary that this being the case and the world teeming with new mothers “there was no attention given to this preparation for office.”14 She engaged an experienced nurse but immediately came into conflict with her over whether her baby should or should not be tightly bound in shawls. Elizabeth thought she would feel uncomfortable wrapped like that so the baby must too and she took them off. The nurse threatened disaster. The doctor threatened it also when his treatment for a collarbone twisted during birth was rejected. Elizabeth went ahead formulating her own theories on babycare based on commonsense and observation and came to think of herself as an expert in no time at all. For the rest of her life no baby was safe from her good intentions – she was liable to approach any baby she saw, undo its clothes, give it water and march it into the fresh air whatever its state of health and whatever the weather. Those around her found it all rather trying and it was perhaps fortunate that in 1843, when Henry was admitted to the bar, the Stantons moved to Boston.

  In Boston, Elizabeth was for the first time mistress of her own house. She loved it. Her theories on housekeeping quickly became second only to those on motherhood and were put into practice with the same energy. The Stanton house was a new house overlooking Boston Bay. “It is a proud moment,” wrote Elizabeth solemnly, “in a woman’s life to reign supreme within four walls.”15 Her approach to the job was as analytical as usual. “I studied everything pertaining to housekeeping and enjoyed it all . . . Even washing day . . . had its charms . . .”16 Her natural passion for orderliness now became her greatest asset. She tried not only to keep the whole house “from front to back” clean and tidy but to give it “an artistic touch”. She had a particular fondness for freshly laundered cotton tablecloths upon which she arranged bowls of carefully chosen flowers. In later years she blushed to remember how far she had taken her pride in the appearance of her house confessing that she had once paid a man “an extra shilling to pile the logs of firewood with their smooth ends outward”17 so they would look more attractive. A second son, Henry, was born in 1844 and a third, Gerrit Smith, in 1845 but still Elizabeth enjoyed housekeeping even though it was not as easy.

  What finally removed much of the charm was moving from that first house. In 1846, for the sake of Henry’s health, the Stantons moved to Seneca Falls, another small New York State town. It was situated on a river at the head of the Finger Lakes but was no pretty Boston Bay type village. Industry boomed there. There were seventeen new mills, five factories, and a distillery. The town itself was in a raw state as it expanded to cope with the influx of workers. There were no pavements and the roads were clogged with enough mud to make them quite frequently impassable. The house the Stantons bought was isolated, stood in five acres of rough ground overgrown with weeds, and had been empty some years. There was an enormous amount of work to be done as Judge Cady, who owned the house, knew. “You believe in woman’s ability to do and dare – now go ahead and put your own house in order,”18 he instructed Elizabeth. With three small children, only one inadequate servant girl, neighbours who leaned on her rather than helped her (they were mostly Irish immigrants) she had a hard time trying to do so. Her exacting standards were impossible to maintain. The boys were more interested in pulling off rather than admiring the pretty tablecloths she so loved and as for washday, that was first to become a chore. “The novelty of housekeeping had passed away,” she wrote, “and much that was once attractive in domestic life was now irksome.”19 What made it all worse was Henry’s absence.

  From the moment Henry had started to practise in Boston he had warned Elizabeth that he would have to work hard. He was not an established figure like her father with the same salary to go with the job. “Do not expect to see me getting great fees yet. I must get under weigh first,”20 he wrote to her in his first year. It proved even harder than he had envisaged. There were, he told his wife, queues of “hungry young lawyers” like him. She misunderstood him if she imagined for one minute that he chose to be away from home – quite the contrary. He hated leaving her and his children. His letters were full of anxiety that the boys might forget him and he envied her being with them. If she was sad when he left he assured her he was sadder – “You have the sweet little kiddy to play with and embrace and so you forget all about the poppy, but reflect, where would the kiddy have been but for me?!”21 It worried him that Elizabeth would give full rein to her cranky ideas without him. “Do not let the kiddy catch cold,” he wrote. “See that he is not held by the window in the evening. He must get older before you toughen him. We must take great care of our precious treasure.”22 But what upset him most of all was how few letters he received from his wife compared to how many he sent. True, she had three small children and a big house to organize but he had long, hard days and evenings working and yet still found time to write before he fell asleep. “Dear Lizzie, think of me often, pray for me often, write to me often,”23 he begged. But she did not. “Do write me immediately,” he would instruct her, the words heavily underscored. “I say, immediately” . . . “Write at once” . . . “Write”. He suggested that Daniel might even write a few lines if she guided his hand, but none was forthcoming. She wrote once to his four times and at half the length. “I long to see you, my lovely Lee. I am lonesome, cheerless and homeless without you,”24 he confided and told her that if her silence was due to any “coldness and unkindness” he had displayed towards her when they were together he was sorry and would she forgive him.

  Elizabeth’s apathy extended not just to Henry but to everything. She was suffering, she wrote, from “a general discontent”. Nobody could love their children more but being virtually alone with three babies under five years of age for long stretches of time exhausted her. There were no close friends near with whom to share the burden – all her friends were left behind in Boston, there was no one congenial to talk to. “I suffered from mental hunger,” she wrote, “which, like an empty stomach, is very depressing.”25 It was also very common. She was merely experiencing the usual confusion of all young, intelligent mothers who find, guiltily, that although they ought to be satisfied they are not. “It is not in vain that in myself I have experienced all the wearisome cares to which woman in her best estate is subject”26 Elizabeth later wrote to Susan Anthony. She felt often that she had been elected to suffer “in double measure” what the vast majority of women suffered without complaint, and yet she knew she was by no means the worst off. She was never poor and she had a loving if often absent husband who did his best to understand. But after two years in Seneca Falls the real dilemma of women seemed to her clear and sharp: it was a conflict between self-development and self-abnegation in the cause of motherhood. She believed firmly that women should not sacrifice their own individuality for the sake of the family but how could she do otherwise? In practice, she saw she subdued herself all the time, constantly giving precedence to t
he needs of her husband and children. She became more and more convinced that “some active measures” should be taken to make the lot of women easier but she could not think what these should be or how they should be secured.

  It is quite possible that she never would have done so either if her old friend Lucretia Mott had not come to visit her sister Martha Wright in nearby Waterloo and invited Elizabeth to come and have tea. Elizabeth went over, excited at the thought not just of the outing but the assurance of stimulating conversation. She and Lucretia took up where they had left off eight years before. The need for women’s rights was greater than ever and now that Elizabeth had gone through the mill of motherhood she spoke with even more passion and conviction. This time, something would be done. There and then the five women taking tea – Elizabeth, Lucretia, Martha, and Mary Ann McClintock and Jane Hunt – decided to call a convention to discuss woman’s rights. (Calling a convention was the accepted pattern of the day and meant to them no more than arranging a meeting – but it sounded better.) On July 13th 1848 they drafted an advertisement to appear in the Seneca Court Courier, a local newspaper, which read as follows: