Part 22
Driving through the deserted streets, we remembered grim stories of this part of the city and rejoiced in the protection of the taxicab. The bright colors of our national flag cheerfully illuminated the window of the polling-place, reminding us of our citizenship in the greatest country of the world!
With a bearing intended to show great confidence I passed through the little knot of men gathered at the door and entered the barber’s shop. Was not one of my lambs clothed with due authority from the Empire State there as watcher? It was “up to the leader” to see that all was going well with her. At the end of the long table farthest from the door sat Mrs. V——. (To prevent hysterics on the part of the “antis” it should be said that she was a grandmother and that the duties of her home were attended to by her grown daughter.)
“Everything going all right?”
“Yes, indeed. I’ve been treated with every courtesy. Let me introduce you to the chairman of the board, Mr. ——.”
I looked about for the filthy pool of politics, but could not discover any. Several men were busily writing in enormous books, in regular _Alice in Wonderland style_. A policeman clothed with all the majesty of the law sat at the other end of the long table. Several candidates for registration stood in line, awaiting their turn, while the man at the head of it struggled through the third degree. The floating population of New York sometimes finds difficulty in recalling where it lived and voted from a year ago!
Everything in and about the place was as quiet and orderly as possible. Gentlemen seemed to find it more convenient to smoke outside! Yet our women have made no objection to tobacco.
At another election district I found that the watcher in charge was on such good terms with her election board that they had regaled her with the strains of the victrola and a cup of tea!
On the great day itself we were “on the job” before the opening of the polls at six o’clock. I started on my round of the twenty-one districts in the cold dusk of the winter morning, finding all the watchers in their places. We visited them a second and a third time in the course of the day. At only one polling-place had the men in charge made any trouble for us. There they did not want the watcher to go behind the bar, but as this was her undoubted right they eventually yielded. The day was clear, but raw and windy. The political atmosphere was also less balmy on this day of the struggle. The Tammany leaders were less cordial than earlier in the campaign, and on some faces a suspicion of a frown lurked. We were treated with all courtesy, however, and some of the gentlemen were so gallant as to help me in and out of the automobile.
This was the first Election Day when women were given the authority to visit the polls and watch the count in the metropolis. We had not yet won the vote, but we were the advance-guard of victory! It was a most interesting experience and I greatly enjoyed it. Our Twelfth Assembly District had been thoroughly canvassed. Every registered voter had been called upon and duplicate lists of those in our favor had been compiled. One copy was given each watcher, that she might check off the names as the men came into the polls. The other copy was reserved for those who were later in the day, to “get out the vote.” It would seem that there are always indolent or tardy freemen who have to be reminded of their privilege of casting a ballot, before the day draws to a close.
This duty is assigned by politicians to youths, and here as elsewhere we took advantage of their experience. Election Day being a holiday, we found it difficult to procure boys. Some made promises—then failed to appear. My son Henry came to the rescue with two squads of bright, active lads, his pupils from the High School of Commerce. Armed with the lists and led by two adult women workers, the boys started off in excellent spirits. The neighborhoods visited were much impressed. Beholding the boys and the decorated automobiles, they exclaimed, “Tammany has nothing on the Woman Suffrage party.” Tammany Hall and the home of “Charlie” Murphy are both in the Twelfth Assembly District.
Our watchers stuck faithfully to their posts until the count was completed—their long day’s work having extended from six in the morning till nine, ten, and eleven o’clock at night.
As they came one after another into our temporary headquarters and announced the result, district by district, it was evident that we had lost. But the American women had been invited to enter the sacred precincts of the polling-place and given authority to watch the returns. November 6, 1915, was a historic day in the Empire State, marking the beginning of a new era.
Among the many faithful workers in the Twelfth Assembly District, one who overcame difficulties insuperable to most women deserves special mention. This was Mrs. Clara Deutsch. As the wife of a young physician beginning practice and the mother of a little girl of four she had many domestic cares. She did her own housework, helped her husband administer anesthetics, and yet found time to do excellent service in the suffrage cause.
“Yes, I can help on Thursday, since you need me badly. Mrs. ——, the wife of the Methodist minister, will take care of Mary for me. She has five children of her own and is expecting a sixth, so one more makes little difference. _She_ is a good suffragist, too, so by keeping Mary she also will be helping the cause that day.”
If more contributions were called for than she could well afford, Mrs. Deutsch would say, cheerfully: “That is all right. We’ll go without dessert for a time.” Mrs. Deutsch had been a trained nurse and thus had learned how to do and to plan. No matter at what hour I called to see her she always appeared at the door looking as neat as a pin. She was a handsome young woman, tall and powerfully built; strong, yet tender to the sick and weak. No one was more eminently fitted than she to carry our banner in a suffrage parade.
We had college graduates and women of wealth among our members. Ours is a truly democratic cause in which riches and social position are held to be of secondary importance.
Four days after the election the youngest son who had been my housemate for five years took unto himself a bride, thus giving me a third daughter-in-law who was to become, like the others, very dear to me.
It was evidently wise to allow the young couple to start housekeeping for themselves, hence, while they were still on their honeymoon, I set out on a long-deferred trip to California. As I closed the door of our house behind me, again it seemed that a new page in life had been turned!
The visit to the Pacific coast was indeed a delightful experience. I enjoyed every moment of the journey in both directions, and of my stay under the hospitable roof of our dear cousins, Joseph and Louisa Mailliard. Time fails me in which to tell of the beauties of the International Exposition (the “P.-P. I. E.”), the marvels of the Grand Cañon of the Colorado, or the wonderful glimpse of the Pacific shore. The glory of that matchless surf, as the long line of distant waves tossed their splendid crests beneath the opaline light of an afternoon sun covered with soft gray clouds, was a thing never to be forgotten.
In 1916 I was invited to come to Newport to assist my sister, Mrs. Maud Howe Elliott, president of the Newport County Woman Suffrage League, during the summer. She had greatly increased its membership and broadened its activities, but was, at the moment, heavily burdened with other matters of importance. Hence I was appointed executive secretary and put in charge of the work of the society.
My recent experience in New York enabled me to organize this along the lines so admirably laid out by the Woman Suffrage party of that city. Especial emphasis was laid on canvassing, which politicians consider of great importance. In preaching a new cause like ours, it is indispensable, for we are obliged not only to round up the members of a party as the Republicans and Democrats do, but to explain its doctrines and increase its membership.
The women at Newport were more timid about canvassing than their New York sisters. The summer capital is a very conservative place, and the question, “What will my friends and acquaintances say?” is more vital than in a big city where no one knows and few care what their neighbors do.
A corps of good workers was finally enlisted. Our canvassing luncheons proved a decided success, especially where the hostess possessed an attractive villa and garden. Our calls were made, for the most part, on persons of moderate means. Few of the rich people have their permanent residence in Newport, hence do not vote there. It is also easier to canvass among the former, because no supercilious flunky, anxious to guard his mistress from unwelcome visitors, comes to the door. It is opened, instead, by the voter’s wife, with whom one can at once establish pleasant relations, unless the baby is crying. In that case it is kinder not to detain her.
Friends often lent us their automobiles, the distances being much greater than in our densely inhabited district in New York. Instead of high tenement-buildings we found two-story wooden houses where our chats took place at the open doorway. Altogether it was pleasant work, chiefly among women, the men being usually absent from home. We assured them that the possession of the franchise did not necessitate deserting the home, and explained its advantages. It is strange that, after nearly seventy years of agitation, the question of woman suffrage should still be considered so mysterious! We found most of our hearers open to conviction where their opinions were not already favorable to us. Many names were secured for our yellow (favorable) slips, and only a few for the white (undecided); still fewer for the blue (opposed).
Our labor was repaid a hundredfold by the victory of our cause a few months later. For our formidable list of persons favorable to suffrage was copied on a catalogue of imposing proportions and presented to the Rhode Island Legislature. It was one of the arguments which persuaded them to grant the presidential franchise to the women of the state in 1917. In New York, while our stirring campaign of 1915 met temporary defeat, it paved the way for the great victory of November, 1917, when the women of the Empire State won full citizenship.
XXIII
UNTO THE THIRD AND FOURTH GENERATION
_My Mother’s Beautiful Old Age.—How It Feels to Be an Ancestor.—Grandmotherhood in the Twentieth Century.—Keeping Alive the Sacred Fires of Noble Tradition.—Handing on the Lighted Torch._
IT has often seemed to me that my mother’s life was like that of the century-plant—increasing in beauty as time went on. The last flowering, the loveliest of all, came when she was well over four-score years of age. Is not this the normal course of a well-spent life? The fruit reaches its full beauty when ready to drop from the tree. The colors of the sunset splendidly crown a perfect day.
In those last years she seemed to us like a lovely saint whose faults had all been burned away by the fires of life, leaving only the ethereal spirit behind. Yet she was by no means entirely absorbed in religious meditation. This was an important part of her existence, but she also enjoyed the things of this world and was often full of fun and gaiety.
For all who knew her, and for all, I hope, who have read the story of her life, she has robbed old age of half its terrors. She met it bravely, smilingly, wisely, submitting with good grace to certain inevitable restrictions. Thus while she never gave up walking so far as her strength permitted, since more fresh air was desirable, she accepted the wheeled chair for additional exercise. To other limitations she would not submit. She would attend meetings, public and private; she would make the addresses which were so much prized by her audience; in a word, she would continue the intellectual and social intercourse with her fellow-men and women which was to her literally the breath of life. For their love and sympathy, their interest in her words, were to her a veritable elixir. The feeling that she still had a message which the world wished to hear helped to keep her alive. The veteran who believes that “he lags superfluous on the stage” is not likely to survive long.
When she attended the biennial of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs in Boston, in 1908, I was her companion, as on many earlier club occasions. She confessed afterward that she had feared the delivery of her speech in the vast auditorium of Symphony Hall might kill her, but this did not deter her from reading it! In the last summer of her life we attended a suffrage meeting in Bristol Ferry at the house of Miss Cora Mitchell, founder and president of the Newport County Suffrage League. Here she told the ladies of her work for peace, begun shortly after the Franco-Prussian War. It should be said that, despite her interest in German philosophy, her sympathies in that conflict were entirely with the French, whom she felt to be the victims of German aggression. It was the wholly unnecessary nature of the conflict which made the author of the “Battle Hymn” call in the early ’seventies a Peace Congress of Women to protest against future wars of the sort. In her correspondence we find that she met with no encouragement from the women of Germany.
Her visit to Smith College, where the degree of Doctor of Laws was conferred upon her, shortly before her death, has been described in her _Life_. The story of the awarding to her of the degree of LL.D. at Tufts College has a special interest because it was the first, and because in her speech she made a protest against Turkish cruelty, thus carrying on the work begun by her husband on the shores of Greece eighty years before! Her grandson, Dr. Henry Marion Hall, who accompanied her, has thus described the occasion:
Professor Evans, of the department of history, drove Grandmother and me from No. 241 Beacon Street to the college, where we remained in his rooms for a short while until Grandmother felt rested. Then we walked across the campus, which was bright with the colors seen only in coeducational institutions. Mrs. Howe joined the academic procession just before it entered the hall, and all at once she and I found ourselves on a platform, surrounded by men in caps and gowns, the instructors and those about to receive degrees. Grandmother was the only woman on the platform, and everybody in the audience seemed particularly interested in her. In spite of her great age I recall that there was something quite simple and almost childlike in her expression—absolutely different from the self-consciousness peculiar to most people under similar circumstances. When she rose to receive her degree there was a remarkable hush, such a hush as I have seldom known of with so many people in a large room. The hood was put about her shoulders by the president, Doctor Chapin, and she flushed with pleasure at the burst of applause.
At the dinner which followed the exercises she sat with the guests of honor, among whom was Mr. Moody, Secretary of the Navy. When Mrs. Howe arose to speak she took occasion to express the hope that the Secretary might indicate whether or not the government of the United States was going to exert its influence to mitigate the horrors of the Armenian atrocities, for the Turks were then carrying on systematic massacres. Mr. Moody spoke next, and gave a fine oration, but said that circumstances prevented him from indicating the policy of his government at that time. He deprecated, of course, the villainous behavior of the Turks. Grandmother was delighted to receive the degree, and we drove back to Boston with Professor Evans, Grandmother still wearing the hood and holding the sheepskin in her hands.
This grandson, Henry Marion Hall, received, a few years later, the degrees of M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University. To our great delight, his thesis, “The Idylls of Fishermen,” was warmly praised by the critics.
She was as pleased as a young girl to hear that we were “going to give a party” during that last summer. “Flossy shall do my hair!” she gaily exclaimed. “The party” was only a small frolic for the Hall grandchildren and their young friends, with a few elders to play cards with her. No one enjoyed the occasion more than she did.
We still continued our duets on the piano, playing airs from “Il Pirata” and other old operas which she loved, as well as Händel’s quaint arias. Her fingers, which never lost their flexibility, played in these last years for her great-grandchildren to dance, as she had played for children and grandchildren.
An article published that autumn in the press, declaring that protestantism was on the decline, troubled her. She desired to make some reply, not in a controversial spirit, however. Her interest in religion was too broad to be confined to any sect. We were glad to have her preach whenever invited to do so, provided her strength permitted, but unreasonable requests were sometimes made. Thus when the zealous pastor of a negro church invited us, in the course of an afternoon call, to go down on our knees in prayer, I protested successfully. If he had not carried a large umbrella in his hand I might have yielded. But how impossible would have been any approach to solemnity in the presence of that most unecclesiastical object!
The memorial exercises after her death were held in Symphony Hall. Tickets had been issued to persons having a special claim to be present, but as soon as the doors were opened the great public, who also loved her, would not be denied admittance. They surged in, tickets or no tickets, and took possession of the great auditorium. The varied nature of the program corresponded with her diversified talents. A haunting-chorus of her own composition was sung by the blind pupils of the Institution founded by her husband. Many were the beautiful tributes paid to her by men and women of national reputation. None, however, equaled in heartfelt eloquence the speech of Lewis, the distinguished negro lawyer, as he poured out the gratitude of his race to the woman who had written the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” I suddenly realized what the words meant to the colored people. The appeal, “Let us die to make men free,” was for all men and for all time, yet in a special sense it was meant for the despised slave for whose freedom the soldiers of the Union laid down their lives in those dark days of the ’sixties.
Sister Laura and I were already rejoicing in several grandchildren while our mother was still with us. People sometimes feel sorry for the grandmothers whom they see in the streets in charge of little children. The first impulse is to exclaim, “That old woman has earned a right to rest. It is too bad she should still be burdened with the care of babies.”
The second and saner impulse is to rejoice that she still has strength for the day’s work. Our civilization should be so ordered that a well-spent life may bring a certain degree of freedom toward its close. But to have no responsibilities, to be an idle and frivolous elderly woman, would be a sad fate.
No one need sink into it if she has grandchildren, the loveliest of all flowers, who bloom in the evening of life. If she has grandchildren of assorted ages she is especially fortunate, for she can then enjoy the various stages of babyhood and childhood at the same time.
Life is full of pleasant surprises. Our sons and daughters grow to maturity so gradually that we fail to realize the change from their childhood’s days. They are still boys and girls to us when they are so absurd as to suppose themselves men and women! They marry, and on some fine day present us with a grandchild! Then we suddenly realize that we are again to have the delightful experience—almost forgotten—of growing up with a baby.
On our journey through life we have been disappointed in meeting many people who did not come up to our ideals. We are weary of the petty ambitions, the injustice of the world—of everybody’s faults, our own included. In the twinkling of an eye we are transported back into the lovely child-garden, where faith, love, and hope bloom! Little hands cling trustingly to us, a little cheek is laid against ours, eyes like stars smile up at us! There is a new heaven and a new earth!
The bond between age and childhood is known of all men. Are not the glory of the sunrise and that of the sunset one and the same? The child rejoices in the beautiful and wonderful things he sees all about him—in birds, beasts, and flowers, the blue sky and the trees of the forest. The woman declining into the vale of years has long known these things, but in the light of the sunset they become transfigured and glorified. With the little child she learns again lessons half forgotten; together they enjoy the true pleasures of life—the simple, every-day things that we forget to be thankful for during the years when we are busily hunting for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
So the child and its grandame walk together for a while, until their paths separate. The little one goes forward with eager feet into the great battle of life, the grandmother advances with tranquil step to meet the shadows. The coming into this world of the child has strengthened her faith, as its companionship has strengthened her love.
It came, she knows not whence, “trailing clouds of glory.” Will not the morning of a new and splendid day break for her, also, in a new world?
We enjoy our grandchildren all the more, in the twentieth century, because we have other cares and responsibilities besides those of the family and household. Hence we cannot be selfishly absorbed in our own small circle. Our duties have multiplied since the great war began to call the young men and women more and more into service.
We elders now have a new incentive to work with all our strength while it is yet day for us. This summer I visited Camp Merryweather, where sister Laura aids her husband in conducting a delightful place of sojourn for forty boys. Of the sons whose help they have had in former years one had gone as a soldier to France, the other and the sons-in-law were attending drill and caring for war gardens. Upon the older generation came the care and responsibility of the summer’s work and play. Never have I seen them more resolute and courageous! No word was said of added duties, but in their manner one could see a determination to do their bit and to do it valiantly! Sister Laura’s relaxation will be to go on a “grandmothering tour” to see her dozen grandchildren.
In this twentieth century, and especially in war-time, the public and private duties of women sometimes conflict. We want very, very much to go to some inspiring meeting on a day when we are needed at home. It is best to give the latter the benefit of the doubt, when we feel any. Yet we must sometimes go forth to gain inspiration, in order to give it out again. The woman who stays always at home from a mistaken sense of duty is in danger of becoming a dull drudge. The mother of sons and daughters must, in these stirring times, teach them to have the love of freedom, the public spirit, necessary for the salvation of our Republic.
She must take her share, too, in labors for the welfare of our native land and for the comfort and protection of its brave defenders. If we fail to do our part it may happen that no homes will be left us to care for!