Part 8 (1/2)
One of the books in my library I value most highly is the first volume of Whittier's poems, published in 1838, ”Dedicated to Henry B. Stanton, as a token of the author's personal friends.h.i.+p, and of his respect for the unreserved devotion of exalted talents to the cause of humanity and freedom.” Soon after our marriage we spent a few days with our gifted Quaker poet, on his farm in Ma.s.sachusetts.
I shall never forget those happy days in June; the long walks and drives, and talks under the old trees of anti-slavery experiences, and Whittier's mirth and indignation as we described different scenes in the World's Anti-slavery Convention in London. He laughed immoderately at the Tom Campbell episode. Poor fellow! he had taken too much wine that day, and when Whittier's verses, addressed to the convention, were read, he criticised them severely, and wound up by saying that the soul of a poet was not in him. Mr. Stanton sprang to his feet and recited some of Whittier's stirring stanzas on freedom, which electrified the audience, and, turning to Campbell, he said: ”What do you say to that?”
”Ah! that's real poetry,” he replied. ”And John Greenleaf Whittier is its author,” said Mr. Stanton.
I enjoyed, too, the morning and evening service, when the revered mother read the Scriptures and we all bowed our heads in silent wors.h.i.+p. There was, at times, an atmosphere of solemnity pervading everything, that was oppressive in the midst of so much that appealed to my higher nature.
There was a shade of sadness in even the smile of the mother and sister, and a rigid plainness in the house and its surroundings, a depressed look in Whittier himself that the songs of the birds, the suns.h.i.+ne, and the bracing New England air seemed powerless to chase away, caused, as I afterward heard, by pecuniary embarra.s.sment, and fears in regard to the delicate health of the sister. She, too, had rare poetical talent, and in her Whittier found not only a helpful companion in the practical affairs of life, but one who sympathized with him in the highest flights of which his muse was capable. Their worst fears were realized in the death of the sister not long after. In his last volume several of her poems were published, which are quite worthy the place the brother's appreciation has given them. Whittier's love and reverence for his mother and sister, so marked in every word and look, were charming features of his home life. All his poems to our s.e.x breathe the same tender, wors.h.i.+pful sentiments.
Soon after this visit at Amesbury, our n.o.ble friend spent a few days with us in Chelsea, near Boston. One evening, after we had been talking a long time of the unhappy dissensions among anti-slavery friends, by way of dissipating the shadows I opened the piano, and proposed that we should sing some cheerful songs. ”Oh, no!” exclaimed Mr. Stanton, ”do not touch a note; you will put every nerve of Whittier's body on edge.”
It seemed, to me, so natural for a poet to love music that I was surprised to know that it was a torture to him.
From our upper piazza we had a fine view of Boston harbor. Sitting there late one moonlight night, admiring the outlines of Bunker Hill Monument and the weird effect of the sails and masts of the vessels lying in the harbor, we naturally pa.s.sed from the romance of our surroundings to those of our lives. I have often noticed that the most reserved people are apt to grow confidential at such an hour. It was under such circ.u.mstances that the good poet opened to me a deeply interesting page of his life, a sad romance of love and disappointment, that may not yet be told, as some who were interested in the events are still among the living.
Whittier's poems were not only one of the most important factors in the anti-slavery war and victory, but they have been equally potent in emanc.i.p.ating the minds of his generation from the gloomy superst.i.tions of the puritanical religion. Oliver Wendell Holmes, in his eulogy of Whittier, says that his influence on the religious thought of the American people has been far greater than that of the occupant of any pulpit.
As my husband's health was delicate, and the New England winters proved too severe for him, we left Boston, with many regrets, and sought a more genial climate in Central New York.
CHAPTER IX.
THE FIRST WOMAN'S RIGHTS CONVENTION.
In the spring of 1847 we moved to Seneca Falls. Here we spent sixteen years of our married life, and here our other children--two sons and two daughters--were born.
Just as we were ready to leave Boston, Mr. and Mrs. Eaton and their two children arrived from Europe, and we decided to go together to Johnstown, Mr. Eaton being obliged to hurry to New York on business, and Mr. Stanton to remain still in Boston a few months. At the last moment my nurse decided she could not leave her friends and go so far away.
Accordingly my sister and I started, by rail, with five children and seventeen trunks, for Albany, where we rested over night and part of the next day. We had a very fatiguing journey, looking after so many trunks and children, for my sister's children persisted in standing on the platform at every opportunity, and the younger ones would follow their example. This kept us constantly on the watch. We were thankful when safely landed once more in the old homestead in Johnstown, where we arrived at midnight. As our beloved parents had received no warning of our coming, the whole household was aroused to dispose of us. But now in safe harbor, 'mid familiar scenes and pleasant memories, our slumbers were indeed refres.h.i.+ng. How rapidly one throws off all care and anxiety under the parental roof, and how at sea one feels, no matter what the age may be, when the loved ones are gone forever and the home of childhood is but a dream of the past.
After a few days of rest I started, alone, for my new home, quite happy with the responsibility of repairing a house and putting all things in order. I was already acquainted with many of the people and the surroundings in Seneca Falls, as my sister, Mrs. Bayard, had lived there several years, and I had frequently made her long visits. We had quite a magnetic circle of reformers, too, in central New York. At Rochester were William Henry Channing, Frederick Dougla.s.s, the Anthonys, Posts, Hallowells, Stebbins,--some grand old Quaker families at Farmington,--the Sedgwicks, Mays, Mills, and Matilda Joslyn Gage at Syracuse; Gerrit Smith at Peterboro, and Beriah Green at Whitesboro.
The house we were to occupy had been closed for some years and needed many repairs, and the grounds, comprising five acres, were overgrown with weeds. My father gave me a check and said, with a smile, ”You believe in woman's capacity to do and dare; now go ahead and put your place in order.” After a minute survey of the premises and due consultation with one or two sons of Adam, I set the carpenters, painters, paper-hangers, and gardeners at work, built a new kitchen and woodhouse, and in one month took possession. Having left my children with my mother, there were no impediments to a full display of my executive ability. In the purchase of brick, timber, paint, etc., and in making bargains with workmen, I was in frequent consultation with Judge Sackett and Mr. Bascom. The latter was a member of the Const.i.tutional Convention, then in session in Albany, and as he used to walk down whenever he was at home, to see how my work progressed, we had long talks, sitting on boxes in the midst of tools and shavings, on the status of women. I urged him to propose an amendment to Article II, Section 3, of the State Const.i.tution, striking out the word ”male,”
which limits the suffrage to men. But, while he fully agreed with all I had to say on the political equality of women, he had not the courage to make himself the laughing-stock of the convention. Whenever I cornered him on this point, manlike he turned the conversation to the painters and carpenters. However, these conversations had the effect of bringing him into the first woman's convention, where he did us good service.
In Seneca Falls my life was comparatively solitary, and the change from Boston was somewhat depressing. There, all my immediate friends were reformers, I had near neighbors, a new home with all the modern conveniences, and well-trained servants. Here our residence was on the outskirts of the town, roads very often muddy and no sidewalks most of the way, Mr. Stanton was frequently from home, I had poor servants, and an increasing number of children. To keep a house and grounds in good order, purchase every article for daily use, keep the wardrobes of half a dozen human beings in proper trim, take the children to dentists, shoemakers, and different schools, or find teachers at home, altogether made sufficient work to keep one brain busy, as well as all the hands I could impress into the service. Then, too, the novelty of housekeeping had pa.s.sed away, and much that was once attractive in domestic life was now irksome. I had so many cares that the company I needed for intellectual stimulus was a trial rather than a pleasure.
There was quite an Irish settlement at a short distance, and continual complaints were coming to me that my boys threw stones at their pigs, cows, and the roofs of their houses. This involved constant diplomatic relations in the settlement of various difficulties, in which I was so successful that, at length, they const.i.tuted me a kind of umpire in all their own quarrels. If a drunken husband was pounding his wife, the children would run for me. Hastening to the scene of action, I would take Patrick by the collar, and, much to his surprise and shame, make him sit down and promise to behave himself. I never had one of them offer the least resistance, and in time they all came to regard me as one having authority. I strengthened my influence by cultivating good feeling. I lent the men papers to read, and invited their children into our grounds; giving them fruit, of which we had abundance, and my children's old clothes, books, and toys. I was their physician, also--with my box of homeopathic medicines I took charge of the men, women, and children in sickness. Thus the most amicable relations were established, and, in any emergency, these poor neighbors were good friends and always ready to serve me.
But I found police duty rather irksome, especially when called out dark nights to prevent drunken fathers from disturbing their sleeping children, or to minister to poor mothers in the pangs of maternity.
Alas! alas! who can measure the mountains of sorrow and suffering endured in unwelcome motherhood in the abodes of ignorance, poverty, and vice, where terror-stricken women and children are the victims of strong men frenzied with pa.s.sion and intoxicating drink?
Up to this time life had glided by with comparative ease, but now the real struggle was upon me. My duties were too numerous and varied, and none sufficiently exhilarating or intellectual to bring into play my higher faculties. I suffered with mental hunger, which, like an empty stomach, is very depressing. I had books, but no stimulating companions.h.i.+p. To add to my general dissatisfaction at the change from Boston, I found that Seneca Falls was a malarial region, and in due time all the children were attacked with chills and fever which, under homeopathic treatment in those days, lasted three months. The servants were afflicted in the same way. Cleanliness, order, the love of the beautiful and artistic, all faded away in the struggle to accomplish what was absolutely necessary from hour to hour. Now I understood, as I never had before, how women could sit down and rest in the midst of general disorder. Housekeeping, under such conditions, was impossible, so I packed our clothes, locked up the house, and went to that harbor of safety, home, as I did ever after in stress of weather.
I now fully understood the practical difficulties most women had to contend with in the isolated household, and the impossibility of woman's best development if in contact, the chief part of her life, with servants and children. Fourier's phalansterie community life and co-operative households had a new significance for me. Emerson says, ”A healthy discontent is the first step to progress.” The general discontent I felt with woman's portion as wife, mother, housekeeper, physician, and spiritual guide, the chaotic conditions into which everything fell without her constant supervision, and the wearied, anxious look of the majority of women impressed me with a strong feeling that some active measures should be taken to remedy the wrongs of society in general, and of women in particular. My experience at the World's Anti-slavery Convention, all I had read of the legal status of women, and the oppression I saw everywhere, together swept across my soul, intensified now by many personal experiences. It seemed as if all the elements had conspired to impel me to some onward step. I could not see what to do or where to begin--my only thought was a public meeting for protest and discussion.
In this tempest-tossed condition of mind I received an invitation to spend the day with Lucretia Mott, at Richard Hunt's, in Waterloo. There I met several members of different families of Friends, earnest, thoughtful women. I poured out, that day, the torrent of my long-acc.u.mulating discontent, with such vehemence and indignation that I stirred myself, as well as the rest of the party, to do and dare anything. My discontent, according to Emerson, must have been healthy, for it moved us all to prompt action, and we decided, then and there, to call a ”Woman's Rights Convention.” We wrote the call that evening and published it in the _Seneca County Courier_ the next day, the 14th of July, 1848, giving only five days' notice, as the convention was to be held on the 19th and 20th. The call was inserted without signatures,--in fact it was a mere announcement of a meeting,--but the chief movers and managers were Lucretia Mott, Mary Ann McClintock, Jane Hunt, Martha C.
Wright, and myself. The convention, which was held two days in the Methodist Church, was in every way a grand success. The house was crowded at every session, the speaking good, and a religious earnestness dignified all the proceedings.
These were the hasty initiative steps of ”the most momentous reform that had yet been launched on the world--the first organized protest against the injustice which had brooded for ages over the character and destiny of one-half the race.” No words could express our astonishment on finding, a few days afterward, that what seemed to us so timely, so rational, and so sacred, should be a subject for sarcasm and ridicule to the entire press of the nation. With our Declaration of Rights and Resolutions for a text, it seemed as if every man who could wield a pen prepared a homily on ”woman's sphere.” All the journals from Maine to Texas seemed to strive with each other to see which could make our movement appear the most ridiculous. The anti-slavery papers stood by us manfully and so did Frederick Dougla.s.s, both in the convention and in his paper, _The North Star_, but so p.r.o.nounced was the popular voice against us, in the parlor, press, and pulpit, that most of the ladies who had attended the convention and signed the declaration, one by one, withdrew their names and influence and joined our persecutors. Our friends gave us the cold shoulder and felt themselves disgraced by the whole proceeding.