show their appreciation of her long services in behalf of woman's emancipation.
No. 49 East 23d St., New York,
February 10, 1870.
Elizabeth B. Phelps,
Anna B. Darling,
Charlotte Beebe Wilbour.
In response to the invitation, the parlors of the bureau were crowded with friends to congratulate Miss Anthony on the happy event, many bringing valuable gifts as an expression of their gratitude. Among other presents were a handsome gold watch and checks to the amount of a thousand dollars. The guests were entertained with music, recitations, the reading of many piquant letters of regret from distinguished people, and witty rhymes written for the occasion by the Cary sisters. Miss Anthony received her guests with her usual straightforward simplicity, and in a few earnest words expressed her thanks for the presents and praises showered upon her. The comments of the leading journals, next day, were highly complimentary, and as genial as amusing. All dwelt on the fact that, at last, a woman had arisen brave enough to assert her right to grow old and openly declare that half a century had rolled over her head.
Of carefully prepared written speeches Miss Anthony has made few; but these, by the high praise they called forth, prove that she can—in spite of her own declaration to the contrary—put her sterling thoughts on paper concisely and effectively. After her exhaustive plea, in 1880, for a Sixteenth Amendment before the Judiciary Committee of the Senate, Senator Edmunds accosted her, as she was leaving the Capitol, and said he neglected to tell her, in the committee room, that she had made an argument, no matter what his personal feelings were as to the conclusions reached, which was unanswerable—an argument, unlike the usual platform oratory given at hearings, suited to a committee of men trained to the law.
It was in 1876 that Miss Anthony gave her much criticised lecture on "Social Purity" in Boston. As to the result she felt very anxious; for the intelligence of New England composed her audience, and it did not still her heart-beats to see, sitting just in front of the platform, her revered friend, William Lloyd Garrison. But surely every fear vanished when she felt the grand old abolitionist's hand warmly pressing hers, and heard him say that to listen to no one else would he have had courage to leave his sick room, and that he felt fully repaid by her grand speech, which neither in matter nor manner would he have changed in the smallest particular. But into Miss Anthony's private correspondence one must look for examples of her most effective writing. Verb or substantive is often wanting, but you can always catch the thought, and will ever find it clear and suggestive. It is a strikingly strange dialect, but one that touches, at times, the deepest chords of pathos and humor, and, when stirred by some great event, is highly eloquent.
From being the most ridiculed and mercilessly persecuted woman, Miss Anthony has become the most honored and respected in the nation. Witness the praises of press and people, and the enthusiastic ovations she received on her departure for Europe in 1883. Never were warmer expressions of regret for an absence, nor more sincere prayers for a speedy return, accorded to any American on leaving his native shores. This slow awaking to the character of her services shows the abiding sense of justice in the human soul. Having spent the winter of 1882-83 in Washington, trying to press to a vote the bill for a Sixteenth Amendment before Congress, and the autumn in a vigorous campaign through Nebraska, where a constitutional amendment to enfranchise women had been submitted to the people, she felt the imperative need of an entire change in the current of her thoughts. Accordingly, after one of the most successful conventions ever held at the national capital, and a most flattering ovation in the spacious parlors of the Riggs House, and a large reception in Philadelphia, she sailed for Europe.
Fortunate in being perfectly well during the entire voyage, our traveler received perpetual enjoyment in watching the ever varying sea and sky. To the captain's merry challenge to find anything so grand as the ocean, she replied, "Yes, these mighty forces in nature do indeed fill me with awe; but this vessel, with deep-buried fires, powerful machinery, spacious decks, and tapering masts, walking the waves like a thing of life, and all the work of man, impresses one still more deeply. Lo! in man's divine creative power is fulfilled the prophecy, 'Ye shall be as Gods!'"
In all her journeyings through Germany, Italy, and France, Miss Anthony was never the mere sight-seer, but always the humanitarian and reformer in traveler's guise. Few of the great masterpieces of art gave her real enjoyment. The keen appreciation of the beauties of sculpture, painting, and architecture, which one would have expected to find in so deep a religious nature, was wanting, warped, no doubt, by her early Quaker training. That her travels gave her more pain than pleasure was, perhaps, not so much that she had no appreciation of aesthetic beauty, but that she quickly grasped the infinitude of human misery; not because her soul did not feel the heights to which art had risen, but that it vibrated in every fiber to the depths to which mankind had fallen. Wandering through a gorgeous palace one day, she exclaimed, "What do you find to admire here? If it were a school of five hundred children being educated into the right of self-government I could admire it, too; but standing for one man's pleasure, I say no!" In the quarters of one of the devotees, at the old monastery of the Certosa, at Florence, there lies, on a small table, an open book, in which visitors register. On the occasion of Miss Anthony's visit the pen and ink proved so unpromising that her entire party declined this opportunity to make themselves famous, but she made the rebellious pen inscribe, "Perfect equality for women, civil, political, religious. Susan B. Anthony, U.S.A." Friends, who visited the monastery next day, reported that lines had been drawn through this heretical sentiment.
During her visit at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Sargent, in Berlin, Miss Anthony quite innocently posted her letters in the official envelopes of our Suffrage Association, which bore the usual mottoes, "No just government can be formed without the consent of the governed," etc. In a few days an official brought back a large package, saying, "Such sentiments are not allowed to pass through the post office." Probably nothing saved her from arrest as a socialist, under the tyrannical police regulations, but the fact that she was the guest of the Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States.
My son Theodore wrote of Miss Anthony's visit in Paris: "I had never before seen her in the role of tourist. She seemed interested only in historical monuments, and in the men and questions of the hour. The galleries of the Louvre had little attraction for her, but she gazed with deep pleasure at Napoleon's tomb, Notre Dame, and the ruins of the Tuileries. She was always ready to listen to discussions on the political problems before the French people, the prospects of the Republic, the divorce agitation, and the education of women. 'I had rather see Jules Ferry than all the pictures of the Louvre, Luxembourg, and Salon,' she remarked at table. A day or two later she saw Ferry at Laboulaye's funeral. The three things which made the deepest impression on Miss Anthony, during her stay at Paris, were probably the interment of Laboulaye (the friend of the United States and of the woman movement); the touching anniversary demonstration of the Communists, at the Cemetery of Père La Chaise, on the very spot where the last defenders of the Commune of 1871 were ruthlessly shot and buried in a common grave; and a woman's rights meeting, held in a little hall in the Rue de Rivoli, at which the brave, far-seeing Mlle. Hubertine Auchet was the leading spirit."
While on the Continent Miss Anthony experienced the unfortunate sensation of being deaf and dumb; to speak and not to be understood, to hear and not to comprehend, were to her bitter realities. We can imagine to what desperation she was brought when her Quaker prudishness could hail an emphatic oath in English from a French official with the exclamation, "Well, it sounds good to hear someone even swear in old Anglo-Saxon!" After two months of enforced silence, she was buoyant in reaching the British Islands once more, where she could enjoy public speaking and general conversation. Here she was the recipient of many generous social attentions, and, on May 25, a large public meeting of representative people, presided over by Jacob Bright, was called, in our honor, by the National Association of Great Britain. She spoke on the educational and political status of women in America, I of their religious and social position.
Before
