USA > New York > Onondaga County > Syracuse > Sixty-odd, a personal history > Part 27
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WEARY PATRIOTISM
From friends in England, the Muirheads in particular, I had recently heard much of the Fabians, and had felt a greater interest in that development of the socialist movement than in the party which represented it in this country. The Fabians were intellec- tuals of the middle class, and were not agitating for drastic revolu- tion but for gradual education of society; the gentler title of their brotherhood was less repellent than that of the organization which, to conservatism, represented little less than a plague and a menace. Graham Wallas, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, William Morris, even John Burns and Keir Hardie and other leaders in the Labor move- ment, were more than mere names to us. Although the political interests of my own country had by this time superseded the flair for contemporary British history, we had followed such reports as could be gleaned from the reviews and from the speeches of visit- ing Englishmen.
Such men as Shaw, with unassailable positions in the literary world, were more or less intrenched against open attack, although not immune to thrusts of ridicule from conservative men of letters and of science as well; even the social scientists had trained heavy guns upon their assumptions. Shaw, however, could never be downed, however daring his aggression. Midway between the aris- tocracy and the proletariat, he could send his flashing shafts in all directions, and in a measure blazed the trail for the more patient arguments.
Our own middle class comprehended little of the doctrines of Marx, nor did it trouble itself to understand the Fabians. Socialism, in its theoretical sense, was not branded as actually dangerous, but
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rather as a delusion, a ridiculous idea that the human race could achieve equality by pooling all the money in the country and di- viding it up, thereby producing a dead-level of living-standards and a drab existence for everyone, with no hope or initiative. That was the general attitude of nineteenth-century society, but some of our young intellectuals, taking comfort in the self-flattery produced by finding themselves able to enjoy the Fabian essays, confessed to belief in the new doctrine.
It was the burden of many discussions in the Social Reform Club and in various intimate groups. Our dining-room, with its quaint fireplace, was turned into a small forum on many Sunday nights, when we kept open house for supper. A few friends dropped in from week to week, and shared the family meal. Old Melissa, who had come back from a long visit at her daughter's to take care of Roger, would put the children to bed after a quiet day, and I cooked the supper, which was cleared away to make room for a circle round the fire. Let me not give the impression that those were gatherings of the salon order, intellectual feasts with the sparkle of wit and the stimulus of philosophical argumentation. There were seldom more than five or six people, often differing widely in mental calibre and outlook.
Now and then there would be solitary individuals who came simply for a rest and a meal, and a chance to air their views. Some of them tended to quibble in discussions and showed a fly-like persistence in coming back to the ego and its standpoint. Then there was one mild anarchist who, though not precisely disputa- tious, managed to infuse polemics into the conversations, especially when conservatives were about. Once he had as antagonist a distant female relative of ours who was a Christian Scientist. They began by getting into a hot and perfectly futile argument, and ended by going off together toward the lady's home, not being able to stop talking, each hoping to convert the other, while the relieved sur- vivors settled down to confidential discourse.
Once we came back from the summer vacation on a Saturday night, and Archie disclosed on Sunday noon that at least three people had found we were coming and were figuring on supping
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with us that night. He recommended planning for six. I had no provisions in the house save the fall supply of potatoes and apples in the cellar, and a very few groceries; but I made a plentiful supply of French-fried potato crescents, and heaped a blue platter with baked apples, their bubbling juicy contents flavored with brown sugar. This, with tea and bread and butter, constituted the meal.
It turned out to be one of our really brilliant evenings, with Leonora O'Reilly there. She was out of the sweat-shop now with a better position, and was greatly interested in the possibilities of a Women's Trade-Union League. There were very few crafts in which women were organized, and the Union leaders took little or no interest in forming new ones. In fact, it had become clear that the girls themselves must fight for their cause if there was to be anything accomplished. Since 1885 the Unions, under Gompers, had increased as the Knights of Labor diminished. Gompers was shrewd and influential, but bent on keeping the original order and power of the crafts unions intact and excluding all the unkilled and less solid groups. There could be no actual strengthening of forces except on limited lines. The only real weapon labor pos- sessed was the strike, and thus far strikes, even the most disastrous and determined, had failed to accomplish anything more than a public upheaval and a subsequent return to the suppression of the workers.
Leonora built her hopes on the education of the woman worker, and also on her eventual enfranchisement; but it was a long slow process, with discouraging returns from both employees and ci- ployers, and no help from the law. It was not merely the flame of the wood-fire that flushed her cheeks that night as she told us of efforts to open up a broader horizon to the girls who had worked under her, and the lack of ambition which long toiling hours had en- gendered in them. She made us all listen to her, and feel with her, but she little knew what a foundation she herself was helping to lay in the outer world for the solidarity of wage-earning women.
In March of that year, 1898, President Mckinley took the oath of office. Cleveland's second term had been a difficult one, for him and for the country; commercial panic, financial panic, the Demo-
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cratic President fighting for low tariff, the Republican party for protection; money hard to get, gold going out of the country, a silver standard threatened; jibes and jeers at the administration, at the marriage of the Chief Executive to a charming young woman; a rebellious Senate, an income-tax declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, five to four. The old rhythm of capitalism again! And boundary disputes in South America, an uprising in Cuba; finally another election campaign and the nomination of Mckinley a gold man, against the Democratic William Jennings Bryan silver advocate. People's domestic affairs were too absorbing to be disturbed by the political earthquakes; cradles rocked plac- idly while states were shaken. The new Republican President promised tariff revenue, quiet, and a balanced budget, and Con- gress passed a bill, the invention of one Dingley, which was ex- pected to bring more money into the country at the expense of foreign traders.
But after Mr. McKinley's inauguration there was a good deal to take his attention from this hopeful programnie. The grave dis- agreements with Spain and the revolt in Cuba had been going on for months. Admiral Dewey was in the Philippines, and celebrated May Day, 1898, by demolishing the Spanish fleet in Manila Harbor without losing a single American life, said the triumphant reports. Our navy was now "second to none" in glory of achievement. In July Roosevelt and his Rough Riders made their spectacular charge up San Juan Hill, and the North applauded. The Cuban survivors came back in the autumn, and were paraded-a sad, listless company -through the streets. They listened passively to the applause from the sidewalks, and perhaps found more satisfaction in the occasional groans of pity which reached their ears. Veterans. Old before their time, and with just that one adventure stamped into their brains for the years to come. Admiral Dewey came back too, and we took the children up to a roof on Brooklyn Heights to see the victorious ships steam up the harbor. I can remember the thrill of it, and the reflection that we had done our duty by Nan and Roger in giving them this great event to remember. And I think we went over
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later in the day, and sat at a window on Fifth Avenue, to watch the victors themselves as they drove past in open carriages.
We reached home in a state of weary patriotism that day, and Archie had a lame shoulder from carrying his heavy young son. I doubted privately whether the remembrance of it all would con- tribute to the boy's future value as a citizen. I had not been able to put heart or enthusiasm into the war, and all my horror and hatred of that came back with the review of its victims. But the Rough Riders and brass-buttoned naval uniforms were received with furious acclaim; later the psychology of the conquering hero worked itself out in Theodore Roosevelt's fame and eventual po- litical life.
There was more or less aftermath, which children could feel. Roger was not so much stirred by the patriotic fervor of his envi- roning world, as by the bands and brass buttons. He could not yet talk, beyond a queer jargon which served to acquaint the family with his desires. But he sang, from morning till night, in his bath, his baby-carriage, and his bed, reproducing all the popular melodies 'and war choruses, with isolated syllables for words-usually wa, a contraction of Hurrah-but perfectly correct and recognizable in time and tune. People used to stop and demand the name of the "singing baby," and asked for Marching through Georgia or My Country 'Tis of Thee, which were delivered with entire indiffer- ence to the beholder.
Marching through Georgia . . . I thought of the songs which had echoed through the Boston Common in the sixties, in through the open windows of Ninety-eight Boylston Street, where Father and his friends discussed the war and God and the country's states- men, while the fourth child hid from the blare of bands, too near. The revolving wheel of history had once more arrived at the same point, through the complication and conflict of the intervening years. And in 'ninety-eight we ourselves were discussing war and God and the country's politicians-and our own child was objecting when the band came too near, shaking his head indignantly, listen- ing again, then begging to go after it.
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There came a sunny spring morning, the morning of Whitsun- day, 1899, when I sat by my window at sunrise, watching the early church-goers, with their prayerbooks and their rosaries, pass to the sound of bells in the distance. A light breeze stirred the maple leaves; across the street between brick walls I could see a blossoming apple tree; a robin was calling; shafts of sunlight were lengthening across the pavement; overhead the sky was clear blue. My heart was beating with happy anticipation in tune to the chime, for another child was on its way to us, and I felt sure it would come in time to be a Sunday baby.
My family was still asleep, so I had that happy hour by myself, and five hours later our second boy, a tiny but healthy creature, ar- rived as the bells were ringing for service again. He was a merry little person, with an equable nerve-outfit, and even in his early babyhood made few demands on the attention of his elders. We named him John, after Archie's father, who had died a few weeks before. Roger greeted him with broad smiles, and settled himself into the big-brother attitude.
We all went early to Hadley that year, because a hot wave made Brooklyn nearly uninhabitable. It had been a hard spring, after a blow in the winter-time which depleted our courage. My husband's law partner had died suddenly after a short illness, and with his going the comfort and confidence of our home life had faded. It was impossible now for one man to keep up the rent of an expen- sive office, or to pay a helper, without whose services the court work could not be carried on. We had been able to look forward to a measure of security for the future during those two years, and had
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even put by a little toward the extra expense of my illness. But although Archie managed to finish the work in hand, there was no outlook for an extension of it during the summer.
We had been through some weeks of great anxiety, and had finally accepted the necessity of his breaking away from the practice of law, and accepting a position with the publishers of the new En- cyclopedia Britannica, at a small but regular salary. I could not but realize that at last Archie had found a kind of work which was con- genial to him, even though it had not the promise of what he hoped to achieve at some future day. He was very thankful for regular pay again, and found the task interesting.
As for giving up the house, which seemed inevitable, a small windfall came to us through inheritance, and would pull us through for the year to come; one worry settled. I had been lame the previous winter with a phlebitic trouble which kept me on crutches, on one floor for a few weeks, but the children could be out-of-doors all day. The family at the old house came back and forth, helped with the nursery work when old Melissa was recalled by her daughter; and my older brother and his children, five boys and a girl, the eldest now an instructor at Dartmouth, kept us much alive. Nan and the babies went over each morning to see their grandparents, with Cleve, the big dog, for guardian.
The Bishop read aloud to us, after the earlier fashion, Trollope's Last Chronicle of Barset, to which the older children could now listen. The baby lay on a comforter spread over the grass, and cooed to himself; Nan rowed with her cousins; Roger had abandoned his vocal exercise, and begun to put words properly together. Molly was the children's delight; Arria was busy with a new book, Under a Colonial Rooftree, a story of the old house and the earlier life at Forty Acres. In the midst of all this activity, I could lay aside anxi- eties and take in the peace of the Valley as preparation for the more strenuous winter.
Little did we think how our lives would be changed after an- other season's mutations. But we returned to town in full vigor, and there were many demands on our time. One of my friends in Brooklyn had gone south, and left me her box at the Metropolitan
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Opera House for one evening a week, and another friend gave me her box for afternoon concerts, while she went away for a few weeks.
Walter Damrosch was then conducting a series of young people's matinees, one of the most important moves in the history of Ameri- can music. I took Roger to one of those; he was three now, and more musical than ever, always wanting to be at the piano, where he touched one note at a time, prolonging it and listening to its last vibration, and then perhaps playing a chord, stretching his small fingers apart and striking the keys almost timidly, with a smile to himself. He never attempted tunes.
I was a little doubtful about giving him the excitement of hear- ing an orchestra, but still longed to try its effect on him, and de- cided to let him come with me. We sat in a proscenium box, the second tier, and the concert began with the Pilgrims' Chorus from Tannhäuser. Listening so intently that I had forgotten the small figure beside my knee, in white kilts which made him look partic- ularly infantile, I happened to turn my head toward the audience once, and noticed that people were looking toward the box and smiling. Roger was standing there with one hand in the air, fol- lowing Damrosch's baton with absolute fidelity, beat by beat, a broad grin on his countenance. He kept it up unconsciously until the very last notes of the overture, for I hated to interrupt him; then he climbed up in my lap, still smiling but saying not a word.
I must say I was rather more moved, however, by hearing him give a whoopy and quite unexpected cough before the entertain- ment was over, which mingled some regret with my joy at having been able to bring him with me. As a matter of fact he did develop whooping-cough, and had a long siege of it; that one concert con- stituted his entire musical experience for months to come.
Then came the dawning of the twentieth century. The populace welcomed it with bells and blare, from the iron throats of machines to whistles and penny horns and cat-calls. Press and prophecy pro- claimed it; the thoughtful said among themselves that there was no limit to its possibilities and its obligations; they made resolutions and beginnings, and promises, many promises. The old, in dread of
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change, reflected on the wickedness of the world and the menace of war; the clergy preached and prayed. 1
But I think there was a feeling of sadness in many minds. The closing years of the nineteenth century had been filled with pre- monitions of change, of a parting of the ways and a loss of the se- cure, perhaps too confident sense of abiding comfort and safe, orna- mented living to which the Victorian age seemed to have attained. At any rate, we two people did not greet the age of machinery and magnificence with very hopeful hearts. We were finding it harder than ever to make both ends meet, and to plan for the children's future advantage. The salary on which we were trying to subsist was too small for the necessary outlay; the little old house, for all its joys and its possibilities, grew more costly each year. We felt it must be given up for more modest quarters, and that by spring some sort of decision would be forced upon us.
We had talked over the situation and its possible remedy, again and again, during the year. What if we should go off quietly, with- out letting our friends know where to find us, and live among the people who had been so long on our hearts, wage-earners with no greater resources than ourselves and no particular ambition? And do what, we asked ourselves. We must both work, of course.
I tried to sketch out certain ways of earning, one of them being dressmaking. Visions of a bare dining-room, with table pushed back and a long mirror on the wall, were conjured up. "And let the babies crawl about among the pins and swallow them," suggested Archie. No, that was harrowing beyond words. Although it was said that children learned to avoid pins. But dressmaking seemed to be the only profession which could be carried on in the home, and my going out to work was impossible. Furthermore, we both knew the conditions of the slums all too well, and rents were pretty nearly prohibitive, even in tenements. Besides all this, the distress of our relatives would be a hopeless obstacle. Neither of us would think of living with one another's people as an alternative to life in the tenements, either. We used to break off these futile discussions in a mood for shelving all plans and passively awaiting some decision which might be made for us, rather than by us.
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One day the blow descended upon our heads. We had had a par- ticularly happy day, for the weather was bright, and the children had been able to play out-of-doors, since Roger's whooping-cough was almost gone, and so far little John had not shown any signs of contracting it. But when their father turned in at the gate I saw trouble in his face-a whiteness and weariness that boded defeat of some sort.
It was not long before the news came out; the firm for which he had been working was to move to London, closing its New York office. A blank curtain had been dropped, cutting off our view of the future, of our life, it seemed to us. This time we both sat staring ahead of us, silently and hopelessly. The one possible avenue to restoration of hope and ambition had been cut off. They wanted us to go to London, Archie said, but there was no certainty how long a position would last, even if we could afford to make the move. And there was no alternative now but for him to bend every energy toward getting a new and more profitable opportunity to continue in the publishing business, without capital, with expenses eating us up, with the children's needs increasing daily.
It was then that a thought which had been coming into my mind with persistent appeal, began to renew its claims. It had dawned upon me that if only I could make it possible for my husband to be free of all cares and goading expenses, and if he could have a ycar or more in which to buckle down and find his own level in the literary world, a scope for the talent with which he was plainly en- dowed, and which he only needed time and opportunity to develop, it would be the chance of his life; a chance he had never known before. If there were some way for me to make a home for the chil- dren and at the same time provide for the family expenses, taking all care from him, I knew well that he could work out his destiny and fulfil the promise which all his friends had recognized, but to which the four of us who were dependent on him were barriers. There was no question about that; many a time I had felt that our families must be aware of it. Not that there needed to be any senti- mental recognition of the fact, but it was a fact.
In spite of all the preconceived, traditional views of the essence
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of matrimonial responsibility, all the ordinances of social life which made a wife a dependent under the law, it was an absolutely clear conviction in my mind, growing with each year of marital experi- ence that the mother's obligation for the support of her children was as great as the father's. Her share of the work for the household might with equal propriety consist in wage-earning.
I had never said very much about this to my husband because I knew the pang it gave him, both in pride and sense of obligation. Yet he had agreed with me in theory when we were discussing the demands of our world, and so long as it did not cut into our own personal conditions we could both of us look upon it as a principle to be applied to all married people. What if we were to be put to the test after all? Were we afraid of our own convictions, or ready to sacrifice ourselves for them?
In the end we had only a few days for coming to a conclusion. I had written to my father that we were giving up our house on the first of May, pending a decision about further possibilities, and that I wished we might find something to do in New England. I believed that my husband's Harvard training had equipped him to teach in the English department of a college, although I knew that he would rather undertake creative work of some kind.
The letter reached the Bishop at Forty Acres, whither he had gone to make plans for spring planting. He met his old friend, Pres- ident Seelye of Smith College, in Northampton next day; by chance -he said. They discussed common responsibilities somewhat, and then my father mentioned that it would be a joy to him if his daughter and her husband could get back to New England. "I want my grandchildren," he said, "to grow up in the spirit of their forefathers." Mr. Seelye caught his meaning. He had no opening to propose for a man at that time, but for the Bishop's daughter- was she the author of a recent article in the literary Saturday issue of the Times, on Children's Reading? He had been interested in it.
. Would she be willing to come to Northampton and open a house for students? They needed more off-campus houses, and he thought a very good dwelling might be found; he would be glad to help.
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There was one on Round Hill, not far from the site of the old hotel, and also near the college. . ..
I shall not tax the reader's patience by describing the steps, painfully surmounted, by which we reached an agreement to ac- cept this offer. It was not easy to make, and yet the very fact that we loved one another deeply, and wanted the best for our two selves and for our children, kept it from being a tragedy. For each one a door of opportunity was offered; freedom with its inescapable price of isolation, sacrifice that would be keen and possibly bitter; hard work; a complete readjustment of our plan of living. Things we could not face all at once, nor even work out with the imagination which set itself to appreciate them.
We could look back upon that racking choice in later years, with thankfulness, for all its harsh demands on our devotion and discernment. Each had tried to save the other when crises threat- ened. Now we found out how much stronger the will becomes when two characters lay hold upon a common problem. But for my part, I could see no opening and no promise as yet. I faced the relinquish- ment of a life in which we had found companionship, children, hos- pitality, opportunity; through it we had come to a sense of oneness with all humanity, of daily living permeated with faith. And now to go back to a quiet New England town to earn support for one's children and one's self through the commercialization of everyday comfort; to sell one's household labor, and count achievement in columns of red and blue lines, in dollar-marks and dots and ciphers; was that to be the sum of achievement?
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