Chapter XXI: Introduction (21)

“Do not think for a moment that I claim any merit. If there be any
doctrine that I dislike and fear more than another, it is the
‘Doctrine of Works.’ Whatever I have done has been given to me; what I
have done I was enabled to do; and all happy results (if any there be)
must be credited, not to the servant, but to the great Master, who led
and sustained him.

“My course, however, has raised up for me many enemies, and very few
friends, but among those friends I hope that you may be numbered.

“Yours truly,
“SHAFTESBURY.”

I sent him another little _souvenir_ two years later:—

TO LORD SHAFTESBURY ON HIS 82ND BIRTHDAY.

WITH A CHINA TABLET.

The Lord of Rome, historians say,
Lamented he had “lost a day,”
When no good deed was done.
Scarce one such day, methinks, appears
In the long record of the years
Of England’s worthier son.

If on this tablet’s surface light
His hourly toils should Shaftesbury write
All may be soon effaced:
But in our grateful memories graven
And in the registers of Heaven
They will not be erased.

_London, April 28th, 1883._

The next letter refers to my Lectures on the _Duties of Women_ which I had just delivered.

“24, Grosvenor Square, W.,
“May 14th, 1880.

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“... I admire your Lectures. But do you not try to make, ‘the sex’ a
little too pugnacious? And why do you give ‘truth’ to the men, and
deny it to the women?

“If you mean by ‘truth’ abstinence from fibs, I think that the females
are as good as the males. But if you mean steadiness of friendship,
adherence to principles, conscientiously not superficially
entertained, and sincerity in a good cause, why, the women are far
superior.

“Yours truly,
“SHAFTESBURY.”

“24, Grosvenor Square, W.,
“May 21st, 1880.

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“... Your lecture on Vivisection was admirable—we must be ‘mealy
mouthed’ no longer.

“Shall you and I have a conversation on your lectures and the ‘Duties
of Women’? We shall not, I believe, have much difference of opinion;
perhaps none. I approve them heartily, but there are one or two
expressions which, though intelligible to myself, would be greatly
misconstrued by a certain portion of Englishmen.

“I could give you instances by the hundred of the wonderful success
that, by a merciful Providence, has followed with our Ragged children,
male and female.[27] In fact, though after long intervals we have lost
sight of a good many, we have very few cases, indeed, of the failure
of our hopes and efforts.

“In thirty years we took off the streets of London, and sent to
service, or provided with means of honest livelihood more than two
hundred and twenty thousand ‘waifs and strays.’

“Yours truly,
“SHAFTESBURY.”

“July 23rd, 1880.

“Dear Miss Cobbe,

“I have had a very friendly letter from Gladstone; but on reference to
him for permission to publish it, he seems unwilling to assent.

“Our testimony, thank God, is cumulative for good. We may hope, and we
must pray, for better things.

“I send you Gladstone’s letter. Pray return it to me, and take care
that it does not appear in print.[28]

“I am glad that you liked the ‘Dinner.’ It was, I think, a success in
showing civility to foreign friends.

“Yours truly,
“SHAFTESBURY.”

Lord Shaftesbury made the following remarks about the Future State of Animals, in a very sympathizing reply to a letter I had written to him in which I mentioned to him that my dog had died:—

“September 29th, 1883.

“I have ever believed in a happy future for animals; I cannot say or
conjecture how or where; but sure I am that the love, so manifested,
by dogs especially, is an emanation from the Divine essence, and, as
such, it can, or rather it _will_ never be extinguished.”[29]

“24, Grosvenor Square, W.,
“May 14th, 1885.

“My dear Miss Cobbe,

“You must not suppose that because I did not answer your letter, at
the moment, I am indifferent to you or your correspondence.

“Far from it, but when I have little to do, being almost confined to
the house, I have much to write, and to get through my work, I must
frequently be relieved by a recumbent posture.

“Nevertheless, by God’s mercy, I am certainly better; and I think that
were we blessed with some warm, genial, weather, I should recover more
rapidly.

“Bryan[30] is a good man, he is able, diligent, zealous and has an
excellent judgment. I have not been able to attend his Committee, but
his reports to me show attention and good sense.

“I have left, as perhaps you have seen, the Lunacy Commission. It was
at the close of 56 years of service that I did so. I dare say that you
have had time to read my letter of resignation in the _Times_ of the
8th.

“I am very glad that Miss Lloyd is determined to print those lines.
They are very beautiful; and you must be sure to send a copy to Miss
Marsh. She admires them as much as I do.

“The thought of Calvary[31] is the strength that has governed all the
sentiments and actions of my manhood and later life; and you can well
believe that I greatly rejoice to find that one, whom I prize so
highly, has kindred sympathies....

“May God prosper you.

“Yours truly,

“SHAFTESBURY.”

The most remarkable woman I have known, not excepting Mrs. Somerville (described in my chapter on Italy), Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Mrs. Beecher Stowe, was, beyond any doubt or question, my dear friend, Fanny Kemble. I have told of the droll circumstances of our first meeting at Newbridge in the early Fifties. From that time till her death in 1892, her brilliant, iridescent genius, her wit, her spirit, her tenderness, the immense “go” and momentum of her whole nature, were sources of endless pleasure to me. When I was lame, I used to feel that for days after talking with her I could almost dispense with my crutches, so much did she, literally, lift me up!

Mrs. Kemble paid us several visits here in Wales, and was perhaps even more delightful in our quiet country quarters than in London. She would sit out for many hours at a time in our beautiful old garden, which she said was to her “an idyll;” and talk of all things in heaven and earth; touching in turn every note in the gamut of emotion from sorrowful to joyous. One summer she came to us early, and thus sat daily under a great cherry tree “in the midst of the garden,” which was at the time a mass of odorous and snowy blossoms. Alas! the blossoms have returned and are blooming as I write;—but the friend sleeps under the sod in Kensal Green.

Mr. Henry James’ obituary article and Mr. Bentley’s generous-hearted letter concerning her in the _Times_—in rebuke of the mean and grudging notice of her which that paper had published,—seem to me to have been by far the most truthful sketches which appeared of the “grand old lioness;” as Thackeray called her. Everybody could admire, and most people a little feared her; but it needed to come very close to her and brush past her formidable thorns of irony and sarcasm, to know and _love_ her, as she most truly deserved to be loved.

There is always something startling and perhaps the reverse of attractive to those of us who have been brought up in the usual English way to _repress_ our emotions, in women who have been trained reversely by histrionic life, to give all possible outwardness and vividness of expression to those same emotions. It is only when we get below both the extreme demonstrativeness on one hand, and the conventional reserve and self-restraint on the other, and meet on common ground of deep sympathies, that real friendship is established; a friendship which in my case was at once an honour and a delight.

Mrs. Kemble in her generous affection made a present to me of the MSS. of her Memoirs, which subsequently I induced her to take back, and publish herself, as her “_Old Woman’s Gossip_,” her _Records of a Girlhood_ and _Records of Later Life_. Beside these, which, as I have said, I returned to her one after another, she gave me, and I still possess, an immense packet of her own old letters to her beloved H. S. (Harriet St. Leger) and others; and the materials of five large and thick volumes of autograph letters addressed to her, extending over more than 50 years. They include whole correspondences with W. Donne, Edward Fitzgerald, Henry Greville, Mrs. Jameson, John Mitchell Kemble, George Combe, and several others; and besides these there are either one or half-a-dozen letters from almost every man and woman of eminence in England in her time. Mr. Bentley has very liberally purchased from me for publication about 100 letters from Edward Fitzgerald to Mrs. Kemble. The rest of the Mrs. Kemble’s correspondence I have, as I have mentioned, bound together in five volumes, and I do not intend to publish them. Had any of Mrs. Kemble’s “_Records_” remained inedited at the time of her death I should have undertaken, (as she no doubt intended me to do) the task of writing her biography. The work was, however, so fully done by herself in her long series of volumes that there was neither need nor room for more. I am happy to add, in conclusion, that in the arrangements I have made regarding my dear old friend’s literary remains, I have the consent and approval of her daughters.

I knew Mrs. Gaskell a little, but not enough to harmonize in my mind the woman I saw in the flesh with the books I liked so well as _Mary Barton_ and _Libbie Marsh’s Three Eras_. Of Mrs. Stowe’s delightful conversation on the terrace of our villa on Bellosguardo, I have written my recollections, and recorded the glimpses I had of Mrs. Browning. I have also described Harriet Hosmer and Rosa Bonheur; our sculptor and painter friends, from the latter of whom I have just (1898) received the kindest letters and her impressive photograph; and Mary Carpenter, my leader and fellow-worker at Bristol. I must not speak here of the affection and admiration I entertain for my dear, living friend Anna Swanwick, the translator of Æschylus and Faust; and for Louisa Lee Schuyler, one of the leaders in the organization of relief in the great Civil War of America and who founded and carried to its present marvellous extent of power and usefulness the _State Charities Aid Association_ of New York. Again, I have known in England Mdme. Bodichon (who furnished Girton with its first thousand pounds); Mrs. Josephine Butler; Mrs. Webster the classic poetess; and Mrs. Emily Pfeiffer, another poetess and very beautiful woman at whose house I once witnessed an interesting scene,—a large party of ladies and gentlemen dressed in the attire of Athenians of the Periclean age. Miss Swanwick and I, who were alone permitted to attend in English costume, were immensely impressed by the _ennobling_ effect of the classic dress, not only on young and graceful people, but on those who were quite the reverse.

I never saw Harriet Martineau; but was so desirous of doing it that I intended to make a journey to Ambleside for the purpose, and with that view begged our mutual friend, the late Mrs. Hensleigh Wedgwood, to ask leave to introduce me to her. It was an unfortunate moment, and I only received the following kind message:—

“I need not say how happy I should have been to become acquainted with
Miss Cobbe; but the time is past and I am only fit for old friends who
can excuse my shortcomings. I have lost ground so much of late that
the case is clear. I must give up all hopes of so great a pleasure.
Will you say this to her and ask her to receive my kind and thankful
regards, I venture to send on the grounds of our common friendships?”

Of my living, beloved and honoured friends, Mrs. William Grey, Lady Mount-Temple, Miss Shirreff, Mrs. Fawcett, Miss Caroline Stephen, Miss Julia Wedgwood, Lady Battersea, and Miss Florence Davenport Hill, I must not here speak. I have had the pleasure also of meeting that very fine woman-worker Miss Octavia Hill.

George Eliot I did not know, nor, as I have just said, did I ever meet Harriet Martineau. But with those two great exceptions I think I may boast of having come into contact with nearly all the more gifted Englishwomen of the Victorian era; and thus when I speak, as I shall do in the next chapter, of my efforts to put the claims of my sex fairly before the world, I may boast of writing with practical personal knowledge of what women are and can be, both as to character and ability.

The decade which began in 1880 brought me many sorrows. The first was the death of my second brother, Thomas Cobbe, of Easton Lyss. I loved him much for his own sweet and affectionate nature; and much, too, for the love of our mother which he shared especially with me. I was also warmly attached to his beautiful and good Scotch wife, who survived him only a few years; and to his dear children, who were my pets in infancy and have been almost like my own daughters ever since. My brother ought to have been a very successful and brilliant barrister, but his life was broken by the faults of others, and when in advanced years he wrote, with immense patience and research, a really valuable _History of the Norman Kings_ (thought to be so by such competent judges as Mr. William Longman, and the Historical Society of Normandy, which asked leave to translate it), the book was practically _killed_ by a cruel and most unfair review which attributed to him mistakes which he had not made, and refused to publish his refutation of the charge. If this review were written (as we could not but surmise) by an eminent historian, now dead, whose own book my brother had, very unwisely, ignored, I can only say it was a malicious and spiteful deed. My brother’s ambition was not strong enough to carry him over such a disappointment, and he never attempted to write again for the press, but spent his later years in the solitary study of his favourite old chronicles and his Shakespeare. A little later my eldest brother also died, leaving no children. I must be thankful at my age that the youngest, the Rector of Maulden, though five years older than I, still survives in health and vigour, rejoicing in his happy home and family of affectionate daughters. I trust yet to welcome him into the brotherhood of the pen when his great monograph on LUTON CHURCH, HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE, sees the light this year.

I lost also in this same decade, my earliest friend Harriet St. Leger; and a younger, very dear one, Emily Shaen. Mrs. Shaen and her admirable husband had been much drawn to me by religious sympathies; and I regarded her with more heartfelt respect, I might say reverence, than I can well express. She endured twenty years of seclusion and suffering, with the spirit at once of a saint and of a philosopher. Had her health enabled her to take her natural place in the world, I have always felt assured she would have been recognised as one of the ablest as well as one of the best women of the day, and more than the equal of her two gifted sisters; Catharine and Susanna Winkworth. The friendship between us was of the closest kind. I often said that I _went to church_ to her sick-room. In her last days, when utterly crushed by incessant suffering and by the death of her beloved husband and her favourite son, she bore in whispers, to me, (she could scarcely speak for mortal weakness,) this testimony to our common faith: “I sent for you,—to tell you,—_I am more sure than ever that God is Good_.”

All these deaths and the heart-wearing Anti-vivisection work combined with my own increasing years to make my life in London less and less a source of enjoyment and more of strain than I could bear. In 1884 Miss Lloyd, with my entire concurrence, let our dear little house in Hereford Square to our friend, Mrs. Kemble, and we left London altogether and came to live in Wales.

CHAPTER
XIX.
_CLAIMS OF WOMEN._

It was not till I was actively engaged in the work of Mary Carpenter at Bristol, and had begun to desire earnestly various changes of law relating to young criminals and paupers, that I became an advocate of “Women’s Rights.” It was good old Rev. Samuel J. May, of Syracuse, New York, who, when paying us a visit, pressed on my attention the question: “_Why should you not have a vote?_ Why should not women be enabled to influence the making of the laws in which they have as great an interest as men?”

My experience probably explains largely the indifference of thousands of women, not deficient in intelligence, in England and America to the possession of political rights. They have much anxiety to fulfil their home duties, and the notion of undertaking others, requiring (as they fully understand) conscientious enquiry and reflection, rather alarms than attracts them. But the time comes to every woman worth her salt to take ardent interest in some question which touches legislation. Then she begins to ask herself, as Mr. May asked me; “Why should the fact of being a woman, close to me the use of the plain, direct means, of helping to achieve some large public good or stopping some evil?” The timid, the indolent, the conventional will here retreat, and try to believe that it concerns men only to right the wrongs of the world in some more effectual way than by single-handed personal efforts in special cases. Others again,—and of their number was I—become deeply impressed with the need of woman’s voice in public affairs, and thenceforth attach themselves to the “Woman’s Cause” more or less earnestly. For my own part I confess I have been chiefly moved by reflection on the sufferings and wrongs borne by women, in great measure owing to the _deconsideration_ they endure consequent on their political and civil disabilities. Whilst I and other happily circumstanced women, have had no immediate wrongs of our own to gall us, we should still have been very poor creatures had we not felt bitterly those of our less fortunate sisters, the robbed and trampled wives, the mothers whose children were torn from them at the bidding of a dead or living father, the daughters kept in ignorance and poverty while their brothers were educated in costly schools and fitted for honourable professions. Such wrongs as these have inspired me with the persistent resolution to do everything in my power to protect the property, the persons and the parental rights of women.

I do not think that this resolve has any necessary connection with theories concerning the equality of the sexes; and I am sure that a great deal of our force has been wasted on fruitless discussions such as: “Why has there never been a female Shakespeare?” A Celt claiming equal representation with a Saxon, _or any representation at all_, might just as fairly be challenged to explain why there has never been a Celtic Shakespeare, or a Celtic Tennyson? My own opinion is, that women _en masse_ are by no means the intellectual equals of men _en masse_;—and whether this inequality arise from irremediable causes or from alterable circumstances of education and heredity, is not worth debating. If the nation had established an intellectual test for political equality, and admission to the franchise were confined to persons passing a given Standard; well and good. Then, no doubt, there would be (as things now stand) fifty per cent. of men who would win votes, and perhaps only thirty per cent. of women. So much may be freely admitted. But then that thirty per cent. of females _would_ obtain political rights; and those who failed, would be debarred by a natural and real, not an arbitrary inferiority. Such a state of things would not present such ludicrous injustice as that which obtains,—for example,—in a parish not a hundred miles from my present abode. There is in the village in question a man universally known therein as “The _Idiot_;” a poor slouching, squinting fellow, who yet rents a house and can do rough field work, though he can scarcely speak intelligibly. _He_ has a vote, of course. The owner of his house and of half the parish, who holds also the advowson of the living, is a lady who has travelled widely, understands three or four languages, and studies the political news of Europe daily in the columns of the _Times_. That lady, equally of course, has _no_ vote, no power whatever to keep the representation of her county out of the hands of the demagogues naturally admired by the Idiot and his compeers. Under the regulations which create inequalities of this kind is it not rather absurd to insist perpetually, (as is the practise of our opponents,) on the _intellectual_ inferiority of women,—as if it were really in question?

I hold, however, that whatever be our real mental rank,—to be tested thoroughly only in future generations, under changed conditions of training and heredity,—we women are the _equivalents_, though not the _equals_, of men. And to refuse a share in the law-making of a nation to the most law-abiding half of it; to exclude on all largest questions the votes of the most conscientious, temperate, religious and (above all) most merciful and tender-hearted moiety, is a mistake which cannot fail, and _has_ not failed, to entail great evil and loss.

I wrote, as I have mentioned in Chapter XV., a great many articles, (chiefly in _Fraser_ and _Macmillan_,) on women’s concerns about the years 1861–2–3: “_What shall we do with our Old Maids?_”; “_Female Charity, Lay and Monastic_;” “_Women in Italy in 1862_;” “_The Education of Women_;” “_Social Science Congress and Women’s Part in them_;” and, later, “_The Fitness of Women for the Ministry of Religion_.” These made me known to many women who were fighting in the woman’s cause; Miss Bessie Parkes (now Madame Belloc), Madame Bodichon, Mrs. Grey, Miss Shirreff, Mrs. Peter Taylor, Miss Becker, and others; and when Committees were formed for promoting Woman Suffrage, I was invited to join them. I did so; and frequently attended the meetings, though not regularly. We had several Members of Parliament and other gentlemen (notably Mr. Frederick Hill, brother of my old friend Recorder Hill and of Sir Rowland), who generally helped our deliberations; and many able women, among others Mrs. Augusta Webster, the poetess; and Lady Anna Gore Langton, an exceedingly sensible woman, who also held Drawing-Room Suffrage Meetings (at which I spoke) in her house. We had for secretary Miss Lydia Becker; a woman of singular political ability, for whom I had a sincere respect. Her premature death has been an incalculable loss to the women of England. She gave me the impression of one of those ill-fated people whose outward persons do not represent their inward selves. I am sure she had a large element of softness and sensitiveness in her nature, unsuspected by most of those with whom she laboured. She was a most courageous and straightforward woman, with a single eye to the great political work which she had undertaken, and which I think no one has understood so well as she.

After Miss Becker’s lamented death the great schism between Unionists and Home Rulers extended far enough to split even our Committee, (which was avowedly of no party,) into two bodies. I naturally followed my fellow-Unionist, Mrs. Fawcett when she re-organized the moiety of the Society and established an office for it in College Street, Westminster. Believing her to be quite the ablest woman-economist and politician in England, I entertain the hope that she may at last carry a Woman Suffrage Bill and live to see qualified single women recording their votes at Parliamentary elections. When that time arrives every one will scoff at the objections which have so long closed the “right of way,” to us of the “weaker sex.”

Beside the Committee of the Society for _Woman Suffrage_, I also joined for a time the Committee which,—long afterwards,—effected the splendid achievement of procuring the passage of the _Married Women’s Property Act_; the greatest step gained up to the present time for women in England. I can claim no part of that real honour, which is due in greatest measure to Mrs. Jacob Bright.

The question of granting University Degrees to women, was opened as far back as 1862. In that year I read, in the Guildhall in London at the Social Science Congress, a paper, pleading for the privilege. Dean Milman, who occupied the Chair, was very kind in praising my crude address, and enjoyed the little jokes wherewith it was sprinkled; but next morning every daily paper in London laughed at my demand, and for a week or two I was the butt of universal ridicule. Nevertheless, just 17 years afterwards, I was invited to join a Deputation headed by Lady Stanley of Alderley, to thank Lord Granville for having (as President of London University) conceded those degrees to women, precisely as I had demanded! I took occasion at the close of the pleasant interview, to present him with one of the very few remaining copies of my original and much ridiculed appeal.

From this time I wrote and spoke not unfrequently on behalf of women’s political and civil claims. One article of mine in _Fraser_, 1868, was reprinted more than once. It was headed “_Criminals, Idiots, Women and Minors_;” and enquired “Whether the classification should be counted sound?” I hope that the discussion it involved on the laws relating to the property of married women was of some service in helping on the great measure of justice afterwards granted.

Another paper of mine, circulated by the _London National Society for Women’s Suffrage_, for whom I wrote it, was entitled “_Our Policy_.” It was, in effect, an address to women concerning the best way to secure the suffrage. I began this pamphlet by the following remarks:—

“There is an instructive story, told by Herodotus, of an African
nation which went to war with the South Wind. The wind had greatly
annoyed these Psyllians by drying up their cisterns, so they organised
a campaign and set off to attack the enemy at head-quarters—somewhere,
I presume, about the Sahara. The army was admirably equipped with all
the military engines of those days; swords and spears, darts and
javelins, battering rams and catapults. It happened that the South
Wind did not, however, suffer much from these weapons, but got up one
fine morning and blew!—The sands of the desert have lain for a great
many ages over those unfortunate Psyllians; and, as Herodotus placidly
concludes the story, ‘The Nasamones possess the territory of those who
thus perished.’

“It seems to me that we, women, who have been fighting for the
Suffrage with logical arguments—syllogisms, analogies, demonstrations,
and reductions-to-the-absurd of our antagonists’ position, in short,
all the weapons of ratiocinative warfare—have been behaving very much
like those poor Psyllians, who imagined that darts, and swords, and
catapults would avail against the Simoom. The obvious fact is, that it
is _Sentiment_ we have to contend against, not Reason; Feeling and
Prepossession, not intellectual Conviction. Had Logic been the only
obstacle in our way, we should long ago have been polling our votes
for Parliamentary as well as for Municipal and School Board elections.
To those who hold that Property is the thing intended to be
represented by the Constitution of England, we have shown that we
possess such property. To those who say that Tax-paying and
Representation should go together, we have pointed to the
tax-gatherers’ papers, which, alas! lie on our hall-tables wholly
irrespective of the touching fact that we belong to the ‘protected
sex.’ Where Intelligence, Education, and freedom from crime are
considered enough to confer rights of citizenship, we have remarked
that we are quite ready to challenge rivalry in such particulars with
those Illiterates for whose exercise of political functions our Senate
has taken such exemplary care. Finally, to the ever-recurring charge
that we cannot fight, and therefore ought not to vote, we have replied
that the logic of the exclusion will be manifest when all the men too
weak, too short, or too old for the military standard be likewise
disfranchised, and when the actual soldiers of our army are accorded
the suffrage.

“But it is Sentiment, not Logic, against which we have to struggle;
and we shall best do so, I think, by endeavouring to understand and
make full allowance for it; and then by steady working, shoulder to
shoulder so as to conquer, or rather _win_ it over to our side.”

In 1876, May 13th, I made a rather long and elaborate speech on the subject of women’s suffrage in a meeting in St. George’s Hall, at which Mr. Russell Gurney, the Recorder of London, took the chair. John Bright had spoken against our Bill in the House, and though I had not intended to speak at our meeting, I was spurred by indignation to reply to him. In this address I spoke chiefly of the wrongs of mothers whose children are taken from them at the will of a living or dead father. I ended by saying:—

“I advocate Woman Suffrage as the natural and needful constitutional
means of protection for the rights of the weaker half of the nation. I
do this as a woman pleading for women. But I do it also, and none the
less confidently, as a citizen, and for the sake of the whole
community, because it is my conviction that such a measure is no less
expedient for men than just for women; and that it will redound in
coming years ever more and more to the happiness, the virtue and the
honour of our country.”

Several years after this, I wrote a letter which was printed in the (American) _Woman’s Tribune_, May 1st, 1884. It expresses so exactly what I feel still on the subject that I shall redeem it if possible from oblivion. The following are the passages for which I should like to ask the reader’s attention:

“If I may presume to offer an old woman’s counsel to the younger
workers in our cause, it would be that they should adopt the point of
view—that it is before all things our _Duty_ to obtain the franchise.
If we undertake the work in this spirit, and with the object of using
the power it confers, whenever we gain it, for the promotion of
justice and mercy and the kingdom of God upon earth, we shall carry on
all our agitation in a corresponding manner, firmly and bravely, and
also calmly and with generous good temper. And when our opponents come
to understand that this is the motive underlying our efforts, they, on
their part, will cease to feel bitterly and scornfully toward us, even
when they think we are altogether mistaken.

“That people MAY conscientiously consider that we are mistaken in
asking for woman suffrage, is another point which it surely behoves us
to carry in mind.

“We naturally think almost exclusively of many advantages which would
follow to our sex and to both sexes from the entrance of woman into
political life. But that there are some ‘lions in the way,’ and rather
formidable lions, too, ought not to be forgotten.

“For myself, I would far rather that women should remain without
political rights to the end of time than that they should lose those
qualities which we comprise in the word ‘womanliness;’ and I think
nearly every one of the leaders of our party in America and in England
agrees with me in this feeling.

“The idea that the possession of political rights will destroy
‘womanliness,’ absurd as it may seem to us, is very deeply rooted in
the minds of men; and when they oppose our demands, it is only just to
give them credit for doing so on grounds which we should recognize as
valid, _if their premises were true_. It is not so much that our
opponents (at least the better part of them) despise women, as that
they really prize what women _now are_ in the home and in society so
highly that they cannot bear to risk losing it by any serious change
in their condition. These fears are futile and faithless, but there is
nothing in them to affront us. To remove them, we must not use violent
words, for every such violent word confirms their fears; but, on the
contrary, show the world that while the revolutions wrought by men
have been full of bitterness and rancour, and stormy passions, if not
of bloodshed, we women will at least strive to accomplish our great
emancipation calmly and by persuasion and reason.”

I was honoured about this time by several friendly advances from American ladies and gentlemen interested like myself in woman’s advancement. The astronomer, Prof. Maria Mitchell, wrote me a charming letter, which I exceedingly regret should have been lost, as I felt particular interest in her great achievements. I had the pleasure of receiving Mrs. Julia Ward Howe in Hereford Square, and also Mrs. Livermore, whose speech at one of our Suffrage Meetings realised my highest ideal of a woman’s public address. Her noble face and figure like that of a Roman Matron, her sweet manners and playful humour without a scintilla of bitterness in it,—as if she were a mother remonstrating with a foolish, school-boy son,—were all delightful to me.

Col. J. W. Higginson, who has been so good a friend and adviser to women, also came to see me, and gave me some bright hours of conversation on his wonderful experiences in the war, during which he commanded a coloured regiment, which fought valiantly under his leadership. Finally I had the privilege of being elected a member of the famous _Sorosis_ Club of New York, and of receiving the following very pleasant letter conveying the gift of a pretty gold and enamel brooch, the badge of the Sisterhood.

“Dear Madam,

“The ladies of _Sorosis_—The Woman’s Club of New York—beg your
acceptance of the accompanying Pin, the insignia of their
organization, which they send by the hand of their foreign
correspondent, Mrs. Laura Curtis Ballard.

“Trifling as is this testimonial in itself, they feel that if you knew
the genuine appreciation of you and your work that goes with it—the
gratitude with which each one regards you as a faithful worker for
women—you would not consider it unworthy your acceptance. With best
wishes for your continued health, which in your case means continued
usefulness,

“I am, dear Madam,
“With great respect and esteem,
“Your obedient Servant,
“CELIA BURLEIGH,
“Cor. Sec. Sorosis.

“37, Huntingdon Street, Brooklyn, New York,
“June 21st, 1869.”

The part of my work for women, however, to which I look back with most satisfaction was that in which I laboured to obtain protection for unhappy wives, beaten, mangled, mutilated or trampled on by brutal husbands. One day in 1878 I was by chance reading a newspaper in which a whole series of frightful cases of this kind were recorded, here and there, among the ordinary news of the time. I got up out of my armchair, half dazed, and said to myself: “I will never rest till I have tried what I can do to stop this.”

I thought anxiously what was the sort of remedy I ought to endeavour to put forward. A Parliamentary Blue Book had been printed in 1875 entitled: “Reports on the State _of the law relating to Brutal Assaults_,” and the following is a summary of the results. There was a large consensus of opinion that the law as it now stands is insufficient for its purpose. Lord Chief Justice Cockburn, Mr. Justice Lush, Mr. Justice Mellor, Chief Baron Kelly, Barons Bramwell, Pigott and Pollock, all expressed the same judgment (pp. 7–19). The following gave their opinion in favour of flogging offenders in cases of brutal assaults. Lord Chief Justice Cockburn, Mr. Justices Blackburn, Mellor, Lush, Quain, Archibald, Brett, Grove, Chief Baron Kelly, Barons Bramwell, Pigott, Pollock, Charles, and Amphlett. Only Lord Coleridge and Lord Denman hesitated, and Mr. Justice Keating opposed flogging. Of Chairmen of Quarter Sessions 64 (out of 68, whose answers were sent to the Home Office,) and the Recorders of 41 towns, were in favour of flogging. After all this testimony of the opinions of experts (collected of course at the public expense), _three years_ elapsed during which absolutely nothing was done to make any practical use of it! During the interval, scores of Bills, _interesting to the represented sex_, passed through Parliament; but _this_ question on which the lives of women literally hung, was never mooted! Something like 5,000 women, judging by the published judicial statistics, were in those years “brutally assaulted;” _i.e._, not merely struck, but maimed, blinded, burned, trampled on by strong men in heavy shoes, and, in many cases, murdered outright; and thousands of children were brought up to witness scenes which (as Colonel Leigh said) “infernalise a whole generation.” Where lay the fault? Scarcely with the Government, or even with Parliament, but with the simple fact that, under our present constitution, Women, having no votes, can only exceptionally and through favour, bring pressure to bear to force attention even to the most crying of injustices under which they suffer. The Home Office _must_ attend first to the claims of those who can bring pressure to bear on it; and Members of Parliament _must_ bring in the measures pressed by their constituents; and thus the unrepresented _must_ go to the wall.

The cases of cruelty of which I obtained statistics, furnished to me mainly by the kindness of Miss A. Shore, almost surpassed belief. It appeared that about 1,500 cases of aggravated (over and above ordinary) assaults on wives took place every year in England; on an average about four a day. Many of them were of truly incredible savagery; and the victims were, in the vast majority of cases, not drunken viragos (who usually escape violence or give as good as they receive), but poor, pale, shrinking creatures, who strove to earn bread for their children and to keep together their miserable homes; and whose very tears and pallor were reproaches which provoked the _heteropathy_ and cruelty of their tyrants.

After much reflection I came to the conclusion that in spite of all the authority in favour of flogging the delinquents, it was _not_ expedient on the women’s behalf that they should be so punished, since after they had undergone such chastisement, however well merited, the ruffians would inevitably return more brutalised and infuriated than ever; and again have their wives at their mercy. The only thing really effective, I considered, was to give the wife the power of separating herself and her children from her tyrant. Of course in the upper ranks, where people could afford to pay for a suit in the Divorce Court, the law had for some years opened to the assaulted wife this door of escape. But among the working classes, where the assaults were ten-fold as numerous and twenty times more cruel, no legal means whatever existed of escaping from the husband returning after punishment to beat and torture his wife again. I thought the thing to be desired was the extension of the privilege of rich women to their poorer sisters, to be effected by an Act of Parliament which should give a wife whose husband had been convicted of an aggravated assault on her, the power to obtain a Separation Order under Summary Jurisdiction.

Mr. Alfred Hill, J.P., of Birmingham, son of my old friend Recorder Hill, most kindly interested himself in my project, and drafted a Bill to be presented to Parliament embodying my wishes. Meanwhile; I set about writing an article setting forth the extent of the evil, the failure of the measures hitherto taken in various Acts of Parliament, and, finally, the remedy I proposed. This article my friend Mr. Percy Bunting was good enough to publish in the _Contemporary Review_ in the spring of 1878. I also wrote an article in _Truth_ on _Wife Torture_, afterwards reprinted. Meanwhile, I had obtained the most cordial assistance from Mr. Frederick Pennington and Mr. Hopwood, both of whom were then in Parliament, and it was agreed that I should beg Mr. Russell Gurney to take charge of the Bill which these gentlemen would support. I went accordingly, armed with the draft Bill, to the Recorder’s house in Kensington Palace Gardens, and, as I anxiously desired to find him at home, I ventured to call as early as 10.30. Mr. Gurney read the draft Bill carefully, and entirely approved it. “Then,” I said, “you will take charge of it, I earnestly hope?” “No,” said Mr. Gurney, “I cannot do that; I am too old and over-worked to undertake all the watching and labour which may be necessary; but I will put my name on the back of it, with pleasure.”

I knew, of course, that his name would give the measure great importance and also help me to find some other M.P. to take charge of it, so I could not but thank him gratefully. At that moment of our interview, his charming wife entered the room leading a little boy; I believe his nephew. Naturally I apologized to Mrs. Gurney for my presence at that unholy hour of the morning; and said, “I came to Mr. Gurney in my anxiety, as the Friend of Women.” Mr. Gurney, hearing me, put his hands on the little lad’s shoulder and said to him, “Do you hear that, my boy? I hope that when you are an old man, as I am, some lady like Miss Cobbe may call you _the Friend of Women_!”

At last, the Bill embodying precisely the purport of that drawn up for me by Mr. Hill, and subsequently published in the _Contemporary Review_, was read a first time, the names of Mr. Herschell (now Lord Herschell) and Sir Henry Holland (afterwards Lord Knutsford) being on the back of it. Every arrangement was made for the second Reading; and for avoiding the opposition which we expected to meet from a party which seems always to think that by _calling_ certain unions “Holy” a Church can sanctify that which has become a bond of savage cruelty on one side, and soul-degrading slavery on the other. Just at this crisis, Lord Penzance, who was bringing a Bill into the House of Lords to remedy some defects concerning the costs of the intervention of the Queen’s Proctor in Matrimonial causes, introduced into it a clause dealing with the case of the assaulted wives, and giving them precisely the benefit contemplated in our Bill and in my article; namely, that of Separation Orders to be granted by the same magistrates who have convicted the husband of aggravated assaults upon them. That Lord Penzance had seen our Bill, then before the Lower House, (it was ordered to be printed February 14th) and had had his attention called to the subject, either by it, or by my article in the _Contemporary Review_, I have taken as probable, but have no exact knowledge. I went at once to call on him and thank him from my heart for undertaking to do this great service of mercy to women; and also to pray him to consider certain points about the custody of the children of such assaulted wives. Lord Penzance received me with the utmost kindness and likewise gave favourable consideration to a letter or two which I ventured to address to him. It is needless to say that his advocacy of the measure carried it through the House of Lords without opposition. I believe that in speaking for it he said that if any noble Lord needed proof of the grievous want of such protection for wives they would find it in my article, which he held in his hand.

There was still, we feared, an ordeal to go through in the House of Commons; but the fates and hours were propitious, and the Bill, coming in late one night as already passed by the House of Lords and with Lord Penzance’s great name on it,—escaped opposition and was accepted without debate. By the 27th May, 1878, it had become the law of the land, and has since taken its place as Chapter 19 of the 41st Vict. _An Act to amend the Matrimonial Causes Acts._ The following are the clauses which concern the assaulted Wives:—

4. If a husband shall be convicted summarily or otherwise of an
aggravated assault within the meaning of the statute twenty-fourth and
twenty-fifth Victoria, chapter one hundred, section forty-three, upon
his wife, the Court or magistrate before whom he shall be so convicted
may, if satisfied that the future safety of the wife is in peril,
order that the wife shall be no longer bound to cohabit with her
husband; and such order shall have the force and effect in all
respects of a decree of judicial separation on the ground of cruelty;
and such order may further provide,

1. That the husband shall pay to his wife such weekly sum as the Court
or magistrate may consider to be in accordance with his means, and
with any means which the wife may have for her support, and the
payment of any sum of money so ordered shall be enforceable and
enforced against the husband in the same manner as the payment of
money is enforced under an order of affiliation; and the Court or
magistrate by whom any such order for payment of money shall be made
shall have power from time to time to vary the same on the
application of either the husband or the wife, upon proof that the
means of the husband or wife have been altered in amount since the
original order or any subsequent order varying it shall have been
made.

2. That the legal custody of any children of the marriage under the
age of ten years shall, in the discretion of the Court or
magistrate, be given to the wife.

At first the magistrates were very chary of granting the Separation Orders. One London Police Magistrate had said that the House of Commons would never put such power in the hands of one of the body, and he was, I suppose, proportionately startled when just six weeks later, it actually lay in his own. By degrees, however, the practice of granting the Orders on proper occasions became common, and appears now to be almost a matter of course. I hope that at least a hundred poor souls each year thus obtain release from their tormentors, and probably the deterrent effect of witnessing such manumission of ill-treated slaves may have still more largely served to protect women from the violence of brutal husbands.

Six years after the Act had passed in 1884, I received a letter from a very energetic and prominent woman-worker with whom I had a slight acquaintance, in which the following passages occur. I quote them here (though with some hesitation on the score of vanity) for they have comforted me much and deeply, and will do so to my life’s end.

“On Wednesday last I was two hours with a widow,—of O——, near W——; one
of those persons who _make_ a country so good, brave, loving and
hardworking! For 33 long years she lived with a fiend of a husband,
and suffered furious blows, kicks, and attacks with ropes, hot water,
and crockery; was hurled down cellar-steps, &c., starved and insulted.
All the time, up early and at work managing a large shop and
superintending 35 girls....

“I wish you could have been there to hear her tell me that ‘the law
was altered now,’ and how her niece had got a separation for brutal
treatment; and (best of all) ‘her two bairns’ (children). As for the
8s. a week ordered,—the wife never ‘bothers after that.’ ‘The Lord has
stopped that villain’s ways, and she wants no more.’ I could not help
crying, as I looked at the exquisitely clean person and home,—the
determined face, and thought of the diabolical horrors this good,
clever woman had gone through. I told her how you had got the law
altered—and she kept saying ‘She’s a lady—she’s a lady. Bring her to
O——, Missis! and we’ll _percession_ her down t’ street!’...

“You have love and gratitude from our hearts, I assure you; we live
wider lives and better for your presence. I have ventured to write
freely on a subject some would find wearisome, but your heart is big
and will sympathise; and I am always longing for you to know the
active result of your achieved work. This! that poor battered, bruised
women are relieved—are safer—and bless you, and so do I, from a full
heart.

“I am, dear Miss Cobbe,
“Yours faithfully,
“A. S.”

If I could hear before I die that I had been able to do as much for tortured brutes, I should say “_Nunc Dimittis_,” and wish no more.

Some time after this (I have kept no copy or record of date) I delivered a Lecture, which was a good deal noticed at the time, on the _Little Health of Ladies_. It was an exposure of the evils resulting to families from the state of semi-invalidism in which so many women live, usually gently lapped therein by interested advisers. I exhorted women to do, as a duty to God and man, everything possible to avoid falling into this wretched condition, with the self-indulgence and neglect of home and social duties leading to it or consequent on it. I did not then know as much as I subsequently learned of the inner history of a great deal of this misery, or I might have added to my warning some remarkable denunciations by honourable doctors of the practices of their colleagues.[32]

A singular incident followed the publication of this address in one of the Magazines.

There was a lady, whose husband was a wealthy manufacturer in the North of England, who came to London once or twice a year, and for several years called on me; having much sympathy with my various interests. She appeared to be a confirmed invalid, crawling with great difficulty out of her carriage into our dining-room, and lying on a sofa during her visits. One day I was told she had come, and I was hastening to receive her downstairs, when a tall, elegant woman, whom I scarcely recognized, walked firmly and lightly, into my drawing-room, and greeted me cordially with laughter in her eyes at my astonishment.

“So glad to see you so well!” I exclaimed, “but what has happened to you?”

“It is _you_ who have effected the cure!” she answered.

“Good gracious! How?”

“Why, I read your _Little Health of Ladies_, and I resolved to set my doctor at naught and go about like other people. And you see how well I am! There was really nothing the matter with me but want of exercise!”

I saw her several times afterwards in good health; and once she brought me a beautiful gold bracelet with clasp of diamonds set in black enamel, which she had had made for me, and which she forced me to accept as a token of her gratitude. I am fond of wearing it still.

Another incident strongly confirmed my belief in the source of much of the evil and misery arising from the _Little Health of Ladies_. Travelling one day from Brighton I fell into conversation with a nice-looking, well-bred woman the only other occupant of the railway carriage. Speaking of the salubrity of Brighton, she said, “I am sure I have reason enough to bless it. I was for fourteen years a miserable invalid on my sofa in London; my doctor telling me I must never go out or move. At last I said to my husband, ‘It is better to die than to go on thus;’ and, in defiance of our Doctor, he brought me away to Brighton, and there I soon grew, as you see, quite strong; and—and,—I must tell you, _I have a little baby_, and my husband is so happy!”

That clever Gynæcologist lost, I daresay, a hundred, or perhaps two hundred, a year by the escape of his patient from his assiduous visitations; but the lady gained health and happiness; her husband his wife’s companionship; and both of them a child! How much of the miseries and ill-health, and, in many cases, death of women (of the poorer classes especially) lies at the door of medical practitioners and operators, too fond by half of the knife, is known to those who have read the recent articles and correspondence respecting the Women’s Hospitals and “Human Vivisection” therein in the _Daily Chronicle_ (May, 1894) and in the _Homœopathic World_ for June.