At the end of a week of sailing, I walked up on deck one early morning into sharp, bright sunshine, blinking as I emerged from the dark companionway. One of my fellow passengers, an Army officer, was leaning on the railing looking fixedly towards the horizon. He turned as I joined him at the rail.
“France,” he said with grim finality gesturing at a gray line on the horizon. As the ship drew nearer, I could just make out the coast sparkling in the cold December sunlight. From here it was hard to believe that this was a country locked in a vicious war. The swooping gulls, the small boats bobbing up and down on the waves, gave no hint of the desperate fighting in the trenches, and the resulting casualties had that filled the newspapers at home.
While most of Chicago society had ignored the war, complaining only about postponed European summer holidays, the war had taken my attention from the first when the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated. Country after county seemed to fall like dominos on one side or another of a conflict that took on a will of its own. As my life in the yellow brick house seemed to constrict, I found an outlet in watching events in the wider world.
And that world came very close in May of 1915 when the Lusitania was sunk by a German submarine on its way from New York to Liverpool. Cynthia’s parents were among those lost at sea, and there was a huge memorial service for Mr. and Mrs. Sharpless at St. James, the traffic congested with the cars and carriages bearing the black-garbed elite of Chicago society including Papa, James and I in our new Packard with John proudly, but tentatively at the wheel.
I saw Cynthia from a distance entering the front pew with her husband, her hair in a most fashionable upsweep, and her black mourning clothes the latest in fashion. I wondered if her husband, who carefully took her arm to guide her to her seat, was the fashionable romantic of whom she had dreamed. I looked up at the high domed ceiling of the church with its beautiful and elaborate stencils, the stained-glass windows, and the intricately carved wood of the altar, all familiar to me from my first memories. I wondered if James and Papa were also thinking about Arthur, his funeral service only a blur of grief in my mind. His death was an accepted fact in our lives now, but there was still a dull ache when I thought of him.
I made no attempt to talk to Cynthia. I had never been of interest to her in any case, and whatever ties there had been to Trixie had been broken irrevocably. She was now a young married matron, while I probably looked to her like that feared of all beings– a spinster with no hope of changing that status.
But she was wrong. I had been trying to make a life of my own although not one that she, or Mamma for that matter, would have recognized. It was not that I set out to be contrary. My ideas just seemed to lead that way. What seemed logical to me brought looks of horror to the faces of my elders, and what my family wanted, seemed often silly and sometimes painful. Papa was fond of saying, “Valerie wakes up every morning with a new idea.” He did not mean it as a complement.
One of my attempts started at the breakfast table. Papa, who disappeared every morning behind the newspaper, suddenly broke the silence one morning and flung down his paper in disgust. “Those women….” was his only comment as he pushed back his chair and left the room. I was the only other one in the dining room that morning and I hurriedly went over, glancing at the page that had so affronted him. It was a picture of three women, looking very much like my mother, hatted, gloved and well-dressed. There the likeness ended. They were holding a large sign that said ‘Votes For Women’ in bold black letters. I looked around me, and then quickly folded the paper in as small a shape as I could manage and bolted from the dining room. I headed for the playroom on the third floor taking the steps as quickly as my long skirts would allow. I had contraband under my arm, and either Mamma or Papa would take that paper away from me with no hesitation. While I might be allowed to peruse the news of marriages and parties at the back of the paper, the front page was considered by Papa as far too bold for my feminine sensibilities. And Mamma did not care enough about what it contained to argue for its inclusion in our lives. But that picture drew me in and now I wanted to look at the whole paper every day.
I spent two weeks using various stratagems to slip the paper out of the dining room, until Josie finally caught me one morning as she came unexpectedly through the swinging door from the kitchen. Her eyes went to the paper under my arm, and she let out a long sigh. Hesitantly she said, “Emma and I wondered where the paper had gotten to.”
My face flushed as I wordlessly put it back on the breakfast table. I had been caught at last. Josie walked over to the table, and just stood looking at me for a moment as if deciding something. Then she said in a low voice, “Of course it is yours --- I did not mean….” And then more quietly, “it’s just that Emma and I ---enjoy looking at it.’ And then she added hastily, “Just in our spare time of course.”
“Oh Josie,” I breathed on a sigh of relief. “I didn’t know. I thought I was the only one….” And then we both smiled at one another. I had found an ally in an unexpected place. We worked out a plan for sharing the paper that was much better than my clumsy efforts at stealth. Josie would pick up the paper from the breakfast table as usual, and after she and Emma were through with it, she would take it up to the playroom and place it under the cushion on the rocking chair seat.
From the first, I just absorbed what I was reading. My primary interest was in the women who were fighting for the vote, but then I found out that there were groups of women doing other interesting things. Another activity that caught my eye were the women who were running settlement houses for the immigrants who worked in the mills, stockyards, and factories that were such a part of Chicago. I wrote furiously in my journal about what I was learning, feeling almost a part of it all as I wrote.
But after a while reading and writing was not enough, and soon I wanted someone to talk to about the events outlined in the paper. James was too remote, and Papa and Mamma would both sigh in that what-will-we–ever-do-with-her manner. I was drawn to the kitchen where the other two paper readers resided, and soon every afternoon I could manage found me there with Emma and Josie, sharing a piece of pie or cake and sipping tea Emma would make for the occasion. The time was mine as Mamma would be resting up in her room, and Papa would be sequestered in the music room.
It was not long before Nanny joined us. I should have known there would never be any secrets in that house to which she was not privy. She did not rebuke my new interest, but neither did she enter into any of our discussions. She just sat listening quietly, drinking her tea, and eating her cake, as much at home in the kitchen with Emma and Josie as she was in the rest of the house with the family. I had always thought of Nanny as the dispenser of rules, but now that I was older, I could see that she had become more of a guiding hand. If I wanted to read newspapers and discuss them with Emma and Josie, then she would quietly monitor this new development to make sure there was nothing improper in it.
My next step was to begin attending meetings about votes for woman at various locations in Chicago. I was able to slip out to these unnoticed as really no one in the house paid much attention to what I was doing in the evening. As long as I made sure that Papa’s meals were served when and how he liked them, and I visited Mamma before dinner in her room, I was free. Most talks were given under the auspices of the National Woman’s Suffrage Association which I promptly joined. The speakers ranged from our own Jane Adams to speakers from England who had led the fight there. I was late to the battle, hearing stories of women who had started as early as 1910, passing out leaflets on corners with much verbal abuse from the men they encountered.
Now two years later the movement was being taken more seriously which meant not only more publicity, but more opposition from those against it. I read one article in the paper entitled “Would you rather have a vote than a husband,” as if that were the only choice. And Papa pointed out a cartoon to me with great amusement. It showed a gathering of suffragettes all of whom were portrayed as very ugly. They were being lectured by another ugly woman under a banner that said “Husbands for Old Maids.” The caption read, “At the suffragette meetings you hear some plain things and see them too.” After chuckling some more over the drawing. he said, “Thank goodness no one in this family is involved in this rubbish.” My secret felt like a glowing ember that I hoped only I could see.
But the idea that a woman taking part in public life put marriage at risk, could even be found in subtle ways in the ranks of those committed to obtaining the vote. There were many unmarried women involved in the fight, but I still felt the old gulf between the married and the non-married. At one meeting there was a bitter divide over what the suffragettes were to call each other. One member who I knew to be unmarried suggested that all be addressed as Mrs. Another woman stood hastily and in a sharp voice proclaimed, “I am a married woman, and object to maids taking the title of Mrs. They are parading on a married woman’s preserve.” After a raucous discussion it was put to the vote, and everyone was to be called Miss which made no one happy.
There was also an effort to make sure that we unmarried “maids” were always chaperoned at any gathering by those who were married. I objected at some point, but was quietly told by an older married woman, “We cannot give the opposition anything to complain about. It would probably be better if only married women carried out this fight, but it would be unfair to those of you who have not chosen marriage.” What I appreciated the most from this statement was the assumption that being unmarried was something I might have actually chosen, rather than the result of something lacking in me that made me unable to attract a husband.
Then slowly the meetings were less about speakers than about planning to attend a great parade to be held the day before Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration in Washington, D.C. I was swept up in the excitement of the idea of woman from all over the country joining as one to march down the same route that the president would take the next day on his way to his swearing-in ceremony. I longed to be part of this great adventure but could see no way I would be allowed to travel anywhere alone, much less to take part in a voting rights parade.
Then came a special meeting which was held solely to solve this problem. All of us who wanted to go but were unable for any reason were asked to stand. I was hesitant at first and sat in my chair embarrassed by my limitations. But then as woman after woman stood up, I also took to my feet. What followed was a great pairing of those of us who faced difficulties from home with those who had no such problems. A woman who I knew had been a friend of my mother approached me. Her husband was a well-known figure in the Chicago business world and was very supportive of votes for women. Between the two of us we worked out a fiction whereby Adele Williams would call upon Mamma and ask if she could spare me for a few days to help her on the train to Washington. Her only daughter was expecting her first child, and as Mrs. Williams herself had been recently ill, she would appreciate the assistance from someone younger. Mamma was delighted to receive Mrs. Williams, and after a suitable amount of time had passed, allowed herself to be persuaded to let me go. It was only after our guest left that Mamma said with great satisfaction, “Mrs. Williams has three sons, none of whom are married. We must make sure that you take the proper clothes, and that for once you try and put yourself forward.” I just smiled.
It was a good thing that no one from my family was present to see me off on the train. The platform was alive with women, and the air was electric. There was no doubt what these women were about and what they were going to do. My heart literally sang to be a part of all this.
As March 3, 1913, dawned we were all given programs so that we would know where we were to be placed in the parade. There were to be nine bands, twenty-four floats, and more than 5,000 of us marchers. I was with Mrs. Williams in the state contingents marching behind a sign that proudly proclaimed that we were from Illinois. We were so far in the back in the line of marching women, that we could not see the beginning of the parade which the program stated was to be led by a woman lawyer dressed in white and mounted on a white horse. We were to march from the Capitol to the Treasury building where a pageant about woman’s rights was to be presented.
The parade got off to a late start, but eventually we began to move forward the sounds of one of the bands wafting back to us giving everything a festive air. All seemed to go well for about two or three blocks, and then we could see that there were serious problems ahead. The crowds lining the route, which were mostly men, began to close in on the marchers. By the time we had gone a few more blocks the men had surged onto the streets, and in some places only a single line of women could get through. Crude insults were yelled at us which the crowd of men seemed to find very funny. The policemen, who were supposed to be holding the crowd back, joined in the jokes and laughter, one coming close to me and shouting, “Why don’t you stay home where you belong.”
Then one of the men reached out a foot and tripped the woman in front of me. I helped her to her feet, and although she was not hurt, she was shaken. I then looked over at Mrs. Williams, and I could see that she was terrified. “I did not think it would be like this,” she said her eyes wide with horror.
I took her hand as we struggled forward, the men on either side urging each other on. Papa would never be here, but I knew that in his heart he would have agreed with these contorted, angry faces. I suddenly felt filled with anger and determination. I was going to make this march no matter what. I felt a hand grasping my dress and could felt hot breath that smelled of liquor and tobacco on my neck. I pushed him away and heard another protester yelled, “We have a live one here.” I pushed on, my hair coming loose from its pins, dragging a now almost comatose Mrs. Williams with me. I could hear the sounds of sirens above the jeers from the male crowd. Our group of marchers became more and more disorganized as the men pressed in on both sides, sometimes just to taunt, and sometimes to try and stop our forward progress. Then when I thought it would never end, the Treasury building loomed up before us.
A pageant was enacted on the steps of the Treasury involving an allegorical tableau written especially for the event. But I was too filled with anger to enjoy what the Chicago Times would describe the next day as “one of the most impressively, beautiful spectacles ever staged in this country.” I had been stunned by the violence of all those men, only barely held in check, towards a group of wives, mothers and daughters who just wanted to participate in the governance of their own country. I found that two ambulances had come and gone for the six hours that the march encompassed, taking over one hundred marchers to the local Emergency Hospital. At times, even the ambulance had been impeded and actually opposed, so that the doctor and driver literally had to fight to give help to the injured.
As Mrs. Williams son-in-law, stiff with masculine disapproval, saw me off on the train home the next day, I was left with a feeling that was hollow and unreal. Mrs. Williams was still recovering from the march at her daughter’s house, and we had all agreed that my family would never know that I had returned to Chicago unchaperoned.
I spent the trip home looking out the window and feeling the weight of a world that not only did not want me as I was, but was determined to undermine any attempt on my part to change the status quo. That included the coldness of Papa, the contorted angry faces of the men lining the march, and my endless struggle to find a place in the world. As the train clicked its way along the tracks heading relentlessly towards home, I knew that if I did not want to be swallowed up by my stifling life on Ellis Avenue, it would be up to me alone to fight for it. The one thing that I had learned from this trip was that it was never going to be easy. Yes, I wanted the vote, and would continue to fight for it, but I wanted something more than that. But even I did not know exactly what that was. It was just not the life that had been laid out for me since birth.