The History of Woman Suffrage Volume II Part 53

The following letters were read:

26 HEREFORD SQUARE, LONDON.

DEAR MADAM:--I received your kind letter some weeks ago, and beg to apologize for the delay of this reply. Pray accept my thanks for your kind expressions regarding my small efforts to keep alive the great cause we have all so near at heart.

I regret to hear that one who, like yourself, has been a pioneer on the way when the path was the ruggedest, should for many years have been incapacitated from aiding its progress. May you now be restored fully to activity. We certainly want all true workers, albeit the progress of the cause surpa.s.ses our most sanguine expectations, on that as well as on this side of the Atlantic.

Pray accept my thanks for your kind invitation to your Convention. It will not, I think, ever be likely that I shall visit America, but I shall always read with deep interest of all that goes forward there. Accept, dear madam, my thanks for your kindness and sincere regard.

Mrs. P. W. DAVIS. FRANCES POWER COBBE.

MORNINGSIDE, EDINBURGH, Sept. 24, 1870.

MADAM:--I regret that I am unable to accept the invitation with which you have honored me, for I have been an invalid for some months, and am not sufficiently well to undertake any journey. I can a.s.sure you that the cause of woman is gradually but firmly gaining ground in Scotland, and that each month we are gaining in the right direction. At present there are six female medical students studying in our university. The College of Surgeons has thrown its doors open, without any restriction, to the female student.

The Merchants' Maiden Company has, within the last few months, opened large schools in connection with its hospitals, offering as its prizes Bursaries in the university to girls as well as boys, which I think is one of the strongest moves which as yet has been made in behalf of women. The pet.i.tion in favor of the medical education of women was largely signed in Scotland. The Society for the higher education of Women is progressing well and the professors spoke highly of the efficiency of their working pupils. In the university cla.s.ses of botany and natural history all the female students were in the honor list, and Miss Edith Pechey was the first chemistry student for the year.

With best wishes and thanks to you and your committee for your kind invitation, I am truly yours,

S. K. KINGSLEY, for HENRY KINGSLEY.

ALDERLEY EDGE, near MANCHESTER, Sept. 26, 1870.

MADAM:--I beg to thank you for the circular and your accompanying note, both inviting me to attend the Twentieth Anniversary of the inauguration of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the United States, to be held in New York on the 20th and 21st of October. I have once traveled through your country with very much pleasure, and, I hope, with some profit, and I have a strong desire to come again; but as it is impossible for me to do so now, I can not attend your meeting. I need not say that I sympathize with your object.

It seems to me to be inconsistent with the principles of your Government, and of ours, to deny to women the power to control those who legislate for them. Until they obtain this control through the suffrage, they will suffer many disadvantages and be the victims of unequal laws. How soon they will obtain it must depend mainly upon their own efforts. In the meantime the present agitation will give them an interest in many public questions, will in itself be an education in preparation for political power, and will exercise an influence in favor of more equal legislation between men and women.

Very truly yours,

Mrs. P. W. DAVIS. JACOB BRIGHT.

FROM MRS. DR. TAYLOR.

NOTTING HILL, August 10, 1870.

DEAR MADAM:--I cordially thank you for your kind request that I should attend your Convention in October. It is quite impossible for me to leave England now, but I am deputed by our London Committee for Woman's Suffrage to express their sympathy with your movement, and the hope that the efforts you are making will be crowned with success, and that Mrs.

Lucretia Mott will live to see the fruit of some of her good and n.o.ble work.

Believe me yours truly, M. TAYLOR.

FROM LADY AMBERLY.

RODBOROUGH MANOR, STROUD, July 14, 1870.

DEAR MADAM:--I thank you much for your invitation to attend your second decade meeting of the Woman's Suffrage a.s.sociation. I regret that it will not be in my power to accept it. Much as I enjoyed my visit to America, it is rather too far to undertake a second journey there. You must, indeed be glad, after twenty years of work, to see the great advance in public opinion on this question. It seems now to be progressing very fast. I have just aided in establis.h.i.+ng a committee at Stroud, and we hope soon to have one in every borough in England for female suffrage.

Yours truly, Mrs. P. W. DAVIS. KATE AMBERLY.

280 PARK ROAD, SOUTH HILL, LIVERPOOL.

DEAR MADAM:--Mrs. Butler regrets very much not to have been able to write to you before, and begs you will kindly accept her apologies as well as her thanks for your invitation to your Decade Meeting. I have the honor and privilege to be at present Mrs. Butler's Secretary. She is overwhelmed with work, and would be thankful for your sympathy in it. I wish I could give you a clear idea of the battle she has to fight, but it is very difficult for me, as a German, to put it in adequate words.

Mrs. Butler's introductory essay to "Woman's Work and Woman's Culture" only gives a faint idea of her character and strivings, compared to the grand reality of her life.

She has devoted more than fifteen years to the rescue of "fallen women"--a work that requires more active charity and self-denial than any other. The English Parliament pa.s.sed, some time ago, certain acts called the Contagious Disease Acts, as a sanitary measure, on the model of Continental legislation. To earnest, religious minds, like Mrs.

Butler's, the acts appear immoral in principle, as declaring vice a necessity; unjust, as inflicting penalties on women and letting men go free; and cruel in their application, enrolling women in a degraded cla.s.s, making their return to virtue almost impossible. I think if I tell you that by these acts a woman can be arrested by a policeman on suspicion of being a prost.i.tute, and subjected to an examination which amounts to a surgical operation, always disgraceful, sometimes injurious, even dangerous, I have made quite clear to an American lady that such a state of things can not be endured.

The best English women, with Mrs. Butler and Miss Nightingale as leaders, stand up n.o.bly for the poor, degraded women whom, with their true Christian hearts, they still recognize as sisters. Mrs. Butler, who is rather delicate, devotes all her strength to this cause at present.

She travels much, has been in the garrison towns, where, for the benefit of the soldiers, these atrocious acts are in force, and in large meetings denounces the cruelties to women. By her efforts more than sixty thousand signatures have been obtained for the repeal of the acts. Many good men, I am thankful to say, are on our side, and it is a matter of congratulation that in this point many people join who widely differ in other respects. I firmly believe that this question, which can no longer be avoided, will produce a great social reform. Women who timidly keep aloof from all political movements, after this experience of male legislation, eagerly demand the suffrage.

I am sure you will forgive Mrs. Butler for not writing herself. As soon as she has a little more breathing time she is sure to write, but she fears she will never be able to cross the Atlantic.

Yours sincerely, ROSA BRUHN.

Mrs. P. W. DAVIS.

PARIS, RUE NOLLET 92, 7th September.

DEAR MADAME:--I burned the answer I had written to you under the shameful government now fallen, and whose crimes and treasons extorted from me cries of despair for the ruin they have brought on our country.

I thank you for the generous sympathy you express toward us in our great woe. Your honored names have been blessed for this by our French hearts. We are now relieved, and though our actual peril is none the less, we are in possession of our own force. We are rid of the despicable robbers of our honor, our fortune and our lives; and in the most terrible energy, is a consolation and support. Better is it to die with honor than live dishonored. How happy you are to be born on a soil not infested by monarchical roots. They are like dog-gra.s.s, which springs up again and again, nurtured by the ignorance of our rural population. When the Prussians shall have been driven away, we may have civil struggles to fear from the emissaries of this detested monarchy. What avails experience to the blind.

I forwarded immediately your letter to George Sand. Accept my heartfelt thanks for your fraternal invitation to me.

Yes, you say right, our hearts are wholly absorbed, and no place is ours but Paris in this hour of supreme struggle and sacrifice. We shall be with you in thought only, dear sisters--you, the pioneers in woman's emanc.i.p.ation--your names are enshrined in our hearts; but this crisis here will not be useless for the cause. The women of Paris are n.o.ble and courageous; one may hear them in every group encouraging the men to desperate resistance. Everywhere they form societies for the relief of the distressed and the wounded.

Many have pet.i.tioned for this revolution, and have instigated men to the accomplishment of it. Many will take arms in defense and fight; yea, fight with all the strength which desperation lends, should the struggle reach our streets.... They have already proved this sort of courage.

Men feel now how very necessary their co-operation is, and after the crisis I hope they will not forget it. But it is better that woman herself should learn to have a will, an active opinion in public affairs, and this disposition will, doubtless, continue to increase, as it has done for the last two years.

Hail, dear and valiant sisters; blessed be your work in which my heart, and many of those around me unite.

ANDRE LEO.

Mesdames PAULINA W. DAVIS, LUCRETIA MOTT, MARTHA WRIGHT, ELIZABETH C. STANTON, ISABELLA B. HOOKER.

NAPLES, October 10, 1870.

DEAR MRS. DAVIS:--I have only now received your letter, or I should sooner have expressed how highly I am gratified by the honor you do me in asking my opinions with regard to woman suffrage. I can not more strongly show my sympathy with my accomplished sisters in the United States, than by saying that I signed a pet.i.tion to the British Parliament, requesting permission for women to vote at the elections. It was rejected, for the opposition and prejudices in the men of Great Britain are still very strong against any change in our condition. We have, however, gained a most important privilege lately, chiefly through the liberality of the University of Cambridge, in having the opportunity of acquiring every branch of knowledge, literary and scientific.

We owe much to the society of which you are the secretary, for persevering in our behalf for twenty years under strong opposition. The progress of civilization will ultimately emanc.i.p.ate half the human race from the low position in which we have hitherto been kept. Accept, dear Mrs. Davis, my thanks for your letter, and believe me,

Very sincerely yours, MARY SOMERVILLE.

VICTORIA PRESS, LONDON, Oct. 3, 1870.