All this comes up in my mind as I recall that first revisit to San Francisco. But I had friends there, too, and now saw some of them. There I called on one well-remembered, Dr. Van Orden, and paid a bill four years old; called with Harriet Howe on my Oakland landlady, and paid her $140.00, a long over-due rent bill. She was indeed astonished. There was a gas bill, $20.00, a note in full, $70.00, another $25.00, and a little milk bill, $5.00 — he was astonished too. Little by little, I was clearing things off.
Before going south I visited the E. A. Rosses in Palo Alto, always a pleasure; and then to Pasadena. December 23rd— “Katharine to meet me — dear girl!” Up in the foot-hills, by Mt. Brown, is “Las Casitas,” a little mesa all to itself, “developed” in a boom period, but at that time a boarding-place kept by friends, Mrs. Viali and her daughter, Mrs. Evans, whose child Priscilla was one of Katharine’s playmates. Here I stayed all winter, writing Human Work, the first attempt.
This is the greatest book I have ever done, and the poorest — that is, the least adequately done. It is a piece of social philosophy, as to the nature of human life and its economic processes; its theories, if accepted, and better carried out by later thinkers, will completely alter the base of our economic science, and so our conduct. So far it has made practically no impression. Neither did the work of Mendel, for some time. It is a matter of many years, and of successive contributive thinkers, to establish any large and basic change in human thought, and this is a very large one.
It was a grief to find in Pasadena some close friends of former years now cold to me on the ground that I was an “unnatural mother.” This has always puzzled me, yet it should not, knowing, as well I do, how most of us do not think, but merely feel. If they had thought, surely it should have been clear that it would have been of no benefit to her to keep that dear child away from her father and a pleasant home, to drag her over land and sea on lecture trips, or board her with strangers while I traveled. That might have been “natural,” but not good for the child.
I suppose one reason for this long misjudgment was failure to allow for that permanent nerve-ruin, that recurrent paralyzing weakness which prevented any steady work. I plunged about the world, a species of humanitarian prophet, giving my message as best I could, and collapsing with distressing frequency, but at no time did I earn enough to make a home for one, much less for two. And surely a boarding-school would have been inferior to a father.
This was a very happy season for me. Katharine was close by, and spent a good deal of time at Las Casitas with me. We tramped the hills together, read, played games — it was a joy.
The book grew slowly. Day after day I sat out in the bright air, on a little hilltop near by, with the two dogs of the household one on either side, as close as they could crowd. The big bull-dog, Jack, Mrs. Viali said would go with me; that he thought it was his business to take care of the boarders; but Tommy, a little Skye, “is my dog,” she said, “he never leaves me.” But Tommy came every day, and added to his recusancy by lying outside my door when I was upstairs in my room.
The last note of the year is “Get well! Get well! Get well! And do good work. Pay all debts if possible,” and the new diary opens as usual with a restatement of faith and purpose:
Because God, manifesting himself in Society, calls for ever fuller and more perfect forms of expression, therefore I, as part of Society and part of God owe my whole service to the Social development.
FOR 1899
For this New Year — and last,
Of the century nearly past —
Help me to grow!
Help me to fill the days
With deeds of loving praise
For the splendid truths I know.
Help me to finish clear
All claims of the old year —
And all behind;
And to meet all duties new
With loving service due
And a steadfast mind.
A clear and steadfast mind!
Help me, O God, to find
Such hold on you
As may dispel disease,
That I may work in peace,
Work deep, work true.
Slowly so long — and dark!
Down at the lowest mark —
The light grows now!
God! I am seeking still
To learn and do your will —
Still show me how!
CHAPTER XVIII. THREE FLATS AND A HOUSE — 1900-1922
ON April 13th of the new century I left that lovely spot on the foot-hills of the Sierra Madres, for San Francisco, where I visited for a little and had some necessary surgery done. This required boring through the upper jaw, ether being used for the anesthetic. Cheerfully imbibing the same (I have always delighted in anesthesia: it is the only complete rest I have ever known) as the soft tide of unconsciousness arose, as I “died,” it seemed to my departing faculties that it was necessary to make a confession of faith; so I cried in a loud voice — or thought I did!— “I believe in God and Life is good!”
From there to Ogden, Salt Lake and Provo, lecturing again among my Mormon friends. That perforation in the jaw was not a good traveling companion, nor did it help in lecturing. Various friendly doctors had a hand in it, almost literally, but mostly I attended to it myself — had to. Dr. Van Orden had equipped me with a few delicate implements, surgical gauze, and medicine, and I rather enjoyed fussing with it. In Denver, April 30th, the diary says, after the usual “Very tired,” “Am taking strychnia to keep me up, bromide to sleep on, and in my mouth peroxide of hydrogen, zymocide, borolyptol, iodine and iodoform gauze. Also cocaine on cotton.” Not all at once, these! That wretched hole made me a good deal of trouble for a long time but ultimately got well, and a neat pivot replaced the previous incumbent.
Eastward to Chicago, where I rented a room for a while, near my kind Mrs. Dow. There was a short visit in Fargo, North Dakota, with the family of Judge Charles F. Amidon — among the dearest people I have ever known. Poor as I was in some ways, none was ever richer in friends. As I look over these old diaries, and see how many were kind to me, in how many places, it becomes understandable how I lived so long on so little. Complete absence of personal desires, and absolute confidence that I should be taken care of, made lack of money a matter of laughable indifference.
Monday, June 4th, in Milwaukee, I attended the Biennial meeting of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs. The Plankinton was their headquarters, a hotel frequently used for political conventions. As those fine-looking, well-dressed women from all parts of the Union filled the halls and parlors, and the streets, too, going bareheaded in streams between hotel and theater where they held their sessions, the men of Milwaukee gazed and wondered. They stood packed in the passages leading to the barber-shop or the bar, staring and silent. Never had they seen women, en masse, going about by themselves, not with, for or to any man, but “on their own” entirely. It amazed those German men.
At these meetings, well-conducted though they were, I was impressed anew with the callous indifference of speakers to the rights of others, so much that I wrote a bit of caustic verse on the subject!
THE SPEAKER’S SIN
It was a lovely lady,
With manners of the best;
She was finely educated,
She was exquisitely dressed.
With a topic philanthropic
She arose to fill her place
In the program which was builded
For to elevate the race.
She arose with highest purpose
Her noble best to do —
There were seven other ladies
Who were on the program too.
The lady read her paper
Till her hearers wore a frown;
The chairman was a lady
And she would not ring her down.
And when the chairman hinted
That her limit long was o’er —
The lady with the paper
Asked for just a
minute more.
The hearers all were ladies —
What could the hearers do?
There were seven other ladies
Upon the program too!
And those seven other ladies
Had to summon grace sublime,
To smile and wait in silent state
While the speaker stole their time.
Eight papers in a two-hour space
Gives each a fair amount;
Could not the lady read the score
Of those who also claimed the floor?
Could not the lady count?
Did she imagine that her theme
Was the only subject there?
Or that her treatment was the best
And no one wished to hear the rest?
Was it that she forgot their feeling
Who had to lose what she was stealing?
Or that she did not care?
I returned to Chicago June 8th, and on the eleventh went to Detroit, as usual to the house of a friend, where I was met by my cousin, G. H. Gilman of New York, and we were married — and lived happy ever after. If this were a novel, now, here’s the happy ending.
The Episcopalian pastor of my friends there naturally refused to perform the ceremony, but we found a Unitarian minister who said— “Charlotte Perkins Stetson? Why certainly, she has preached in my church.”
A few pleasant days in Detroit, then a trip to Toronto, and down the rapids and through the islands to Montreal. Here we saw a ghastly game of lacrosse, wherein, directly against the rules, men broke one another’s heads with their long sticks. A victim of this foul play would be carried off bleeding, come back sewed and bandaged, and those courteous antagonists would hit him again in the same place! It was a very important game between a Canadian team and an Irish, with a perhaps differing sense of honor.
Down Lake Champlain we drifted to Caldwell, charmingly quiet at that early season; we were the only guests in a large hotel. The beauty of this honeymoon was somewhat marred by my trying to read Human Work to Houghton! He bore it nobly. If one marries a philosopher or a prophet there are various consequences to be met; Xanthippe loses her temper over it, Kadijah does not, I believe, complain, but it never is wholly easy.
For all my winter’s labor the work was by no means ready for publication, so it was postponed and I undertook something shorter. Concerning Children was to be the next book. We spent the rest of the summer at Cold Spring Harbor, Houghton commuting.
It was a lovely summer. The little pond across the road gave us our morning bath, cool, still, soft wisps of white mist still curling here and there in the smooth dark water, and the early sun striking long, down-slanting shafts of light between the trees on the high eastern slope. Katharine joined us at the end of July. It was my turn to have her now.
We had a happy time, all of us. The work went on pretty well, though the “downs” still frequent; nothing, not even happiness, gave me back my brain power. Still the book was finished by the twenty-fifth of August; it was not a large one.
At various times I went in town house-hunting, and by August 23rd I was able to note: “We are to have the top flat in The Avondale, 76th st., and Amsterdam Ave. Good!” It was good, too. That house was built by an intelligent Scotchman, our excellent landlord. There was light on all three sides of our end of the narrow building, seven rooms, with grated fireplaces in two of them.
We moved in on August 31, with only the rudiments of furnishing, picnicking till things could be got together. Our rent was to begin with October; in those days they used to give the tenant a month free! September 1st I note: “A rather sleepless night on account of the noise.” Noise! There was not even asphalt on Amsterdam then, it was stone-paved. Huge, endless lines of telegraph poles with their thick network of wires obscured the view. Seventy-sixth Street was pleasant enough, but those Amsterdam corners had a saloon on each one except ours!
While living there I was horrified to find myself taxed, on personal property. My husband explained that it was the method in New York for the assessor to guess at the possessions of a citizen by his location; that since my name was in the directory — which by the way a married woman’s is not unless she insists on it — he had concluded I was a widow living on 76th Street, and estimated accordingly. The further process was for the overtaxed person to go down to the assessor’s office and “swear off” the over-charge, which I found much amusement in doing. When he found by solemn questions how pitifully scant was my personal property, how minute my income, the whole tax was remitted.
We presently secured table-board at the end of the block, next door to Columbus Avenue where ran the “L” on which Houghton went and came. This house was kept by Mrs. Barthelmess, a handsome, able woman, who before long gave up that business and went on the stage. She had some success there, and her son, Richard Barthelmess, is now a well-known “movie star,” an actor of real power. Then he was a darling child, evidently not liking the boarding-house life at all.
But we liked it. We had “a home without a kitchen,” all the privacy and comfort, none of the work and care — except for beds and a little cleaning. We all went out together to breakfast, then Houghton went to his office and Katharine to her school, while I had the morning for my work. I met Katharine for lunch there, and at night we met Houghton at the train and dined together in peace. We had a table to ourselves, but found much entertainment in the talk of the other boarders. When we had a visitor all that was necessary was another $5.00 a week, no trouble at all. That was all it cost in 1900 — $5.00 a week for good table-board. Our monthly rent was $40.00.
My further life in New York covered twenty-two years. Before this I had tried it repeatedly, boarding at mother’s, had been as well there as anywhere else, and as happy. I came to it as a settled home with cheerful enthusiasm. Here was home at last, a very pleasant one, the best of husbands, and at last my daughter — I was very happy. I brought to the city a large, undiscriminating love of Humanity, without a shadow of race-prejudice or preference. I had much to learn.
Work opened well. My publishers were grieved at my change of name— “You will lose money by it,” they explained, and were not impressed by my protest— “Do you think I would keep one man’s name after I had married another, just for money!” I had kept the name of Stetson after getting my divorce, on Katharine’s account, having no faintest intention of ever marrying again. It would have saved trouble had I remained Perkins from the first, this changing of women’s names is a nuisance we are now happily outgrowing.
The new book went well, was warmly received and widely noticed. I had plenty more coming, and still Human Work to do, on which I soon reëmbarked. Also, there were magazine articles from time to time. In sheer bulk of material I have written much more than the twenty-five volumes I hope to see on my shelf some day; but then there are plenty of newspapermen who have done far more.
Such writing as I have done in those years of free delivery was easy work. An average article, about three thousand words, took three hours to do, a day’s work. Sometimes I would have to copy it, or change a little, but usually it was written and sent — like a letter. This is not, in the artistic sense, “literature.” I have never made any pretense of being literary. As far as I had any method in mind, it was to express the idea with clearness and vivacity, so that it might be apprehended with ease and pleasure.
I had a little talk once with Mary Austin, the beauty of whose writing is well known, in which I disclaimed any pretension to literature, but said I thought I had “a style of my own.” She demurred, hardly thought it style, but granted distinction, adding kindly, “I do think, however, that if you gave your mind to it, you could write.” This was certainly encouragement. And presently for my own amusement I made a little parody, which, if one recognizes the original, surely proves her judgment correct.
Human Work, however, was not to be reeled off like my usual stuff. Here was an enormous change of thought, altering the relationships of all sociologi
cal knowledge. As in astronomy we had to change from the geo-centric to the solar-centric theory of our planetary system, with complete revision of earlier ideas, so here was a change from the ego-centric to the socio-centric system of sociology, with wide resultant alterations in prior concepts. Furthermore, it was a treatise so large in scope as to cover all human life, and in the four times I did it over I never knew where to begin.
I worked over it all that year, still it would not do. A third, and I was not satisfied. Each time I began in a new place, with equal uncertainty. J. A. Hobson, the English economist whom I had met over there and told about this theory, was in New York and came to see me. He was eager to hear about the book. I spent about an hour on it, going over the general argument and its buttresses, while he walked the floor in growing excitement. “You must publish, you must bring it out,” he insisted, “we have nothing like it in sociology.” I told him it was not done, that it did not suit me. “It never will suit you,” he said, “you must bring it out anyway.”
He was quite right. I worked on it a fourth year, was still unsatisfied, and did publish it, in 1904. Again I tried to do it better some ten years later in my magazine the Forerunner, but that was worse. So it remains, merely a starter, later thinkers must make it plainer.
In the meantime, during those four years, I had written The Home, which is the most heretical — and the most amusing — of anything I’ve done. To quote from another later work:
You may talk about religion with a free and open mind,
For ten dollars you may criticise a judge;
You may discuss in politics the newest thing you find;
And open scientific truth to the reluctant mind,
But there’s one place where the brain must never budge!
Oh! the Home is utterly perfect!
And all its works within.
To say a word about it —
To criticise or doubt it —
To seek to mend or move it —
To venture to improve it —
Is the unpardonable sin!
Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman Page 271
