CHAPTER XIX. CONVENTIONS, EDITORS AND THE “FORERUNNER”
WOMEN AND ECONOMICS was translated into German by Frau Marie Stritt, of Dresden, president of the German National Council of Women. It had a tremendous vogue and a wide sale, but never a cent did I get for it — I forget the excuses given. At any rate it gave rise to a call for my attending the next Congress of the International Council, held in Berlin in 1904, which I gladly accepted, meeting with a warm welcome. Not even in London in 1899 did I have such an ovation. My present feelings about Germany have not the faintest personal basis; never was I more cordially received, more warmly appreciated.
My addresses were in English. The year before I had tried to learn German in preparation for the trip; only to realize anew how permanent was the weakening of my mind, how completely I had lost the power to study. But the educated Germans all speak English, and they said they could understand my English better than the other foreigners’ German. So popular was I that great crowds followed me from one hall to another; and the impression was such that arrangements were made for a lecture trip in the following year.
One pleasant expression of good feeling was given by an ardent, blue-eyed young gentleman, who approached when I was eating in a restaurant, bowed till I could see the whole back seam of his coat, and presented me with a large bouquet!
The Congress was most successful. There were said to be three thousand foreign women in Berlin, and the amazement of the German men at these multitudes of “frauen personen” was amusing. Some of them were truly exotic, as delegates from India, China and Japan; and one tall, handsome Turkish princess, followed about by what in the Arabian Nights was called “a great black.”
As in London, we were royally entertained; the Kaiserin receiving Aunt Susan and other leading delegates. There was a reception by Mrs. Charlemagne Tower, wife of the American Ambassador, a garden-party by the Grafin von Bülow, a dinner, to some of us, given by Herr Koch, who was at the time famous for his researches in tuberculosis. Grandest of all was a banquet given to the Congress by the city fathers of Berlin, an honor we were told that was appreciated even by the Kaiser. It was in a high, great hall, there was an unbelievable quantity and variety of meat, as well as some other edibles, and by every plate stood the Bear of Berlin, full of chocolates.
From the crowded glory of the Congress, where I was surrounded by admiring friends from all countries — Women and Economics, in German had been read in many lands — and all that rush of full sessions and fuller entertainments I whisked off to Italy, speeding through Switzerland in the night, alas! — and joined my daughter in Rome. She had been living there with her father for a while, and was to return to America with me.
But there were ten days in Italy, she was eager to show her mother the beauties of her second country, and had arranged an itinerary of appalling completeness. Those ten days, to my exhausted mind, seemed a sort of beautiful nightmare. I stopped over night in Florence, to call on our friend Mrs. Hackett, in whose house Women and Economics had been begun; and to call on “Vernon Lee” in her villa near by, who had written an introduction to the Italian edition. In a few full days I was shown something of Rome, then Naples.
The contrast was sudden and severe. I was exhausted beyond usual depths by that incessant whirl and rush in Berlin, and naturally somewhat elated by international admiration, and now in the twinkling of an eye I was precipitated into another country of whose language I knew not a word, and became a complete dependent on my charming daughter. In age I served as a chaperon, but in all else she commanded the expedition.
We saw things — the Baths of Caracalla, the Forum, the Catacombs, the Colosseum, various galleries and palaces, the Vatican, yes, and the ball on the tip-top of St. Peters — we went up there! All is vague and blurred. The tremendous bulk of the Colosseum did not make as much impression as the photograph of it in the hall at Aunt Harriet Stowe’s in Hartford, when I was a small child. I remember the Catacombs because of the ill behavior of the monk who showed us about. He tried to frighten us by suggestion of putting out his light, he actually laid hands on me, seizing me by the wrist, which surely is not allowed to clericals. But Katharine and I refused to be alarmed, assuring him that our friends would promptly follow us if we were delayed, and he brought us to the surface again in safety.
The Bay of Naples is also confused in my mind with many pictures, Vesuvius under its smoke cloud was but too familiar, and as to the Blue Grotto — the memory of being in it is not half so clear and lovely as what I have read of it. Capri the beautiful has stayed, however, that long, upwinding road, the oleanders on the terrace, the far blue sea. But the vividest memory is of Pompeii — being in it — walking those dead streets!
We came home together, to that first apartment, to the pleasant home life with its small housekeeping, to local lectures and the writing of articles, but by February, 1905, I was off again, to England first, then Holland, Germany, Austria, Hungary. This was as tiring as any trip I ever tried. In London a very crowded list of engagements in February weather, though I was most beautifully cared for by Mr. and Mrs. Stanton Coit with whom I stayed; then a few days in Holland, where I stayed with Dr. Aletta Jacobs, who had translated Women and Economics into Dutch. Concerning Children was there also, done by Martina Kramers. I spoke in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, and so eastward, on this itinerary: Saturday in Dresden (I did go and see the great Madonna!), Sunday in Budapest, Monday and Tuesday in Vienna, Wednesday in Munich (got an opera glass there), Thursday in Heidelberg, Friday in Mannheim, Saturday in Wiesbaden, and Sunday in Hamburg — where I quite gave out with a severe attack of bronchitis. That was “going some.”
The last European trip was in 1913, to attend the International Suffrage Convention in Budapest. Mme. Rosika Schwimmer had translated Women and Economics into Hungarian, from the German — I’m not sorry I cannot read it! — and again I found a most warm and appreciative reception. If only I could recall the names of all the kind and friendly women I have met! Women from all over the world, fine women, thoughtful progressive women! And of all the homes where I have been taken in and cared for so generously! But since I cannot remember old friends at home I certainly cannot new ones abroad — not all of them.
I think it was on this trip that I had a unique visit at the house of May Morris. She had, meanwhile, been in America on a lecture tour, and we delightedly kept her with us as much as we could, making our house — that time it was the flat on Riverside Drive — a sort of headquarters to go from and return to. She is a most charming home companion; we all loved her. As it happened she was in Spain or somewhere when I arrived in England, but urged me none the less to “make her house my home.” To this end she left a most proficient housekeeper with a husband to wait on me, and I had a most restful little visit, even without a hostess!
The year after that — the War.
So much for conventions — that was my last big one. Now for editors. I have had so many good friends among editors that I can by no means remember all of them. Even in California there were some I wrote for — the Pacific Rural Press, for the Stockton Mail (I think that was its name). There was James Barry of the Star, and Charles Lummis who was on the Los Angeles Times and afterwards editor of The Land of Sunshine, besides being a distinguished archæologist and writer of books.
In Chicago Mr. Browne of the Dial, and when I came to New York on the wave of the Women and Economics’ success, there were ever so many who asked for my work. James Brisbane Walker of the Cosmopolitan, before it became Hearst’s Cosmopolitan, was more than cordial; Margaret Sangster of the Bazaar, before it became Hearst’s Bazaar, was very kind; Mr. Towers, of Good Housekeeping, before it became Hearst’s Good Housekeeping, was greatly interested in my stuff. When they asked for contributions, afterward, I always explained that nothing would induce me to appear in anything of his. A very nice young man came to see me about continuing to work for one of these, the Cosmopolitan, I think it was, and could not understand this attitude. “You wo
uld not have to see Mr. Hearst,” he explained — as if it was merely some personal dislike; and he offered good prices, in vain.
Hamilton of the Independent used to have a good many things of mine; Samuel Merwin, when on Success, was friendly and appreciative. Arthur T. Vance, on the Woman’s Home Companion and later on the Pictorial Review, which he built up so tremendously, used much of my stuff. There were others; scattering articles far and wide, and various larger undertakings which somehow fell through. One enthusiast, starting a new magazine, engaged me to write a serial novel for him, but was punished for his rashness by the prompt failure of his venture.
I worked steadily enough, writing whether I sold or not, unless, as was far too frequent, I was unable to work at all. For all my happiness at home and various glories abroad, I remained through all these years more sick than well; that is, there was more time spent in dull distress of mind and dreary helplessness than in my natural cheerful activity. In this long uselessness, I took up solitaire as a sedative. It is just next to doing nothing, and occupies the mind enough to avoid thinking, not enough to tire.
As years passed and continuous writing and speaking developed the various lines of thought I was following, my work grew in importance but lost in market value. Social philosophy, however ingeniously presented, does not command wide popular interest. I wrote more and sold less.
Theodore Dreiser, then on the Delineator, as I remember, looked gloomily at me over his desk, and said, “You should consider more what the editors want.” Of course I should have, if I had been a competent professional writer. There are those who write as artists, real ones; they often find it difficult to consider what the editor wants. There are those who write to earn a living, they, if they succeed, must please the editor. The editor, having his living to earn, must please his purchasers, the public, so we have this great trade of literary catering. But if one writes to express important truths, needed yet unpopular, the market is necessarily limited.
As all my principal topics were in direct contravention of established views, beliefs and emotions, it is a wonder that so many editors took so much of my work for so long.
But as time passed there was less and less market for what I had to say, more and more of my stuff was declined. Think I must and write I must, the manuscripts accumulated far faster than I could sell them, some of the best, almost all — and finally I announced: “If the editors and publishers will not bring out my work, I will!” And I did. In November, 1909, I started the Forerunner.
This was a small monthly magazine, written entirely by myself. There have been other one-man magazines, but smaller and confined to one kind of writing as a rule. Mine was not very big, but its ten-by-seven pages, twenty-eight of them, seven hundred and fifty words to a page, made some twenty-one thousand to the issue. It equaled four books a year, books of thirty-six thousand words.
Each issue included one instalment of a novel, also of a book published serially; a short story, articles of various length; poems, verses, allegories, humor and nonsense, with book reviews and comment on current events. For a time it carried some advertisements, which I wrote myself, honestly recommending things I knew from experience to be good. One friend offered some advertising, I told him I did not know his stuff. He sent me some samples, I did not like it, and therefore declined it. This attitude did not make for business success.
The cost of publishing this work was $3,000 a year; its price, a dollar. If I could have achieved three thousand subscribers then I would cheerfully have done the work for nothing, but I never had sense enough — business sense, that is, to get them. About fifteen hundred was our income, and the rest of the expense I met by doing extra work in writing — outside of the “four book” demands of the magazine, and as usual, lecturing.
It was an undertaking, especially on long trips, as when abroad, or on the Pacific Coast, to keep up with the manuscript, and see that it reached the printer. We had a most sympathetic printer, a good German, Rudolph Rochow, who was very patient with my efforts at proof-reading. He liked the magazine so well that he subscribed to it! Which reminds me of an early compliment on Women and Economics — that the very type-setters read it and enjoyed it.
The range of circulation was all over this country, quite widely in Europe, and as far afield as India and Australia, but scanty in numbers. What I had banked on in starting was my really wide reputation, the advertising possibilities of continued lecturing, and the low price. But I found to my amusement that among women ten dollars for a hat is cheap while one dollar for a magazine is an unwarranted expense. One woman in a town would take it, and then proudly tell me how she circulated it among all her friends — thus saving them the cost of subscribing!
It seemed to me that out of, say thirty states, there would be a hundred women in each who cared enough for my teachings to pay a dollar a year for them, and I think so still. What was lacking was enough capacity on my part to manage the business properly. However, one cannot have everything. Production is easier than distribution, to some kinds of people at least.
As to engaging a business manager, there was not enough money in the thing at its best to pay a capable man for pushing it. I had a good advertising man for a little while, but he explained to me that for less effort he could sell a page of Scribner’s Magazine for several hundreds than a page of the Forerunner for $25.00, and left.
Similarly, I have never had a good lecture agent or manager for any length of time. Such a person, to succeed, must have a strong conviction of the value of my work, and business ability. These do not coexist. There have been many who were profoundly impressed with the importance of the work, but they were not good press-agents, and good press-agents do not care to promote small, unpopular undertakings. Also, can a press-agent be imagined who would work for a woman who would not allow the least exaggeration or misstatement?
However, regardless of difficulties, I wrote and published the Forerunner for seven years. This meant seven novels (by which I definitely proved that I am not a novelist)! and seven other books, of considerable value, as The Man-made World (widely translated in Europe). Our Brains and What Ails Them, Social Ethics, The Dress of Women, and others; enough verse for another volume, and all the rest of the varied material.
It was an immense task to get the work done, to write more than I could ever have done without some such definite compulsion, and to say exactly what I had to say, fully and freely. If possible I hope to see a “library edition,” some day, with the best of the Forerunner and all my other books, this autobiography trailing along at the end.
The real “income” from that magazine was in the letters of deep personal appreciation I received. Some I used to print in the Forerunner, without the names; some were too touchingly deep-felt to be used for business purposes. Some were funny — as when I wrote this bit:
ALIMONY
Alimony is the meanest money that is taken — by women. It is bad enough to marry for money, it is bad enough to maintain an immoral marriage for money, but to give up this mercenary commerce and then take money when no longer delivering the goods — ! There is only one meanness to be mentioned in the same breath, taking “damage” for “breach of promise.”
Some hold it is a man’s duty to “support his wife,” on the ground that her position as his wife prevents her from earning her own living. When she is no longer his wife this does not hold.
Some say that a man should provide for his children, “his” children, note. They are also hers, surely. But even if he should have the whole burden of their maintenance, that is not “alimony.” Divorcées without children, young women, quite competent to earn their livings, eagerly claim alimony, take it and live on it, never giving a thought to the nature of their positon.
But a woman’s health is often ruined; she is in no condition to earn her living, is urged. Very well. If a woman is really injured by her marriage she should sue under the employers’ liability act. She should claim damages, not alimony.
; This brief opinion so pleased a man who saw it, that he sent me an approving letter, and a subscription — for his ex-wife! I hope she liked it.
Another funny letter was received when I was sending out a bit of preliminary advertising, a tiny leaflet, something to this effect: “If you are interested in the work of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, or know any one who is, it may be had in monthly form in her magazine the Forerunner for $1.00 a year.” This was sent to all the names in my address-book, and others, but one name was evidently misplaced, for I received the following admirably expressed answer from a woman doctor in Boston: “I am not interested in the work of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, in monthly or any other form, nor do I know any one who is.”
It has always seemed to me something of a joke on the American critics of this period that not one of them, save one woman who was already a friend, should have recognized this literary tour de force by an established author as worth mentioning. Without any question as to its artistic merit, it was certainly a unique piece of work, worth recording. But that is not the first joke on critics, by any means.
In regard to the general attitude of hearers, readers and editors, toward my work, I have met a far wider and warmer welcome than I ever expected. Not aiming in the least at literary virtuosity, still less at financial success, I have been most agreeably surprised by the acceptance of so much of what I had to offer. One cannot undertake to alter the ideas, feelings and habits of the people and expect them to like it.
Consider the theses this one woman was advancing against the previous convictions of the world: in religion a practical, impersonal Deism, seeing God as a working power which asks no worship, only fulfilment:
God is a force to give way to —
God is a thing you have to Do!
with no concern for immortality or salvation, merely a carrying out of the divine will. In ethics its presentation as a wholly social science, applicable to every act in life, the measure of merit being the effect on social advancement. In economics, a change in the basis of that science, as with ethics, from the individual to the group, involving a complete reversal of most of our previous economic theories; and in what is of far more interest to most of us, our domestic and sex relationships, the claim that we as a race of animals are oversexed — abnormally developed in that function from long centuries of excessive indulgence, and that it is disadvantageous to social progress to have the feeding of humanity and the care of young children carried on by amateurs.
Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman Page 273
