The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2): Including Public Addresses, Her Own Letters and Many From Her Contemporaries During Fifty YearsHarper, Ida Husted
History
The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2): Including Public Addresses, Her Own Letters and Many From Her Contemporaries During Fifty Years
Harper, Ida Husted
Anthony, Susan B. (Susan Brownell), 1820-1906
Rachel and I came up from Basingstoke on Sunday to attend a small
reception at Mrs. Jacob Bright's. Her husband has championed woman
suffrage in Parliament for years, and she has led the few who have
dared say, "And married women, too, should have the franchise."
When the powers that be forbade her to include married women in the
Parliamentary Suffrage Bill now pending, Mrs. Bright withdrew and
started a bill for their property rights, which was passed last
session and is now in force.
[Illustration: Autograph: "With kindest regards from Mr. Bright and
myself, yours very truly, Ursula M. Bright"]
Monday morning we went to Bedford Park and spent two hours at
Moncure D. Conway's. His charming wife read us what a delegate here
from the American Unitarians says of Emerson, Alcott, Frothingham
and George Ripley--that all are wearying of their early theories
and theologies and returning to the old faith. Today I had an hour
with William Henry Channing, and he virtually told me this was true
of himself! I exclaimed: "Do you mean to say that you have returned
to the belief in the immaculate conception of Jesus and in the
miracles--that you no longer explain all these things as you used
to do in your Bible readings at Rochester?" He replied: "I never
disbelieved in miracles. Man's levelling and tunnelling the
mountains is a miracle." Well, I was stunned and left. Even if all
these grand men, in old age, or when broken in body, decide that
the conclusions of their early and vigorous manhood were false,
which shall we accept as most likely to be true--the strong or the
weakened thought? It is very disheartening if we are so constituted
that with our deepest, sincerest study we grope and dwell in error
through our threescore and ten, and after those allotted years find
all we believed fact to be mere hallucination. It is--it must
be--simply the waning intellect returning to childish teachings.
That evening we visited the House of Commons and heard several
members speak as we peeped through the wire latticework of the
ladies' cage. The next afternoon we attended a large reception at
Mrs. J. P. Thomasson's, daughter of Margaret Bright Lucas and wife
of a member of Parliament. There we met the leading suffrage women.
Wednesday morning I went to Tunbridge Wells--thirty miles--to see
Mrs. Rose, who is trying the waters there in hope of relief.... I
should have told you that I dined on Sunday with Margaret
Lucas--John Bright's sister--and lunched today with Mrs. Mellen,
mother-in-law of General Palmer, of Colorado, president of the Rio
Grande R. R.--an elegant and wealthy woman.
LONDON, June 22.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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