The Complete History of the Women's Suffrage Movement in U.S.. Jane Addams
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minister to a feeling of class pride, which they felt was sinful to cultivate in their children. And this I am glad to remember, because it gave me a feeling of sympathy for the patient and struggling poor, which but for this experience I might never have known." Under such humane influences, with such ancestors and associations, in the public schools, in the Friends' meeting, on the adventurous island, and in the suburbs of Boston, the child passed into girlhood, with lessons of industry and self-denial well learned, and with her life all before. She lived in a period when women of genius had vindicated their right to be recognized in art, science, literature, and government, and through many of the great events that have made the United States a Nation. It was such a combination of influences that developed Lucretia Mott into the exceptional woman she was.
In an unlucky hour her father endorsed for a friend, and to save his honor, was compelled to lose his property. It was a blow from which he did not recover, and henceforward much of the support of the family devolved upon the mother, who had remarkable tact, energy, and courage. Both parents were ambitious for their children, and did all they could for their education; that was one thing about which all Quakers were tenacious. In her fourteenth year Lucretia and her elder sister were sent to "The Nine Partners," a Friends boarding-school in Dutchess County, New York, and there pursuing her studies with patient zeal, she remained two years without once going home for a holiday vacation. At fifteen, a teacher having left, Lucretia was made an assistant, and at the end of the second year, was tendered the place of teacher, with the inducement beside, that her services would entitle a younger sister to her education.
Her well-balanced character enabled her to meet with calmness, all life's varied trials, of which she had her full share. As one of eight children in her father's house, with his financial embarrassments, and sudden death: and afterward with five children of her own, and her husband's reverses; Lucretia's heroism and strength of mind were fairly tested. In both of these financial emergencies, she opened a school, and by her success as a teacher, bridged over the chasm.
In her eighteenth year, Lucretia Coffin and James Mott, according to Quaker ceremony, became husband and wife, the result of an attachment formed at boarding-school, which proved to be an exceptionally happy union, and through their long wedded life, of over half a century, they remained ever loyal to one another. James Mott, though a Quaker, was in all personal qualities the very opposite of his wife. He had the cool judgment, she the enkindling enthusiasm. He had the slow, sure movement; she the quick, impulsive energy. He enjoyed nothing more than silence; she nothing more than talking. The one was completely the complement of the other. She possessed a delicate love of fun, and was full of dry humor. Once during a visit from her husband's brother, Richard Mott, of Toledo, Ohio, who like James was a very silent man, she became suddenly aware of their absence and started to look for them. Finding them seated on either side of a large wood fire in the drawing-room, she said, "Oh, I thought you must both be here it was so quiet."
In speaking of them, Robert Collyer says: "If James and Lucretia had gone around the world in search of a mate, I think they would have made the choice which heaven made for them. They had lived together more than forty years when I first knew them. I thought then, as I think now, that it was the most perfect wedded life to be found on earth. They were both of a most beautiful presence. He, large, fair, with kindly blue eyes, and regular features. She, slight, with dark eyes and hair. Both, of the sunniest spirit; both, free to take their own way, as such fine souls always are, and yet their lives were so perfectly one that neither of them led or followed the other, so far as one could observe, by the breadth of a line. He could speak well, in a slow, wise way, when the spirit moved him, and the words were all the choicer because they were so few. But his greatness, for he was a great man, lay still in that fine, silent manhood, which would only break into fluent speech as you sat with him by the bright wood fire in winter, while the good wife went on with her knitting, putting it swiftly down a score of times in an hour, to pound a vagrant spark which had snapped on the carpet, or as we sat under the trees in the summer twilight. Then James Mott would open his heart to those he loved, and touch you with wonder at the depth and beauty of his thoughts; or tell you stories of the city where when a young man he lived, or of the choice humors of ancient Quakers, who went through the world esteeming laughter vain, and yet set the whole world which knew them laughing at their quaint ways and curious fancies."
In his young days, James Mott was a teacher; later on he engaged in the cotton business, but abandoned it when it was becoming remunerative, because of its connection with slave labor. He finally took up the wool business, and retired with a competency some years before his death, which enabled them to take a trip to Europe, and afterward live the life of leisure they desired, indulging their literary tastes. James Mott wrote a very creditable book of their travels, and Lucretia carried enough observations of foreign life in her head to fill folios.
Mrs. Mott was a housekeeper of the old school, in so far as everything from garret to cellar passed under her supervision. She took the entire care of her children, and although with remarkable economy supplying the wants and guarding against the wastes of a large family, she did not allow these necessary cares to absorb all her time and thought, but cultivated the talents entrusted to her in broader interests than family life. She felt she had duties in the Church and the State as well as the home. The time most wives and mothers spend in gaiety and embroidery, she spent in reading and committing to memory choice thoughts in poetry and prose. The money others spent in filling their homes with bric-a-brac she spent in books, and the result proves the superior wisdom of her course.
When conventions were held in Philadelphia, her house was always filled with guests. As presiding officer in a woman's convention nothing escaped her notice. She felt responsible that everything should be done in good taste and order. Her opinions on woman's nature, sphere, destiny, were thoroughly digested, and any speaker that did not come up to her exact ideal, was taken delicately to task when her turn came to speak. As some one remarks, "she had a playful way of tapping a speaker in a public meeting, as a skillful driver touches his horses with the tip end of his whip." Once, says Wendell Phillips, she tried the experiment on me when I had ventured to say that one of the drawbacks to the movement, was the indifference of women themselves. Other speakers too expressed sentiments on which Mrs. Mott differed from them. When she arose she touched them all round with her gentle raillery, offending no one, just pronounced enough in her speech to be effective, and in no way compromising herself. Glancing at the platform on one occasion in Philadelphia, the central figure, is Lucretia Mott in Quaker costume, in the zenith of her refined beauty; around her are grouped James Mott, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Robert Purvis, Charles Burleigh, Ernestine L. Rose, Frances Dana Gage, Hannah Tracy Cutler, Lydia Mott, Martha C. Wright, Ann Preston, Sarah Pugh, Hannah Darlington, Mary Grew, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Susan B. Anthony, and Lucy Stone, as refined and remarkable an assembly of men and women as could be found in any European court. Yet these were the people so hated and ridiculed by the press and the pulpit, whose grand utterances and spicy debates were stigmatized as "the maudlin sentimentalisms of unsexed men and women."
But let us follow these friends to the home of Lucretia Mott. A large house on Arch Street, like all buildings in the city of brotherly love, with white shutters, marble cappings and steps, and dining-room on the second floor of the rear building. There are our stern reformers, round the social board, as genial a group of martyrs as one could find. Without the shadow of a doubt as to the rightfulness of their own position, and knowing too that the common sense of the nation was on their side, they made merry over the bigotry of the Church, popular prejudices, conservative fears, absurd laws and customs hoary with age. How they did hold up in their metaphysical tweezers the representatives of the dead past that ever and anon ventured upon our platform. With what peals of laughter their assumptions and contradictions were chopped into mince meat. On this occasion, William Lloyd Garrison occupied the seat of honor at Mrs. Mott's right hand, and led the conversation which the hostess always skillfuly managed to make general. When seated around her board, no two-and-two side talk in monotone was ever permissible; she insisted that the good things said should be enjoyed by all. At the close of the meal, while the conversation went briskly on, with a neat little tray and snowy towel, she washed up the silver and china as she uttered some of her happiest thoughts. James Mott at the head of the table maintained the dignity of his position, ever ready to throw in a qualifying word, when these fiery reformers