By now, I was almost accustomed to hearing the firm voice
intrude into my kitchen thoughts, followed by the vision of the gray-haired
woman dressed in black. Yet today Susan’s exclamation took me by surprise.
Rice pudding!
Good heavens. What do you mean?
Well, it is clear to me that you are standing in front of
the cabinet wondering what to make for dessert. I was often in that very same
situation in Mrs. Stanton’s kitchen as I decided what to make for her children.
Why would you have to do that?
We were, at once, friends in thought and sympathy. In the
division of labor we exactly complemented each other. Mrs. Stanton (I always
called her that) and I were united in our determination to promote woman’s
rights, act against slavery, and work for temperance. We quickly discovered
each other’s gifts toward those tasks. Mrs. Stanton has said that she is the
better writer and I am the better critic. Others have said that she forged the
lightning bolts and I threw them.
I would move into the Stanton household for a few days,
weeks, even months. It was the best way for us to accomplish our common cause.
I became part of the family. Especially
in those first years, when her children were younger, I would take over some of
the daily child-rearing duties, including making their breakfasts and dinner
desserts.
How did you divide the writing?
I would arrive at the Stanton home--first in Seneca Falls,
later in New York City, or Tenafly, New Jersey--my little portmanteau stuffed
with facts and statistics. I would be desperate to have Mrs. Stanton take up
her pen to prepare an address for me to give to a temperance organization, the teacher’s
association, or a woman’s rights program. We would sit up far into the night arranging material and planning our work. The next day Mrs. Stanton sought the quietest spot in the house and began writing. I would give the children their breakfast, start the older ones to school, make the dessert for dinner, and trundle the babies up and down the walk, rushing in occasionally to help the writer out of a vortex.
In the midst of such exhilarating scenes we wrote addresses
for temperance, anti-slavery, educational, and woman’s rights conventions. Here
we forged resolutions, protests, appeals, petitions, agricultural reports, and
constitutional arguments. Yet there was the family to be cared for.
How many children did she have?
When we met in 1851, I was 31 and Mrs. Stanton was 36 and there were three trouble-making boys, ages nine, seven, and six and the baby Theodore. By 1859 there were seven of them: five boys and two girls.
How many children did she have?
When we met in 1851, I was 31 and Mrs. Stanton was 36 and there were three trouble-making boys, ages nine, seven, and six and the baby Theodore. By 1859 there were seven of them: five boys and two girls.
 |
| Elizabeth Cady Stanton at age 41 with daughter Harriot |
Did Mrs. Stanton look forward to your demanding arrivals?
I am certain that she did. I’ll read you the letter she
wrote shortly after her second daughter and next-to-last child, Harriot, was
born in June 1856. “Your servant is not dead but liveth. Imagine me, day in and
day out watching, bathing, dressing, nursing and promenading the precious
contents of a little crib in the corner of my room. I pace up and down these
two chambers of mine like a caged lioness longing to bring nursing and
housekeeping cares to a close. …come here and I will do what I can to help you
with your address if you will hold the baby and make the puddings. … now that I
have two daughters I feel fresh strength to work for women.”
The one thought I wish to express is how little my friend
and I could accomplish alone. I used to take the little wagon and draw the
children around the garden while Mrs. Stanton wrote speeches, resolutions,
petitions, etc., and I never expect to know any joy in the world equal to that
of going up and down from yard to study, getting editorials written. Then I
would engage halls, advertise, and give these speeches.
We advanced from our speeches and petitions to write the History
of Woman’s Suffrage. We thought it would
be one volume, and as we celebrated the work and all of the women who carried
the cause along with us, it became three large volumes, sharing the lives and
thoughts of those who were part of the struggle.
As the children grew older we would spend our evenings next
to the bright wood fire in the hearth, darn the boys’ socks, and mend their
clothes while we plotted and planned. Often we read aloud the scourgings and
criticisms of us in letters and papers and would laugh, confident that the
positions of our opponents were clearly untenable.
Not always. As we worked, each at her own desk across from
each other in the Tenafly house study, at times our disputes ran so high that
we would put down our pens. One of us would sail out of one door and the other
out of the opposite. We would walk around the estate and soon rejoin, walking
down the hill, arm in arm, to a seat where we often went to see the distant
hills and lovely valleys, and to watch the sun go down in all his glory.
Can you describe your accomplishments?
In our day, we saw a few states allow women to vote in all
elections. We built an organization that continued beyond our personal involvement to work for universal woman’s suffrage. We successfully promoted property
acts allowed women to keep control of their own finances and custody of their
children in case of divorce. We saw more women become college educated and
enter into all manner of professions, from physicians to typesetters, and be
accepted in those jobs.
I want you to understand that I could never have done the
work I did if I had not had that woman at my right hand. We stirred up the work
to recognize the rights of women. The older we grew, the more keenly we felt
the humiliation of disfranchisement, the more vividly we realized its
disadvantages in every department of life, and most of all in the labor market.
So although we have made progress, there is still much to be done.
Mrs. Stanton’s daughter Margaret said it better than I:
“They have fought a hard battle and opened to the young women of coming
generations paths of usefulness and happiness, and secured for them positions
of honor and emolument such as they will never attain for themselves. Let us
then who enter into this glorious inheritance sing our divinest songs of praise
to those who through much tribulation shall have won for us an equal place
everywhere on this green earth.”
We little dreamed when we began this contest, optimistic with the hope and buoyancy of youth, that half a century later we would be compelled to leave the battle for another generation of women to finish. These strong young women would take our place and complete our work. There grew to be an army of them, where we were just a handful.
We little dreamed when we began this contest, optimistic with the hope and buoyancy of youth, that half a century later we would be compelled to leave the battle for another generation of women to finish. These strong young women would take our place and complete our work. There grew to be an army of them, where we were just a handful.
Alex Soyer, famous nineteenth-century cookbook author,
described the role of children’s nutrition in his 1851 book The Modern
Housewife: “change of food is to the stomach what change of air is to the
general health, and, of course, with children these changes must be effected
with judgment, and their food administered in small quantities; for you must
observe when children are well brought up with regard to their meals, they
possess extraordinary organs of digestion, the proof of which is that they
require feeding oftener than a full-grown person, and never appear to be tired
of eating.”
Rice Pudding
2 1/2 tablespoons rice
1 1/2 cups milk
1 small piece lemon peel—1 inch by1/2 inch
1/2 cinnamon stick
1 small piece bay leaf about1/2-inch square
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 tablespoon butter
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1 tablespoon sugar
In a small saucepan combine the rice, milk, lemon peel,
cinnamon, and bay leaf. Bring to a boil and then simmer over very low heat
until the rice is tender, about 20 to 30 minutes. Stir frequently so that the
rice does not stick to the bottom of the pot. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.
Lightly grease a 1-quart casserole dish.
Remove the lemon peel, cinnamon stick, and bay leaf from the milky rice
mixture. Temper the egg by briskly stirring into it some of the hot milk from the
rice pot. Then return this warm egg milk mixture to the pot. Add the
butter, nutmeg, and sugar. Pour this mixture into the casserole and bake until
firm, about 30 minutes. Serve at room
temperature or chilled. Keep leftovers refrigerated for up to two days.
Recipe adapted from The Modern Housewife by Alexis Sawyer
published in New York in 1851
Source note: The
description of the Anthony’s and Stanton's working style and final paragraph were written by
Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s daughter
Margaret Stanton Lawrence for a special edition of The New Era magazine
devoted to her mother. The article “As a Mother” was written October 1, 1885 and published in the magazine on
November 18, 1885.
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