Elizabeth Cady Stanton: Reminiscences

Part 2: Our First Meeting

More of this Feature • Part 1: Introduction • Part 2: Our First Meeting • Part 3: Pronunciamentoes • Part 4: Tableau of Mother and Susan • Part 5: How Mrs. Worden Voted • Part 6: A Dinner Party • Part 7: Mobs from Buffalo to Albany • Part 8: A Fugitive Mother and Child • Part 9: The Bloomer Costume • Original pagination

Related Resources • Woman Suffrage 1848-1864 • About Elizabeth Cady Stanton • About Susan B. Anthony • Long Road to Suffrage • ECS: Comments on Genesis • ECS: Solitude of Soul • Stanton: Quotations • 1894 Bloomers • More Documents

Elsewhere on the Web • Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation • Votes for Women: 1850-1920

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It was in the month of May, of 1851, that I first met Miss Anthony. That was to both of us an eventful meeting, that in a measure henceforth shaped our lives. As our own estimate of ourselves and our friendship may differ somewhat from that taken from an objective point of view, I will give an extract from what a mutual friend wrote of us some years ago:

Miss Susan B. Anthony, a well-known, indefatigable and life-long advocate of temperance, anti-slavery, and woman's rights, has been, since 1881, Mrs. Stanton's intimate associate in reformatory labors. These celebrated women are of about equal ages, but of the most opposite characteristics, and illustrate the theory of counterparts in affection by entertaining for each other a friendship of extraordinary strength.

Mrs. Stanton is a fine writer, but a poor executant; Miss Anthony is a thorough manager, but a poor writer. Both have large brains and great hearts; neither has any selfish ambition for celebrity; but each vies with the other in a noble enthusiasm for the cause to which they are devoting their lives.

Nevertheless, to describe them critically, I ought to say that opposites though they be, each does not so much supplement the other's difficiencies [sic] as augment the other's eccentricities. Thus they often stimulate each other's aggressiveness, and at the same time diminish each other's discretion.

But whatever may be the imprudent utterances of the one, or the impolitic methods of the other, the animating motives of both are evermore as white as the light. The good that they do is by design; the harm by accident. These two women sitting together in their parlors, have for the last thirty years been diligent forgers of all manner of projectiles, from fire works to thunderbolts, and have hurled them with unexpected explosion into the midst of all manner of educational, reformatory, religious, and political assemblies, sometimes to the pleasant surprise and half welcome of the members, more often to the bewilderment and prostration of numerous victims; and in a few signal instances, to the gnashing of angry men's teeth. I know of no two more pertinacious incendiaries in the whole country! Nor will they themselves deny the charge. In fact this noise-making twain are the two sticks of a drum for keeping up what Daniel Webster called "the rub-a-dub of agitation."

How well I remember the day I first met my life-long friend. George Thompson and William Lloyd Garrison having announced an anti-slavery meeting in Seneca Falls, Miss Anthony came to attend it. These gentlemen were my guests. Walking home after the adjournment, we met Mrs. Bloomer and Miss Anthony on the corner of the street waiting to greet us. There she stood with her good earnest face and genial smile, dressed in gray silk, hat and all the same color, relieved with pale blue ribbons, the perfection of neatness and sobriety. I liked her thoroughly, and why I did not at once invite her home with me to dinner, I do not know. She accuses me of that neglect and never has forgiven me, as she wished to see and hear all she could of our noble friends. I suppose my mind was full of what I had heard, or my coming dinner, or the probable behavior of three mischievous boys who had been busily exploring the premises while I was at the meeting. That I had abundant cause for anxiety in regard to the philosophical experiments these young savages might try, the reader will admit; when informed of some of their performances. (See note*)

Next page > Part 3: Pronunciamentos > Page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

from Chapter XIII, "Reminiscences," The History of Woman Suffrage (ed. Elizabeth Cady Stanton), Vol. 1 (New York: Fowler & Wells, 1881).
This web edition © Jone Johnson Lewis, all rights reserved. Licensed to About Women's History.

Note* One imagined himself possessed of rare powers of invention (an ancestral weakness for generations), and had just made a life-preserver of corks, and tested its virtues on a brother about eighteen months old. Accompanied by a troop of expectant boys, the baby was drawn in his carriage to the banks of the Seneca, stripped, the string of corks tied under his arms, and set afloat in the river, the philosopher and his satellites in a row-boat, watching the experiment. The child, accustomed to a morning bath in a large tub, splashed about joyfully, keeping his head above water. He was as blue as indigo, and as cold as a frog when rescued by his anxious mother. The next day, the same victimized infant was seen by a passing friend, seated on the chimney, on the highest peak of the house. Without alarming any one, the friend hurried up to the house-top, and rescued the child from the arms of the philosopher. Another time, three elder brothers entered into a conspiracy, and locked up the fourth in the smoke-house. Fortunately, he sounded the alarm loud and clear, and was set free to safety, whereupon the three were imprisoned in a garret with two barred windows. They summarily kicked out the bars, and sliding down on the lightning-rod betook themselves to the barn for liberty. The youngest boy, then only five years old, skinned his hands in the descent. This is a fair sample of the quiet happiness I enjoyed In the first years of motherhood. It was 'mid such exhilarating scenes that Miss Anthony and I wrote addresses for temperance, anti-slavery, educational and woman's rights conventions. Here we forged resolutions, protests, appeals, petitions, agricultural reports, and constitutional arguments, for we made it a matter of conscience to accept every invitation to speak on every question, in order to maintain woman's right to do go. To this end, we took turns on the domestic watch-towers, directing amusements, settling disputes, protecting the weak against the strong, and trying to secure equal rights to all to the home as well as the nation. I can recall many a stern encounter between my friend and the young experimenter. It is pleasant to remember that he never seriously injured any of his victims, and only once came near shooting himself with a pistol. The ball went through his hand; happily a brass button prevented it from penetrating his heart. (return)

Next page > Part 3: Pronunciamentos > Page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

from Chapter XIII, "Reminiscences," The History of Woman Suffrage (ed. Elizabeth Cady Stanton), Vol. 1 (New York: Fowler & Wells, 1881).
This web edition © Jone Johnson Lewis, all rights reserved. Licensed to About Women's History.