Frances Willard, her life and work

Preface

Several "Lives" of Frances Willard have been written, by her friends and those who helped her with her work, and in these books she has been praised beyond measure.

It seemed to me, coming to this task with no memories of her, and very little knowledge of the work she did, as if she could not have been so great or so important a woman as they said she was. It seemed to me also as if she could not have been so good nor so lovable a human being, and for a long time I was inclined to look upon these accounts as exaggerated.

But in studying her life I have come almost to believe that she was perfect ; not in her deeds, perhaps, nor in her work, but in her soul. Poring, day after day, over her letters and her diaries, reading and rereading her books and speeches, I have come to share their enthusiasm. I have learned to know her " loves, hates, prayers, promises, and insignificancies," and thus I have grown daily more sure of her greatness.

She was vigorous, with the vigour of her country • she was rash and sometimes unwise, with a love of great undertakings that no disap-

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Preface

pointments could check ; she seemed sentimental, too, with her strange education, her journalistic pen, and her habit of talking straight from her inmost soul ; but she was true, and she was pure in heart, and therefore blessed.

She was lovable and charming ; I have grown sure of this, and also that she was a most vivid and exhilarating companion. But I have found it very hard to tell these things.

I have been greatly indebted to many of Miss Willard's friends, who have helped me in this work ; to Lady Henry Somerset, through whose kindness I have been allowed to undertake the task; to Miss Anna Gordon and Mrs. L. N. Stevens, who welcomed me to Rest Cottage and told me of her daily life and work ; to Miss Agnes Slack and Miss Gorham, through whom I have seen her letters ; and, above all, to my grandmother, Mrs. Hannah Whitall Smith, whose stories of Miss Willard, and faith in her, have enabled me to read her life rightly. She helped me with criticism and revision, and in more ways than I can tell.

I started to write this book as an outsider, and a critic, as one who could judge of her life unblinded by loyalty or affection. But I have not succeeded. I am not an outsider any longer, but a follower and a friend.

RAY STRACHEY.

Arundel, July, 1912.

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Contents

PAGE

INTRODUCTION ..... Xlii

C1I IPTBR

Chapter II Education And The Search For " Culture "

It is delightful to think of the eagerness with which Frances and Mary prepared to go to Milwaukee. At last they were to see something of the world, and learn something of its knowledge, and, of course, their delight was unbounded. Frances was seventeen and Mary fifteen, but they behaved like small children. They bothered Aunt Sarah with endless questions of what it would be like, and spent many hours preparing and packing their clothes and their books and possessions. They went about saying goodbye to the trees, and the river, and the " Eagle's nest " ; and then they were unexpectedly miserable when the time to start actually, came. Even the excitement of going to school could not make up for leaving mother behind, and as their father drove them in to Janesville they probably looked out on the prairie with very tear-stained eyes.

When they reached Milwaukee, however, they must soon have been comforted. To live in a town was in itself a new experience for them, and Frances tells how she sat by her window watching the lighting of the street lamps with the greatest delight.

They boarded, with their aunt, in a house " in which the Christian atmosphere reminded them daily of Forest Home," and every day they went to the Milwaukee Female College. This was a large Congregational school founded by Catherine Beecher, the sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe. It was a very religious school, and the girls behaved with almost unnatural goodness. They were expected to be good, they expected themselves to be good, and good they were, and they seriously tried to be " perfect in punctuality, behaviour, and lessons " ! Frank soon attained this satisfactory state, and both she and Mary were entirely happy while they were there. They made many friends, and delighted in feeling that they were getting an education. This they really were doing, for Miss Hill was a most interesting teacher, and Frances began to work so hard and so enthusiastically that her aunt was afraid for her health. It

was here that Frank saw her first woman speaker,

Education and the Search for "Culture"

a .queer, short-haired, half-crazy spiritualist, whom Aunt Sarah took her to hear because of her " everlasting curiosity," and for whose ramblings Frances felt a sort of shamed pity.

Under her aunt's influence she now began to take a greater interest in religion, and even went to Bible-classes with pleasure. In the midst of the record of this serious and ambitious time it is pleasant to come upon a note of the fifty cents sent to them by Mike Carey, their father's " hired man." This was the only money the girls had to spend during the three months they were away from home, and with her share of it Frances, after due deliberation, bought a ticket to a menagerie, a notebook, and some peppermint candy.

Mr. and Mrs. Willard came in July to see how their daughters had progressed, and to take them home for the summer. Frank's journal gives a glimpse of the rush of the examinations and the excitements of the end of term :—

" Milwaukee, July 16, 1857. — Terrible times preparing for examination. I have studied hard, and ought to do well. How will it be ? I pause for a reply."

"July 23. — Left the city at half-past ten. Felt fully as bad as when I left home, even worse."

The following September Frank was eighteen. She was as full of joy over her birthday cake as if she were just eight, and she danced about wildly to celebrate her coming of age. She wrote an " ode " for the occasion, which showed that she still loved liberty as much as when she tamed her cow :—

"The last year has passed : The last month, week, day, hour, and moment. For eighteen years, quelling all thoughts And wishes of my own, I've been obedient to the powers that were. Not that the yoke was heavy to be borne, And grievous,

Do I glory that 'tis removed — For lighter ne'er did parents fond Impose on child.

It was a silver chain : But the bright adjective Takes not away the clanking sound That follows it."

To put her freedom to the test, and to make quite sure of it, she settled down, towards evening, in her mother's rocking-chair to read " Ivanhoe." No doubt she did not attend to a word of it, for to read a novel in the face oif her father's opposition was a tremendous assertion of independence. Presently he came up to

FRANCES WILLARD.

Age 18.

Education and the Search for "Culture"

her and said very seriously : "I thought I told you not to read novels, Frances." " So you did, father; but you forget what day it is." " What day, indeed ! I should like to know if the day has anything to do with the deed ! " " Indeed, it has . I am eighteen— J am of age— I am now to do what / think right."

As Frances goes on to relate in her Autobiography—somewhat triumphant still over the incident-^Mr. Willard was " dumbfounded." But he finally decided to laugh and let her go her own way-^which was certainly the wisest thing to do I

After this success it was very disappointing to Frank to find that he would not let them go back to Milwaukee. The school was not sectarian enough to suit his rather strict Methodist views, and so they stayed at Forest Home for the winter. But they did not cease to dream of school, and of going on with their education, and they probably studied pretty hard by themselves, and constantly bothered their father to look out for some other place to which they might go.

In the North-Western 'Christian Advocate they read of Evanston, the new Methodist suburb of Chicago, and of the colleges for boys and girls that had been started there. The North -Western University was already flourishing, and the North-western Female College, which afterwards became part of the University, was at that time a private institution managed by Professor William P. Jones and his wife. They heard on all sides glowing accounts of the advantages to be had there, and at last Mr. Willard went himself to inspect the place. To Frank's unbounded joy he came home with a favourable verdict, and on the 2nd of March, 1858, the two> girls set out again, still eager for learning, and still excited at the thought of all there might be in the large world outside of home.

Evanston at that time was a small village with scarcely five hundred inhabitants. It is now a well-planned town with many miles of regular symmetrical avenues of trees, bordered with neat grass, and it seems as if it had always been a civilised place. The houses stand back from the avenues in their own gardens of shrubs and flowers, and the lake washes up against a very tidy shore. It is true that almost all the houses are pretentiously ugly, with contorted Gothic shapes and curious pinnacles and devices of stone ; but they are comfortable, wealthy - looking houses, well hidden by the magnificent

Education and the Search for "Culture"

trees, and the whole impression of the place is that of a flourishing, orderly suburb. Some of the original wooden houses are still standing, however, in their pleasant simplicity, with their sociable " porches " in front, and these are almost the only things that now give any idea of the village of Evanston as it was in 1858 when Frank and Mary came there to school. It was then just a plain new village set down among the trees and the swamps— a few wooden houses, one or two (i stores,' 1 a " long oblong structure with papered walls that served for a church," and the " four proud public buildings that were to make the village famous." Evanston was then the hope of the north-west, a village planned to be " the Methodist Athens of the Prairies," where the learning and culture of the old world were to be reconciled with the energy arid enterprise of the new, and where literature, rhetoric, science, and Christian principles were to find their surest foundation. Serious young men from the farms of Illinois and Wisconsin flocked to the schools, and those who came to settle were religious people, who were tired of the hard and lonely pioneer life, and who hoped to find there congenial companionship. They were for the most part fairly wealthy and very earnest families, and, as one of the first inhabitants said, they lived in " happy days, when they knew every one in the town, and all the Christians of the place filled up the meeting-house."

The University had been planned in 1850. As Miss Willard said, " Evanston began in a prayer-meeting. Half a dozen earnest Christian men met by appointment ... in Chicago. Their object, often talked and prayed about before, was the founding of a University that should be a fountain of Christian scholarship for the north-west. The Rev. Zodac Hall led in prayer." This meeting came to the conclusion that " the interests of sanctified learning require the immediate establishing of a University in the north-west under the patronage of the Methodist Episcopal Church." They also hoped to establish a Biblical Institute for the training of Methodist ministers in the same village, and this was opened in 1855. The founders of Evanston were determined that their schemes should have every chance of success, and they therefore included in the University charter a provision that no intoxicating liquor should ever be sold within four miles of the college campus.

The enterprise began well. No sooner were the buildings begun, the streets laid out, and the lots put up to sale than the people began to come, for the north-west felt the need of a University.

In 1856 the North -West Female College was opened. This college was not part of the University, for the thought of female education had had no share in the hopes of the good men who had prayed so earnestly for the education of the north-west. It was a private enterprise, undertaken and financed by Professor W. P. Jones and his wife, and it was not greatly welcomed by the Trustees of the University. They feared, of course, that anything so radical and unscriptural as a female college must endanger the reputation of their village, and they no doubt greatly rejoiced when the first building was burnt to the ground. But Prof. Jones was not to be discouraged by misfortune or disapproval. He realised that Evanston, where the town and the University were both starting new together, was a very favourable place in which to try the experiment of the higher education of women. And so he built his college, and rebuilt it when it was burned, and gathered his professors, and made his rules, and welcomed all the pupils that came.

Of course in those days no one quite knew what a women's college should be, and as one of the first Deans said, " it was not unusual for mothers to ask if teachers accompanied young ladies on their walks, if the bureau drawers of the students were inspected at regular intervals, and if the Saturday mending was under some one's supervision. The next visitor might be an independent young woman who would announce with plain decisiveness that she had come for college work only, and desired no limitations that were not equally imposed upon young men ! "

But with all their difficulties and crudities the new University and the Women's College began their work proudly and hopefully, and have grown and extended until now the North- Western University is one of the largest and richest of the co -educational institutions in the United States. Different as it now is from the European ideal of a University, with its hatred of specialisation, and its chairs of rhetoric, farming, and dentistry, it was even more different in 1858. Then its students studied to reconcile science and the Bible, worked faithfully over Butler's " Analogy," and were well versed in the principles of English composition and astronomy.

Education and the Search for " Culture"

They all went to Bible Classes, and they all hoped to become Christians, but they had, none the less, the delightful happy years that people at college must have, no matter how good they are.

The words " school " and " college " are interchangeable in America, and in those early days the female college was really little more than a boarding-school. The people who came had very little training, and passed no examinations, and they came at any age from twelve to twenty. But they all came with an earnest wish to study, and so the experiment of the higher education of women prospered.

Mary's Journal describes their early start from Forest Home, their " inward sighs," their journey to Chicago, and their naive admiration of the " really beautiful college building." She tells also of their labours to install themselves in their room, tacking down carpets and unpacking trunks, and of how they could " hope and guess we shall like to live here " ; also of the homesickness that made her glad that their room was " quite pleasantly situated overlooking the railroad track, where cars pass often on the very road that connects us with our home ! "

Both the girls were immediately popular.

•Within a month Frank was head of her classes, editor of the college paper, and leader of a band " of ne'er-do-weels " that had for four months a gloriously wicked career. This was the only time in her life that she gave way to the enterprising recklessness that made her company so exciting, and it is pleasant to think of the future reformer perched on the steeple of the building when she should have been in the classroom, and deserting a Bible lesson to have her hair cut short ! It is equally pleasant to remember that all her life she had a passionnecessarily concealed— for horse-racing. She knew all the favourites, the odds, and the winners, though, of course, she did not ever dream of laying a bet, and even thought it wicked to watch a race, after the first exciting day in Paris when she discovered what it was like.

After all, her career as a ne'er-do-weel was almost equally innocent, for though she determined not to keep strictly to the seventy arduous rules of the establishment, it was only that she might behave well according to a law of her own ; and Professor Jones felt that he could rely on her influence in the school as on the whole a good one. She had no toleration

Education and the Search for " Culture"

for the silly escapades and moonlight walks with University boys which attracted some of her companions, nor would she ever share in anything that seemed to cast disrespect upon religion. But she was a great inventor of sport, and, as Mary Bannister described her, " she came to be something of a beau herself, a certain dashing recklessness about her having as much fascination for the average schoolgirl as if she had been a senior in the University, instead of the carefully dressed, neatly gloved young lady who took the highest credit marks in recitation, but was known in the privacy of one or two of the girls' rooms to assume the airs of a bandit, flourish an imaginary sword, and converse in a slashing way supposed to be known only among pirates with their fellows. "

She was very striking-looking then, as always, with a peculiarly vivid and eager face, large serious eyes, and golden hair. It is no wonder that she made an attractive bandit !

After four months of this reckless career, in which Mary took no part, they went back to Wisconsin for the summer. And then Frank took possession of the schoolhouse and had her first experience of teaching.

Between Frank and her mother there was always the most perfect confidence, and such mutual understanding that, as she described it, " I could not tell where her thought ended and mine began." And so, of course, Mrs. Willard knew all about the pirates, and no doubt she was rather troubled by them, and felt she would like to be with her daughter during the next winter. And she was tired, too, of the loneliness of the farm and the hard work, and longed for the sort of life she could find at Evanston., She therefore persuaded her husband to move there in the winter, when it was time for Frank and Mary to go back to school. He found work in a banking business in Chicago, and they all lived together in a house they called " Swampscot " on the edge of the lake and the swamps. Frank and her father planted round it a great many trees and shrubs that they had brought from Forest Home, and they spent there three very happy years. Mr. Willard entered at once into the life of the village, and took an important part in planning its development, attending especially to the proper planting of the elm and maple avenues. Mrs. Willard delighted in the comparative leisure she now acquired, and the whole family rejoiced in the

5?

friends they found, and the atmosphere of piety and intellectual endeavour in which they lived.

Frank worked harder than ever, and, being at home, she left the ranks of the " ne'er-doweels " and turned her mind to less childish things. She " often rose at four o'clock, and more than once has been found on the sitting-room floor asleep with her head in Butler's ' Analogy.' " She also began to be troubled over religion, and there was one element in her life and surroundings at this time which she found it somewhat difficult to meet, and this was the often recurring revivals in the Methodist Church.

The whole neighbourhood would be stirred at these times of revival, and nearly every one she knew would be seeking either salvation or sanctification . The seekers would go to the altar to pray— that is, to the front benches in the Church— and earnestness in religion was naturally measured by this outward manifestation. But for some reason Frances could not bring herself to this point, and it caused her much heart-searching. Especially was this the case when, in one of these revivals, her father went forward to the altar, and sought for and believed he obtained the blessing of sanctification. Mr. Willard was a very positive man, and held any views he adopted with great earnestness, and he never gave up the blessing he felt he had secured. Naturally he wanted his daughters to seek and obtain the same thing ; but Frances was too honest to adopt the views of even her own father unless she herself was also convinced, and she could not bring herself to go to the altar while she felt doubtful as to its efficacy and the reality of the blessing sought. And so she began to think she had doubts of Christianity, and then she had doubts of her doubts ; but above all she knew that she did not feel right. This was the great difficulty with almost all the young Methodists of that day. Feeling was the one criterion of salvation, and if you could not feel saved there was no hope for you. Of course, it was very difficult to feel correctly. It was difficult to feel yourself a sinner, honestly deserving damnation, when you knew how hard you tried to be good ; it was difficult to feel the importance of sanctiflcation, when life was so happy as it was, and when everything went so well ; and above all, it was difficult to feel that you loved God all the time, when your head was so full of other things. This lack of feeling was taken to be a sign that you were all wrong, and consequently nothing was easier than to be troubled by religion. Professor Jones, the Principal of the College, watched over Frank's religious development very carefully. In describing her as she was at this time, he says :— jT There were students' prayer-meetings, class-meetings, and missionary-meetings, revivals came and went, and few except Miss Willard failed to take a lively interest in them. Still, she was not indifferent."

At last he asked in church for prayers on her behalf. When she heard this she was " considerably wrought upon," for he had said she was an infidel, but she considered herself an inquirer. Soon afterwards, at his request, she did go to the altar. But the same day she wrote to him the following letter :—

" PROFESSOR, — I thank you very much for the interest you manifest in me, and at the same time I feel very guilty.

" I do not think you know how hard my heart is, how far I am from feeling anything. I see I have no excuse to offer for my conduct. Three facts stand out before me as facts, nothing more. I view them calmly, coldly. They are these : I am a great sinner : it is a sin greater than I can comprehend to doubt God . . . or to refuse submission to Him for a moment. I have no excuse for delaying to become a Christian. The third fact is, I am as cold as an iceberg, as unconcerned as a stone. I view it simply as a truth. . . . You will say that I shall feel in hell (a hard word) ... I acknowledge it. If there is a God, a heaven, a hell, a devil, then I am undone. ... If I were to pray I should say, if I were candid, ' Oh God, if there be a God, save my soul, ii I have a soul ! '

"... And now, in view of all these facts I ask, respectfully, yet earnestly, ought I to go to the altar, to kneel before the Christian's God, to hear the Christian's prayer, careless and unconcerned ? . . . I am willing to attend church, though it interferes very much with my progress in science. I am willing to go if you think it will do any good, but until I feel differently I dare not go to the altar again. When I do I will go unasked. " I am, " Gratefully and respectfully yours, "Frances E. Willard."

It is rather pathetic to think of the vehemence with which good people in those days longed to feel wicked, and the agonies they suffered because they could not. Frances, however, was too sensible to suffer very long, and she soon directed most of her religious energies to the effort to become a really satisfactory person. She made such very praiseworthy resolutions, and tried so hard to carry them out, that by-and-by she forgot to worry over how she felt. She became even a little priggish at this time, as when she resolved " to have two objects, a

Education and the Search for "Culture"

life-object and a daily, hourly object/' and " to inform myself first on the subjects of importance of which I feel most ignorant."

But it was very natural to become priggish in such a place, and it is only wonderful that she remained humble enough to be " mortified " by her " stupidity " now and again, considering that she was a leader among the girls, a favourite with the professors, and by far the best student in the college. She was chosen Valedictorian, and was to have made the farewell speech for her class at the commencement exercises, but she had typhoid fever in the spring, and could not graduate. This was a bitter disappointment to her, but she had to submit to it, and when she recovered she settled down to live at home and go on with her studies by herself until Mary should graduate ; when, as she wrote in her diary, she hoped to be able to earn her own living, pay her own way, and try to be of use in the world. It was during this illness that Frank's religious doubts were finally settled. Her experiences are hard to understand if one does not remember how supreme an importance attached to the ceremony of " coming out for Christ." The agonies that every boy and girl suffered in trying to be " converted " were only equalled by the difficulty of making public confession when that happy state was reached, and the whole matter weighed heavily both upon the young people themselves and upon their parents and teachers.

When Frank was in danger of death she felt a conflict over her soul. Two voices urged her, the one to be good and surrender to Christ, the other to be bad and keep her independent position. She yielded to the good voice, and " said yes to God," and this brought peace to her mind. As soon as she was able to go out again she publicly joined the Church on probation. Professor Jones describes the scene, which must have been one of impressive sincerity :—

" It was Sunday evening. A large congregation in the Methodist church had listened to an ordinary sermon, and seemed somewhat impatient for dismissal, when the pastor, to the surprise of every one, extended an invitation to those who wished to unite with the Church on probation to meet him at the altar. The revival wave of the last winter had rolled by ; there had been no special meetings ; not a ripple of religious excitement was discoverable on the smooth current of the Church. No one was expected to respond to the pastor's invitation. A moment's pause, and a young woman moved out into the main aisle, and approached the altar. Instantly all

Education and the Search for "Culture"

eyes converged on her. No sign or faintest token of doubt clouded that countenance now. There was that firm expression which clinches faith and says, * Here I stand. I can do no other.' The effect on the congregation was electrical. For a few moments the solemnity of the occasion held all other feelings in check. Then some one began the doxology, l Praise God, from whom all blessings flow,' and it was sung as if the very stars were expected to join in the chorus."

But this was not the end. For fourteen nights in succession she knelt at the altar expecting some utter transformation, some part of heaven to be placed in her inmost heart. She " prayed and agonised/' but what she sought did not occur. Then orte night when she went to her room baffled, weary, and discouraged, it came to her quietly but surely that this was not the way, that her conversion was already accomplished since she wished to be saved, and that there was no need for agony or transformation, She therefore became a probationer, and a year later was baptized into the Methodist Episcopal Church. From this time onwards she led an intensely spiritual life, and troubled no more about her beliefs. She trusted in her favourite text, " Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee," and in that