NAWSA Subject File Tilton, Elizabeth Well dear Auntie - I lectured in London yesterday. It was on the American Character. I [worked?] like a day over it & George was so sweet - just like you & mother - listening & helping me. So together we got something out. It went well - but don't think the people are those that count, so feel I labored in vain. However, it was worth # trying for it has been nice out here. Now I am going into London for a few days to see what few [?] are left to see. I am beginning to be tired of being along. I want to get home & wish I could have got a passage sooner. But I can't - & I dare say it is better to stay in here. Today I go to a reception at Mrs. [Cloman's - our Military Attache - tomorrow I motor with Mrs. [Yanes?] to [?] - & Sat. dine in Hampstead - Miss [Eck?] comes hence Fri. Tues. I hope to see her. Then I think I shall go to Paris With love. Bessie across & said. I beg you will take tea at my table & tell me about your charming country." a tiny little gentlewoman at the [?] where we staid at Chester said — I'm talking my annual four — & I prayed before I came away that I might meet an American"— will write more tomorrow I pay 10.00 a week - & my meals in my room if I wish table poor! — The house not with our comforts but it is so refined I shall stay & the garden so sweet to lie in. with dear love Bessie. Write to 7 Haymarket London. now whom I once met at Miss Sarah Adams. Thurs. morn I go a great mediaeval pageant - church history done in tableaux — fr its earliest beginnings down to our own times — Everybody talk'g to me & ask'g me about America - & Mrs. Eddy. She is the one person they know about_ Such a cultivated little Miss Perks of Peyton — a qreat thing to see - at the Bishop's Palace - People are very cordial here. Such a journey as we had yesterday - Here England & Oxford - day — there [England?] of Oxford — made quick friends with wo in the train & invited us down to Devon They are crazy over Americans- I took tea in the dining car by myself & an English woman leaned the grounds wonderful they say. such a cordial letter from her - begging me to go there - & I think in July I may go there & stay - because I am afraid I can not go to Paris. I have not strength to travel alone - to carry bags & get tickets - I can just stay here & be quiet & then take occasional trips - & that is all. But the effort of getting round where I don't know the language. I dare not undertake. I'm all right — as I am here — Don't worry — [Affis?] Bessie I never got the fruit fr. Helen & Josie but how kind they were. Nor did I ever get any letters or papers on the voyage - but I have had 2 from you here. to having a class next year. It was too good a chance to let slip, so I shall do it Tuesday at four. Then I think I will go to France on Thurs. Mrs. Jame is in London & I have invited her to go & have tea with me and two Liberals tomorrow — & the next day I am having four more people to tea. Today I have done nothing but rest & walk in The Garden — Tonight I am to give a Reading here in the Convent — to the dull nuns & pupils — poor things. It is so dull for them — all the great, interesting things going on in the world - England in terrible straits - but they escape it all! they do no harm - but active good, no! My mind is on my lecture now. The only one I have here is Colonial Literature — I shall send this to C. Glad you are having quite a pleasent time with Mary. With dear love. Bessie. Dear Auntie, This is Mon. morn. Sat. night the train was so late that I got off at Los Angeles at 12 - and went to a hotel - Then Sun. morn I sent for Miss Jordan and we went out to Pasadena - it was rather interesting - a street of millionaires - but awful architecture - One house had a high hedge of red geraniums in bloom. The pepper and palm trees were interest - such a wilderness & solitary place as the desert is - interesting. Then I came up thro' Cal. by day. It is a gem of a land shut in by high mountains. It is a garden of the gods. It seemed to me a pity we had it, that a people ought to have got it long ago like the Greeks - & grown up in it. It should have had a Homer - & a Rob Roy & a wonderful civilization - it is so ideal. And the climate is such balm & yet not hot. I went at once to the Upham - but found Mrs. [??????] had engaged rooms at the Casa Contenta, so that is my address - So I came on here - it is a nice boarding house, a Miss Rich is here - a very charming person, to whom Mrs. Cunningham had given me a letter. She had flowers in my room - masses of heliotrope & violets - & it was blessed for I was so tired that I was homesick - Today I have just got to stay in bed. Mrs. Borham is here - & it is going to be very nice - A letter from Tacoma asking me to give 3 lectures. I have written I would give 2. Then I could get home about Mar. 15 wh. I ought to do. There is a charming set of the nicest people here & I know I shall like it as soon as I get rested but the journey just racked me out. Sick as I am on a boat I come out rested but the train does not give the fresh air - but I am glad to have seen New Mex- Allan Royal Mail Line, R.M.S."_____________" and sleeping my head off. I really have never seen Miss Best the whole voyage. I shall come home on a New York boat that gets there Second class, however, is all right except the people but they are very kind. All English or Canadians first class. Well - we live thro' everything! I will write as soon as I land - and I do believe in [?] of all the dreadful, [creeping?] voyage - I shall find all my enforced lying down has done me good. Affectionately Bessie. Allan Royal Mail Line Letter 2. R.M.S. Saturday at 11 Well - this is FrIDAY - We are passing down the Irish Sea - Still fog! - but land is in sight - Yesterday was fair. I have made a friend - a [?] English Clergyman - very delightful - cultivated Irish man - and he has been the prop & stay of my mind - taken me out of myself - so I really am all right again - We land this [?] at 4 - Such English service as we have had! - good beyond words! I find I do look forward to England. Miss Best says the English are stupid - Her reason that - while the Jews in the East Side saw at once that she was different - these second classers do not recognize her superior class. If you could see her on shipboard - Oh, my goodness! - in a man's hat! Lovingly - B. Lawn House_ Hampstead Sq. Hampstead London N. W. Here is where I am. I did not go to the Jack Straw Castle. This is a lady's house with payg guests _______ It is the most respectable place I have ever lighted on - grace not only before but after meals! God a very present thing - but otherwise Mme. Le Breton-Simmons is very nice - cosmopolitan. Her paying guests not so open-minded - There is a sweet garden - in wh. we all have tea - & I have a [steamer?] chair. It is entirely an English pension - & I am glad to see it - but I have to make my way as a vulgar American. Mrs. Buckler is the prettiest sweet woman, most delightful - I am to lunch there with a Miss Sheddon tomor- Dear Everybody. I have not written a long letter since last Fri - but this morn I have time. To begin. Last Fri. I went to a Woman's Club. They have them here & use them just as men do the Union Club etc. This was composed of writers - the poetesses & authors were tiresome & affected but the London women journalists there were great - live creatures were their hands on the very pulse of English politics. They sat writing, smoking, drinking drinks, or reading feet up, in the Smoking Room - just like men - but they were so nice to talk to! - so alive. That was Fri - Sat. I went down to Seven Oaks to the Bishop of Rochester Garden Party. That was. another London. It looked just like Trollope - bishops in gaiters & curates run after by simple, sweet-faced English girls, - and such a garden - 200 years old - covering acres - a long bench- walls - moss grown - banks of rhododendrons, & spaces cut in the woods to see vistas of country. Little tables all around with lovely hot-house fruits piled on them. Mrs. Harner is Miss Eckfort's niece. Everybody immediately told me that she was a Somers. [Cot?]! - as if that were being it. There an old lady appeared - dressed in light stiff lavender silk with a train ten miles long - & the worst [toy?] of a gigantic old lavender & purple bonnet - such as only an English aristocrat wears - Everybody told me that she was Mrs. Somers-Cot - very impressed - and she strolled about just like she was a Somers-Cot! I learned afterwards that Adeline, duchess of Bedford was her sister & also Lady Henry Somerset & that they are a very up & coming race - & that Adeline - got this very fat living for her niece - I was introduced to many clergymen - so narrow - & a smattering of Lady so & so. The Lady so & so's usually looked or appeared just like the Haydens - at home - nervous & gigglesome - so that by an effort I was able to enter their mental plane. The house the jolliest old thing - all flowers & bright chintz, I wanted to go & live in it right away. On the way down we fell in with a clergyman & his daughter who guided us. She said her father had no parish but was an assistant. I was quite sorry for her. Thinking him an unsuccessful old party. They asked us to tea Sun. Miss Best went. They are richer than mud! have a beautiful place in Chelsea where the Irish [gentry?] & Home Rulers congregate. They asked us Tues to a lecture. A man gives lessons on How to Converse - with Special Reference to topics for a London Season! Now really we are not so silly as that. Talk about "Mind & Matter gliding into the vortex of Immensity" being all in America, it is not. They have asked me to a [Malecute?] Wed. to which I am going. Sunday I had tea with a delectable looking litle English woman - Her father was an [Irish] radical member of Parliament - & for the first time since I have come to England, I heard ideas like America - progress - liberalism. It is awful here - the un-Christianing - & religious hate, sectarian attitude of the well-bred English people. The Ch. of English is a fetish! The next day I went to Higham - to lunch at Gad's Hill Place - Dicken's home. It was great to see it. It is owned by the Latham's, & little Mrs. Latham - a cousin - took me - the house was nothing special - but the innumerable gardens were interesting. - & of course being where Dickens wrote thrilled me very much. But what interested me the most was seeing English country life. There those people live - father - mother - daughter & governess - off on a far hill - no one near. The child occasionally visits two little girls 5 miles away. The man - who formerly attained to the top-notch in India - in the legal way - stays there all the time - working out family trees - puttering in his gardens - a reading a little. Their lives are nothing - but quiet living on the soil - quiet, very conventional living. The child was very shy & said grace for us at table in a squeaky little voice - that startled me so that I dropped my napkin quite on the floor. - Yet they were lovely, noble, though rough bred people. She looked just like the [Simon] Ripleys - & was very thoughtful of our comfort. I was sorry to leave her sweet stillness. After dinner she made me lie down in Dicken's Chamber & go to sleep. Then she drove me on the Dover Road sacred to David Copperfield & Mr. Lawn House. July 13. Dear Auntie. I am not sailing till the 14 of Aug. Mauritania to N. Y. - because I could not get an outside water room before. & air I must have! Many pleasant trips have happened since I wrote Friday. First - an adventure - Fri. p.m. I was going to the Writer's Tea - & thought I would stop at the British Museum. Could not find the way = inquiring an old man said he would show me. We walked along - He was an American - just landed, very lonely - & finally asked if he might not go with me - showing me 2 letters "to show me he was all right". His name was Oliver Dean - he was attorney to the C. Br [2?] - knew Mr. Howard Elliott & Mr. Perkins - & the letter said his partner was a Senator - & he himself had just given an address before the Illinois Bar - on the American Constitution. I saw he was all right-o perfectly wild with loneliness. So he came with me & then we went to tea - He was so American - So generous & so wanting to give you a good time. Then he took me in a motor to the Writers Club & I left him. - for the moment. At the Club I asked 4 people who have been awfully good to me to dine at a little restaurant in Soho - where you have a wonderful dinner for 30c- They accepted - men & women. I told them about the lonely man. They said "Let's go & get him," so we did & he was mighty glad to come. The next night he dined us. He really had an awfully good mind - & quite a practical one too - & being Western made quite a hit. Today Miss Williams has asked him & me to have tea at the House of Commons with two or three M. P.'s - (one John Burns. I hope) - & we'll probably have some good table as good talk comes easily here. The other night when the English were studying up for aristocracy, Mr. Dean said nothing for a long while & then said (this is long but it was so pretty I have to tell it) - He said, "I believe in blood too - It usually counts but sometimes nature overlooks rules. This was the case with Alexander Hamilton. An illegitimate child, a nobody tossed upon on our American shore; at 19 he had written a book that is authority to this day & at 32 he [wrote] framed the American constitution - He made it for 13 little states but so wonderfully was it wrought that it has been able to adapt itself to 1000s of miles & to millions of people. He's buried in Trinity Church Yard - N. York. I stood by his grave the other day - Around me sky-scrapers such as you English can't even conceive. - The Stock Exch. - Banks with Securities that hold the nations in the hollow of their hands - a great seething, prosperous country giving scope to every man who is elsewhere crushed down - & I thought the brain of the man who laid the foundation of all this lies here - & somehow I rather liked to think that he was a a little illegitimate child. It seemed fitting & splendid for the founder of a great republic. It was very moving. Every one was impressed - Sunday was a full day. Lunched at the Haldanes. Sat beside Col. Haldane of the War Office - a regular English man of Mrs. Ward's novel - distinguished, tall - & calm = They seemed to me half sheer brute & the rest cultivated gentleman. (The refined tenderness that the Amer. man has for woman not there at all). He want thro' the Boer & Jap. war - & told it all with great cultivation & no cry-baby - & I have to own rather fascinated me - tho' really at heart they aren't so good as product, I do believe = They are crueler somehow but very just. He gave me his book wh. is awfully exciting & I will bring it home to you to read. - Then I went to Mrs. Winser's to supper & met the Herefords. That was a very English supper. Nobody tried to talk - we just quietly ate - & it was all very restful especially as I was going on to dine with the Bates. I went to them at 8.30 - All get rich quick Americans. Mr. Bates is an Engineer - They have a good house in Hyde Park. The men were dead tired out. Mr. Bates sat perfectly exhausted opp. his wife & never opened his lips. - I had a Mr. Burton - He was agreeable but I didn't like him. He was on Hearts paper & now is Lord Northcliffe's right-hand man. He said business was not methods but results & altogether voiced an America which I am out of sympathy with & hate to have the English see. Yesterday was a great day with a Vicar [with] in the Slums of London but I will tell you all about it later as I'm tired now. With dear love to you all. (Send my letter to Mrs. E) Bessie. nice things about Geo. E. MR. Cross purred. Then suddenly a lady said. "But the one thing I never could forgive her was marrying that snuffy, middle-aged stock-broker." Everybody gasped but Mr. Cross who said pleasantly. "Well. I never quite understood it myself." When the ladies were alone, the lady who had made the faux-pas sad. "Who was that charming man?" "Well," said the hostess, "we call him Geo. Eliot's Remains. "Order my carriage at once," said the lady, "I am going home," and she went. Las night the Reas gave me a card to the Reception to the Prime Minister & the Liberal Ministry. I went at 9.30. I bough a black spangle-dangle for my hair and a dear Miss Mandy in the home here did it - so that I did not know it - & I went - in the Underground to London - & skipping thro' Charing Cross and Trafalgar like an old Londoner with my skirts held high - & nobody noticing at all - & there I was. The Rea's were late as he was detained in a Debate - but I ran into some Crosses in the Cloak & they took me up - The Earl of Carrington & Mrs. Asquith received. Mrs. A. was Dodo in Burn's novel - Dorothy Tennant - She was very gone-to-pot looking - white - powder - artificiality - but she has had a great career in London society. The Earl of Carrington looked like a "thug" - but the Countess looked like a Beacon St. lady. She was lovely, & modest - with a wreath of diamonds on her head - a lady! - Mrs. Cross introduced me to a Mr. Rowntree - They are famous philanthropists - - having a model village up in York. I always wanted to meet them - then we joined an awful crush of people. There were great stair [wells?] - You stood packed in them & waited. After 3/4 of an hour the Ministry & wives arrived & went up stairs by everybody - & everybody clapped & bowed. Asquith was a ruddy [?] person - Burrell a big farmer &c - Then Mr. Rea came up & asked me whom I should like to meet. I said John Byrnes, the Labour Leader - So I met him - he had a big, scarred - strong face - & was hearty, common - sensible & nice. Then I came home - Here I am resting & writing. Hope you are all well. [?], B. Mrs. E. did not send her address. So I send it to you to send on. Oh, England is a pleasant place for them that's rich & fine! - for M.P.'s. - Lawn House July 8. Dear Mrs. Elliott Well, here it is the 8, and I am still here. I can not get away, things come on so fast. [Thurs Wed?] - the Rea's invited me to have tea on the terrace - where the M.P.'s, take their tea - by the Thames in the House of Commons. I was delighted - I went. I had to run the gauntlet - & a long line of Suffragettes. They [were] had been standing outside since Mon - (till 4 in the morn) waiting for Mr. Asquith to come out. If he did not come on Thurs - then they were to petition the King. He never came - so they have petitioned the King. & no one knows what will happen next. They were sweet, fragile creatures - & I did not enjoy running by them at all - I waited in St. Stephen's Hall - & by & by Mr. Rea came & several others & we all went into the Lobby of the House. Several Radicals had just come out & they & the Rea's all began shaking hands - Everyone knew everyone - & it is the coziest politics I ever imagined. England is so small, it can be. Well - then we had tea out on the Terrace. It was lovely - They put me facing the River - but I made them change as I wished to see M.P.'s & not Rivers. The first man they pointed out was a creature who looked like a thug from Ward 4. He turned out to be Lord Carlyle's son - Lord Somebody. His mother is a great Radical - & very erratic = the other day she decided that the servants should call them (her family) by their first name. Her sons agreed but said if the pretty maids called them by their first name they should kiss the pretty ones - Whereat the lady desisted. She is strong temperance, - and the other night at a dinner shouted down a great dinner able to the butler - Remember, no wine for Carlyle." (meaning her poor husband). Well - many celebrities passed - John Byrnes gay & again - It was very democratic &c look at - Lords & little commoners from White Chapel - all chatting together. After that I went to an Italian Restaurant & had a delicious dinner with the Giffords & then we went to see the Earth and never did I enjoy anything more. It was Lord Northcliffe - & his debasing of Journalism - & the English applauded greatly. It was just present day politics - & all the women as well as the men were so interested. It is a delightful world - this English world - & the smallness of the country does make politics perfectly delightful - & so vital somehow. I like the whole thing immensely. The next day I shopped - had tea with the Bucklers in her garden. I must tell you - the other day Mrs. B. was asked to a luncheon to meet Mr. Cross - Geo. Eliot's husband - The conversation turned on Aug 29, 1908. Malnutrition Come Forth! What a hardy child you are becoming. Bishop Lawrence wrote kind letter but wanted before he gave his name for me to go over plan with John F. Moors. President Eliot wrote as follows. Indent this letter. But then came Mrs. Glendower Evans (of glorious unselfishness) and offered money up to $2000 to start experiment. Oh me! wasn't that like Israel crossing Jordan! The hold-up always is money. Now there won't have to be any letterhead. Such a quick bridge was unexpected. Then Miss Stern decided we should become [part of] Volunteer Committee of the State. Mrs. Evans went off to try and secure a nurse to conduct this laboratory test. I am to secure the School. Malnutrition - child of my heart, you are going to be a real child! in the remote ne [Wishes Election Might be Eliminated] Weak-Kneed Chaos. To the Editor There is the story of Lincoln. He puts a question to his Cabinet. They vote yes. Lincoln with more inside information says. "The Noes have it." The episode closes. Isn't that the need now in Washington. Someone who can say to all these special interests wanting holes in ceilings, "There can be no appeasing, the Noes have it". I hear we shall have to wait till next January - after the election - to get any efficient anti-inflation program. Here is a case in point where No should be said by a strong [organ] man. Would it were possible to eliminate the election for it can not fail to weaken anti-inflation and war effort. I certainly pity Mr. Leon Henderson operating in what would seem to be weak-kneed chaos. E. Tilton Transcribed and reviewed by contributors participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.