GRACE GREENWOOD, PHŒBE COUZINS, AND OTHER ADVOCATES OF THE CAUSE.
The National Woman Suffrage Convention was inaugurated last evening in Washington by a lecture on domestic life by Grace Greenwood. A respectable-sized audience, with young people largely in the preponderance, under the auspices of the Young Men’s Christian Association, welcomed the authorities to the platform, and listened with grace, respect, and occasional spice of applause, to the essay christened “Indoors.” With a handsome, gallant preamble, Mrs. Lippincott (better known to the world as Grace Greenwood), was introduced, and her lecture went far to prove that women “indoors” could accomplish far more for the benefit of the human race than on the platform. There was intellect enough in the talented woman to fill Lincoln Hall, but unfortunately physical power was wanting. Not over one-third of those present were within hearing of the speaker’s voice.
Nature has set her face against women as public speakers unless they have been trained for the stage, like Olive Logan. No woman’s voice can bear the tension of an hour and a quarter without becoming husky and even painful to the last degree, and the speaker of the evening was no exception to the rule. Grace Greenwood appeared upon the platform in heavy black silk, with scarlet trimmings, which well became her dark autumnal beauty. She has a face of character, like Fanny Kemble, which glows and pales according to the combustion within. She commenced her lecture by saying that “Horace Greeley has said that old-fashioned domestic life has taken its departure.” She said she hoped the time would come when the women would be developed mentally, morally, physically, but about that time the millennium would appear. She said woman, though denied the privilege of an equal chance to earn her own living, yet had the same chance on the scaffold, and the same swing at death. From English literature she abstracted what purported to be a description of the ideal woman. This creature was to be blessed with patience, a desire to stay at home, little learning. By no means was she to know how to spell correctly; as an accomplishment she was to know how to lisp. Then she drew a picture of Fanny Kemble as Lady Macbeth, a woman whose trained robe would sweep the men who concocted such pictures off the stage. At one time she intended to write a course of lectures to young men, but she did not say what deterred her from doing so. She gave us a glowing description of home, but regretted that the homes of the aristocracy were invaded by the “Jenkinses” and all the sacredness therein laid bare. Among those she denominated as Jenkins were the distinguished writers, George Alfred Townsend and Don Piatt. In painting the home she gave the “old maid” the most exalted position, and she decided that single life is not entirely bereft of comfort. The marriage relation, its joys, its sorrows, its struggles, were delineated with poetic fervor, and those who were fortunate enough to hear her pronounced the evening’s entertainment a success.