I thus saw and heard Dr. Harriet Kezia Hunt; Mr. and Mrs. George Hildreth; Mrs. George Bradburn; Grace Greenwood; Rev. Henry Bond; Rev. Mr. Mumford; Rev. Mr. Chapin; Ralph Waldo Emerson; Dr. W. Elder; Bayard Taylor; James Murdock, the actor; Frederick Douglass; Mr. John Giles, of the Lyceum lecture system; Rev. Starr King; prominent professors of the Western Reserve College; and a number of leading literati of those times as well as men distinguished in politics, such as Speaker Colfax, leader of the Free Soil party, and Secretary Salmon Chase, who were holding political meetings. All these acquaintances were of incalculable use to me in this educational period. Although not able to converse with them, I could observe and learn much that was of greatest importance to my future.
Discussions pro and con on all kinds of subjects agitated the people, and more than once did I hear the “Boston Trio”—William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips and Theodore Parker—denounced as disturbers of Law and Order.
To Mrs. Vaughan’s untiring patience do I owe my acquiring the English language as well as I was then capable of doing. I had to write two essays that winter, one being for an association formed by the medical students, and one being my thesis. After having assisted me in correcting the grammar, Mrs. Vaughan made me read over each one four times, from ten to half-past eleven o’clock, for fifty evenings, until I got a good English pronunciation of which I was very proud.
My German conservatism was not a little startled when I found that here also the so-called Woman’s Rights movement (the political enfranchisement of women) was heartily indorsed. Yet, in all the families whose acquaintance I made from this social center, and who were so different from those in the circles of Mrs. Severance and Mr. Mayo, I soon recognized the same prejudice existing against all women who attempted to step out of the domestic sphere. In spite of their cultivation in literature and music and the fine arts generally, after the completion of school life the women preferred a mere social activity in their own surroundings and a Lady Bountiful attitude among the poor belonging to their respective churches.
I perceived so many contradictions in meeting with these evidently superiorly educated women. For instance, they abhorred the female medical student and would not dare be seen with one of them in the streets, and they considered themselves heroic for including me when inviting any of the Vaughan family to tea or to an evening gathering; yet, in discussing matters of politics, as Free Soilers or sympathizers with anti-slavery, they manifested an independence of speech which showed that they were well acquainted with the subject they discussed. It was so, also, in spiritual and religious matters, in school affairs and in regard to pauperism. The women, young and old, held firmly to their intellectual convictions, and these might be for or against their fathers, brothers or husbands.
It astonished me to see how absolutely quietly and calmly discussions were carried on, without bitterness or excitement, between opponents, and how respectfully men would listen to each other and to the women in particular, even when directly contradicted in their own views of the case.
It was a great educational opportunity for me, broadening my whole nature which had been narrowed by the German school training of being a subject, first to the Government and next to Man.
I was often taken by surprise when, on the brink of forgetting that these manifestations of independence could exist side by side with the most ludicrous prejudice against me and my medical companions, I would be seriously questioned, “Do you want to turn women into men?”
And when appearing in a church or meeting, we always noticed a significant withdrawal of all present so that we medical students could walk or sit conspicuously by ourselves. This isolation which bordered on ostracism when exposed to a limited multitude was very painful to bear, especially as we were young and at the time of life when the amour propre of the individual would seek obscurity rather than notoriety.
Elizabeth Blackwell only wished to open “legally” to women a field of labor which was successfully cultivated by them “illegally,” because we find that women were numerously employed to relieve pain and to combat disease.