Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History (84 page)

Nancy Langhorne of Virginia began her political career at the age of fourteen during a visit to the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. When a band struck up the Union song “Marching Through Georgia,” she leaped to her feet to yell, “Three cheers for Robert E. Lee!” In recounting this episode to the
New York Herald Tribune
’s John Reagan “Tex” McCrary, Lady Astor noted: “That was the last time I was spanked for a combination of patriotism and cheek.”

The southern beauty (her sister married the artist Charles Gibson and was the model for the Gibson Girl) married Waldorf Astor, who owned the
Observer
and served in the House of Commons until he was elevated to the House of Lords as the second Viscount Astor in 1910. Nine years later, his wife was elected to his constituency in Plymouth, and took her place in history as the first woman chosen by the people to serve in the “Mother of Parliaments.”

Renowned for her outspokenness, she recalled being told in 1906 by the other American at the Court of St. James’s, United States Ambassador Whitelaw Reid, “Modulate your voice, my dear, modulate your voice.” She learned to do that, but not her opinions: in the late thirties, her home at Cliveden in Buckinghamshire became the salon for Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and British isolationists despised as “appeasers” by Winston Churchill. She retired from Parliament in 1945 and died in 1964, remembered for her espousal of women’s rights, public education, temperance, and—unfortunately—the appeasement of “the Cliveden set.”

This speech, made at Town Hall in New York on April 9, 1922, and put together from newspaper reports, was delivered (presumably in a well-modulated voice) less than three years after she became the first woman M.P. It is notable for its projection of personality and character: the tone
is chatty, feisty, common-sensical, and unabashedly opinionated. The account of personal experience in the beginning leads to the didactic middle and exhortative conclusion. “Now, why are we in politics? What is it all about?” she asks rhetorically, and answers, “Something bigger than ourselves. Schopenhauer was wrong…”

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I KNOW THAT
this welcome has nothing to do with me. Ever since I entered the “Mother of Parliaments” I realized that I ceased to be a person and had become a symbol. The safe thing about being a symbol is this—you realize that you, of yourself, can do nothing, but what you symbolize gives you courage and strength and should give you wisdom. I certainly have been given courage and strength, and I won’t say too much about wisdom.

My entrance into the House of Commons was not, as some thought, in the nature of a revolution. It was an evolution. It is rather interesting how it came about. My husband was the one who started me off on this downward path—from the fireside to public life. If I have helped the cause of women he is the one to thank, not me. He is a strange and a remarkable man.

First, it was strange to urge your wife to take up public life, especially as he is a most domesticated man; but the truth is that he is a born social reformer. He has avoided the pitfalls which so many well-to-do men fall into. He doesn’t think that you can right wrongs with philanthropy. He realizes that one must go to the bottom of the causes of wrongs and not simply gild them up.

For eleven years, I helped my husband with his work at Plymouth—I found out the wrongs and he tried to right them—and this combination of work was a wonderful and happy combination and I often wish that it was still going on.

However, I am not here to tell you of his work, but it is interesting in so far that it shows you how it came about that I stood for Parliament at all. Unless he had been the kind of a man he was, I don’t believe that the first woman member of the oldest Parliament in the world would have come from Plymouth, and that would have been a pity. Plymouth is an ideal port to sail from or to. It has been bidding godspeed to so many voyagers. I felt that I was embarking on a voyage of faith, but when I arrived at my destination some of the honorable members looked upon me more as a pirate than a pilgrim.

A woman in the House of Commons! It was almost enough to have
broken up the House. I don’t blame them—it was equally hard on the woman as it was on them. A pioneer may be a picturesque figure, but they are often rather lonely ones. I must say for the House of Commons, they bore their shock with dauntless decency. No body of men could have been kinder and fairer to a “pirate” than they were. When you hear people over here trying to run down England, please remember that England was the first large country to give the vote to women and that the men of England welcomed an American-born woman in the House with a fairness and a justice which, at least, this woman never will forget.

The different ones received me in different ways. I shall never forget a Scotch labor leader coming up to me, after I had been in the House a little while, and telling me that I wasn’t a bit the sort of woman he thought I would be—“I’ll not tell you that, but I know now that you are an ordinary, homely, kindly body,” and he has proved it since by often asking my advice on domestic questions.

Then there was an Irish member who said to me, “I don’t know what you are going to speak about, but I am here to back you.” And the last was from a regular Noah’s Ark man, a typical squire type. After two and a half years of never agreeing on any point with him, he remarked to someone that I was a very stupid woman but he must add that I was a “very attractive one,” and he feared I was a thoroughly honest social reformer. I might add that being the first woman, I had to take up many causes which no one would call exactly popular. I also had to go up against a prejudice of generations, but I must say their decency has never failed, though my manners must have been somewhat of a trial.

Now I must leave the more personal side and get to what it is all about and why we are here. Women and politics—some women have always been in politics, and have not done badly, either. It was when we had the Lancastrian kings that it was said that the kings were made kings by act of Parliament—they did rule by means of Parliament. Then Henry VIII, that old scalawag, accepted the principles of the Lancastrians to rule by Parliament, but he wanted the principle in an entirely different way. He made Parliament the engine of his will: he pressed or frightened it into doing anything he wished. Under his guidance Parliament defied and crushed all other powers, spiritually and temporally, and he did things which no king or Parliament ever attempted to do—things unheard of and terrible.

Then Elizabeth came along. It is true she scolded her Parliaments for meddling with matters with which, in her opinion, they had no concern, and more than once soundly rated the Speaker of her Commons, but she never carried her quarrels too far, and was able to end her disputes by
some clever compromise; in other words, she never let Parliament down, and that is what I don’t believe any wise woman will do in spite of the fears of some of the men.

Now, why are we in politics? What is it all about? Something much bigger than ourselves. Schopenhauer was wrong in nearly everything he wrote about women—and he wrote a lot, but he was right in one thing. He said, in speaking of women, “the race is to her more than the individual,” and I believe that it is true. I feel somehow we do care about the race as a whole, our very nature makes us take a forward vision; there is no reason why women should look back—mercifully we have no political past; we have all the mistakes of sex legislation with its appalling failures to guide us.

We should know what to avoid, it is no use blaming the men—we made them what they are—and now it is up to us to try and make ourselves—the makers of men—a little more responsible in the future. We realize that no one sex can govern alone. I believe that one of the reasons why civilization has failed so lamentably is that it has had a one-sided government. Don’t let us make the mistake of ever allowing that to happen again.

I can conceive of nothing worse than a man-governed world except a woman-governed world—but I can see the combination of the two going forward and making civilization more worthy of the name of civilization based on Christianity, not force. A civilization based on justice and mercy. I feel men have a greater sense of justice and we of mercy. They must borrow our mercy and we must use their justice. We are new brooms; let us see that we sweep the right rooms.

Personally, I feel that every woman should take an active part in local politics. I don’t mean by that that every woman should go in for a political career—that, of course, is absurd—but you can take an active part in local government without going in for a political career. You can be certain when casting your vote you are casting it for what seems nearest right—for what seems more likely to help the majority and not bolster up an organized minority. There is a lot to be done in local politics, and it is a fine apprenticeship to central government; it is very practical, and I think that, although practical, it is too near to be attractive. The things that are far away are more apt to catch our eye than the ones which are just under our noses; then, too, they are less disagreeable.

Political development is like all other developments. We must begin with ourselves, our own consciences, and clean out our own hearts before we take on the job of putting others straight. So with politics if we women put our hands to local politics, we begin the foundations. After all, central
governments only echo local ones; the politician in Washington, if he is a wise man, will always have one eye on his constituency, making that constituency so clean, so straight, so high in its purpose, that the man from home will not dare to take a small, limited view about any question, be it a national or an international one. You must remember that what women are up against is not what they see, but the unseen forces.

We are up against generations and generations of prejudice. Ever since Eve ate the apple—but I would like to remind you, and all men, why she ate the apple. It was not simply because it was good for food or pleasant to the eyes, it was a tree to be desired to make one wise. “She took of the fruit thereof, and did eat; and she gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat.” We have no record of Adam murmuring against the fruit—of his not doing anything but eat it with docility. In passing, I would like to say that the first time Adam had a chance he laid the blame on woman—however, we will leave Adam.

Ever since woman’s consciousness looked beyond the material, men’s consciousness has feared her vaguely, he has gone to her for inspiration, he has relied on her for all that is best and most ideal in his life, yet by sheer material force he has limited her. He has, without knowing it, westernized the harem mind of the East. I don’t believe he knows it yet so we must break it to him gently. We must go on being his guide, his mother, and his better half. But we must prove to him that we are a necessary half not only in private but in political life.

The best way that we can do that is to show them our ambitions are not personal. Let them see that we desire a better, safer, and a cleaner world for our children and their children and we realize that only by doing our bit by facing unclean things with cleanliness, by facing wrongs with right, by going fearlessly into all things that may be disagreeable, that we will somehow make it a little better world.

I don’t know that we are going to do this—I don’t say that women will change the world but I do say that they can if they want and I, coming in from the Old World which has seen a devastating war, cannot face the future without this hope—that the women of all countries will do their duty and raise a generation of men and women who will look upon war and all that leads to it with as much horror as we now look upon a coldblooded murder. All of the women of England want to do away with war.

If we want this new world, we can only get it by striving for it; the real struggle will be within ourselves, to put out of our consciousness, of our hearts, and of our thoughts all that makes for war, hate, envy, greed, pride, force, and material ambition.

Spending his “indoor life” in a room of six thousand books, William Lyon Phelps displayed a love for literature that infused his four decades of teaching at Yale. When he retired, Professor Phelps shared that same love for books with a wider audience, in the following speech that was broadcast on April 6, 1933.

Rarely does the professor lapse into the formal third-person address (“One should have one’s own bookshelves”); instead, he uses the second-person “you” to explain conversationally the joy of owning books. By comparing books to friends, he celebrates the democratic nature of literature (“Books are of the people, by the people, for the people”).

Professor Phelps has a ready reply for strangers who ask, “Have you read all of these books?” His stock answer is disarming: “Some of them twice.” Of course, in the case of antiquarian volumes, his advice to mark them up is an invitation to vandalism; get a reading copy and mark that up.

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THE HABIT OF
reading is one of the greatest resources of mankind; and we enjoy reading books that belong to us much more than if they are borrowed. A borrowed book is like a guest in the house; it must be treated with punctiliousness, with a certain considerate formality. You must see that it sustains no damage; it must not suffer while under your roof. You cannot leave it carelessly, you cannot mark it, you cannot turn down the pages, you cannot use it familiarly. And then, someday, although this is seldom done, you really ought to return it.

But your own books belong to you; you treat them with that affectionate intimacy that annihilates formality. Books are for use, not for show; you should own no book that you are afraid to mark up, or afraid to place on the table, wide open and face down. A good reason for marking
favorite passages in books is that this practice enables you to remember more easily the significant sayings, to refer to them quickly, and then in later years, it is like visiting a forest where you once blazed a trail. You have the pleasure of going over the old ground, and recalling both the intellectual scenery and your own earlier self.