Outlaw Marriages (8 page)

Within a matter of months, Smith had become a valuable member of the settlement house community, spending virtually every day at Hull House.
16

By 1891, Jane Addams's friendship with Mary Rozet Smith had grown into a romantic relationship that included both emotional and physical dimensions. Addams's nephew later wrote, “Mary Smith became and always remained the highest and clearest note in the music that was Jane Addams's personal life.”
17

Even though Smith had, after two years, become one of the settlement house's most stalwart volunteers, family responsibilities kept her from moving in permanently. Instead, she continued to live with her retired father and invalid mother in their Chicago mansion on Walton Place, while spending her days and many evenings working alongside Addams at Hull House. Smith also frequently slept at the house, with these temporary stays sometimes lasting for as long as two weeks at a stretch.
18

The fact that Smith's sense of duty forced her to continue living with her elderly parents had its benefits. There were so many activities at the settlement house that Addams frequently worked so hard and so continuously that she became exhausted, which jeopardized her already fragile health. And so, from time to time, Smith talked her partner into spending a few nights at her parents' mansion. These visits served as respites for Addams, as the household servants did everything they could to pamper her. In the words of one Addams biographer, “the Smith home was a refuge.”
19

Regardless of whether Addams and Smith were spending the night at Hull House or at the Smith home, they insisted on sleeping in the same bed. Indeed, when the two women traveled together, they even telegraphed the hotel where they'd be spending the night to make sure their room was furnished with a double bed, rather than two single ones.
20

By the mid-1890s, Addams was in great demand as a speaker, with reform-minded men and women around the country eager to hear firsthand about the work she was doing in Chicago. Smith accompanied her partner on as many of these trips as she could, partly so the women could spend time alone and partly so Smith could keep Addams from overexerting herself.
21

When Smith's parents asked her to stay with them rather than travel with
Addams, the dutiful daughter generally complied. On these occasions when the two women were separated, they wrote to each other at least once a day—sometimes twice. Statements in the letters, which have been preserved as part of Addams's personal papers, give a sense of how much the two women meant to each other. In one letter, Addams told Smith, “I bless you, dear, every time I think of you, which is all the time” and “I miss you dreadfully and am yours 'til death.” Smith reciprocated with letters to Addams such as one that read, “You have made my life—all its meaning and color come from you.”
22

The correspondence clearly shows that the women thought of themselves as a married couple. “You must know, dear, how I long for you all the time,” Addams wrote during one three-week separation. “There is reason in the habit of married folks keeping together.” Several Addams biographers have stated point-blank that she and Smith would have become wife and wife if such an option had been available. One biographer wrote, “They came to think of themselves as married to each other,” and another said, “Jane and Mary called their forty-year relationship, quite simply, a marriage.”
23

The most tangible way that Smith contributed to Addams's work came with her monetary donations to Hull House, which escalated dramatically in 1893.
24

By that critical point, two significant changes had come about at the settlement house. First, the operation had expanded from a single building into several, including a gymnasium and a residence hall for adult men. Second, the number of young women living and working at Hull House full time had expanded to twelve, which meant expenses for room and board had soared.
25

Addams initially covered the additional costs through her own inheritance, but, after four years, that money was gone. She also no longer had Ellen Starr to share the burdens, as the other founder of Hull House had left Chicago to study in England.
26

In desperation, Addams turned to her partner, and, in the words of one scholar, “Mary Rozet Smith was the right woman at the right moment for Jane Addams—financially as well as personally.” Smith's early gifts were relatively modest, such as the money to create a children's playground and to buy an organ to support the music program, but they soon grew in size, including paying the entire cost of constructing a new building for children's activities in 1895.
27

It was during this same period that Smith created a discretionary fund for Addams. That is, Smith made it clear that her partner was free to spend the money any way she chose, including spending it on personal items that brought her pleasure. This monthly gift would continue without interruption for the next forty years.
28

On several occasions, Addams expressed discomfort at Smith being so generous. “I went to bed quite determined not to accept the check you offered,” she wrote in 1895, “but, after a three o'clock vigil, found myself weakly accepting it.” Addams saw no other option to taking the money from her partner. In the words of one biographer, “It was Smith's constant overcoming of deficits that literally kept the work going.” In addition, there are no statements in any of the couple's correspondence to suggest that Smith had any hesitation about giving the money to support her partner's groundbreaking work.
29

In the late 1890s, Smith was instrumental in bringing about major changes in the fiscal circumstances at Hull House. Realizing that her own inheritance couldn't sustain the operation forever, she took the lead in transforming the house into a corporation, naming herself as one member of the five-person board of trustees.
30

Becoming incorporated wasn't a minor detail, as the business-savvy Smith saw this as an essential step if her partner was to succeed at keeping her social experiment afloat. Specifically, Smith knew that many potential donors were reluctant to give money to an enterprise operated entirely by women. But, she speculated, more contributions would arrive if Hull House became incorporated and had men on the board.
31

After the incorporation process was complete, Smith used her social connections to solicit donations from wealthy Chicagoans who traveled in the same elite circles as her parents did. Indeed, in the words of one scholar, Smith was soon “sweetly dragooning donations from groaning industrialists.” Among the millionaires Smith persuaded to provide financial support for the settlement house—including adding more residence halls and other buildings—were farm equipment manufacturer Cyrus H. McCormick Jr., Sears & Roebuck president Julius Rosenwald, and real estate investor Louise deKoven Bowen.
32

At the same time that Smith was keeping Addams's social reform experiment from failing financially, she also was helping her partner on a much more personal level. That is, Smith took it upon herself to serve as the guardian against Addams overexerting herself by working too hard and, thereby, jeopardizing her physical health.
33

Smith realized, not long into her outlaw marriage, that her initial strategy of helping Addams relax by arranging for visits to her parents' mansion wasn't an ideal solution to her partner's inclination to overexert herself. The problem was that the respites sometimes lasted only a few days before some crisis pulled Addams back to Hull House, which was located only a few miles
away. So Smith came up with the idea of building lengthy vacations into her partner's exhausting schedule.
34

In 1896, for example, Addams wanted to travel to Russia to visit writer and education reformer Leo Tolstoy. International travel during the late nineteenth century was difficult, however, and so Smith initially opposed Addams making the trip. But after some more thought, Smith offered not only to join Addams on the journey but also to pay all the expenses and make all the travel arrangements. Smith's generous proposal came on the condition that they'd extend the trip and spend a month relaxing in Germany. Addams accepted Smith's offer.
35

An excerpt from a letter that a Hull House resident wrote to Smith in 1899 shows that other people recognized the role she played in keeping Addams from overexerting herself. “Miss Addams is very tired & has had bowel trouble added to lady-trouble these last few days,” the woman wrote, “but of course she did not let either deter her from racing about. I wish you could think of some scheme that would take her for a jaunt.” Smith instantly contacted a friend in Baltimore and asked her to invite Addams to speak in that city. The request led to Addams and Smith then spending a two-week vacation in the East.
36

In the early 1900s, Smith came up with a more long-term plan for building periods of relaxation into her partner's hectic life. By this point, Addams had become involved in a dizzying variety of social issues ranging from regulating child labor to crafting national immigration policy. These activities meant she was constantly attending meetings and hearings in East Coast cities such as Boston, New York, and Washington. So Smith found a house that was for sale in a village near Bar Harbor, Maine, and then suggested to Addams that they buy it as a second home they could call their own. Addams agreed, and in 1904 the two women became joint owners of the home, although Smith paid the lion's share of the cost.
37

When she'd gone house hunting, Smith had made sure to find a place that was so small it couldn't accommodate more than two people, so Addams couldn't invite guests to the home. Smith also insisted the house they bought had minimal property around it so the maintenance would be low. The cottage fit the bill perfectly, as it only had a few perennials—such as lilacs and peonies. Smith's careful planning worked, as Addams wrote her, soon after they purchased the cottage, “Our house—it quite gives me a thrill to write the words. It is our house isn't it, in a really true ownership.” In another letter, this one written after the women had stayed in the cottage numerous times, Addams said to Smith, “I feel as if we have come into a healing domesticity which we have never had before.”
38

Even after they were spending periodic vacations in Maine, Smith continued
to pay for her and Addams to go on lengthy international holidays as well—insisting that she make all the arrangements so the travel would proceed at a leisurely pace. During the early 1900s, their destinations included Mexico, the West Indies, and the Middle East.
39

Jane Addams's emergence as a peace advocate grew out of her life experience. From 1889 onward, Hull House had brought together immigrants who'd recently left their native countries. Despite the dramatic differences in language and culture, Addams had mixed these people together on a daily basis with virtually no conflict. She was convinced that this same success could be replicated on a global scale.
40

Once the fighting began in Europe in 1914, she made numerous public statements in support of her beliefs regarding international cooperation, and late that year she chaired a peace conference at a settlement house in New York City. In early 1915, Addams organized a larger conference, this one targeted specifically toward women. “I do not assert that women are better than men,” she told the three thousand participants, “but we would all admit that there are things about which women are more sensitive than men, and one of these is the treasuring of life.”
41

By this point in Addams's life, people paid attention to what she said because she'd grown into an internationally recognized figure with several major accomplishments to her credit. First on the list was her success with Hull House, which had prompted social reformers across the country to found more than one hundred other settlement houses. In addition, she'd been so effective in her campaign against child labor that the U.S. Congress had passed federal legislation making it illegal for employers to hire workers under the age of sixteen. In recognition of Addams's stature,
Ladies' Home Journal
had repeatedly singled her out as America's most admired woman.
42

And so, after Addams's statements and activities on behalf of global cooperation became widely known, a Dutch feminist asked her to preside at an international meeting of peace activists in the Netherlands. The proposed event would be unprecedented, not only because the delegates would all be female but also because they would include women from European countries that were, by that time, engaged in armed combat against each other.
43

Addams didn't reply to the request right away, even though she wanted to accept it, because Mary Rozet Smith opposed the idea for two reasons. First, she was concerned that Addams would be putting herself in harm's way by traveling to Europe during wartime. Second, Smith wanted to guard against her partner jeopardizing her health by adding the responsibilities of leading an international conference to her already substantial burdens.
44

Smith being worried about her partner's health was fueled by a series of medical crises that Addams had suffered since founding Hull House. She'd contracted typhoid fever in 1896 and had an appendectomy in 1909, with her recovery from both incidents proving much slower and much more complicated than her doctors had expected. In addition, Addams had endured several bouts of bronchitis and pleurisy over the years, as well as one instance of pneumonia—the doctors said that stress and fatigue had contributed to all these illnesses.
45