LETTERS: 7 Letters to the Castle in Tarrytown.
Letters to an Educator
Catt, Carrie Chapman. Seven typed letters signed, to Miss C.E. Mason. New Rochelle, N.Y.; 1922-1932; each letter typed on single leaves of stationery; various sizes.
Seven letters from Catt to Mason, an official of a private school at Tarrytown-on-the-Hudson in New York: August 17, 1922; June 19, 1925; January 30, 1926; April 14, 1927; November 28, 1928; February 5, 1932; and November 9, 1932. The letters, sent over a ten year period, are brief, mostly declining invitations from Mason to visit her school in Tarrytown.
Catt’s lengthiest letter – one of the last she sent Mason, in 1932 – has a ring of discouragement in it. By this time, Catt had been a suffrage activist for nearly forty years, and had moved on to anti-war activism. It is clear she was questioning the efficacy of acting against the war machine; indeed she seems the first to admit at the futility of the endeavor:
I rather neglected your request begging that I should have a conference of women to see what was the matter with the world. I talked about it to others, but no one wished to go in on that. As a matter of fact, the world is so full of work just now that no one who is at work feels the necessity of starting something new. I don’t myself think that men or women can make a very stirring appeal on the subject of the causes of our present state, unless they come out flatly and lay it to the last war. Perhaps that war is wholly blamable for all of it. Around the newspaper offices I learn that there is much prediction that before we get through we shall be involved in war with Japan.
I don’t know what use there is of having a Friend for President if he cannot keep us out of war. I am still trusting that he will. (February 5, 1932)
It is clear throughout this correspondence that Catt was preoccupied with her other work with suffrage issues and anti-war activism, and in each letter gives some idea of her busy schedule. From her first letter, in 1922: “I received your letter on Wednesday and packed it up with other things to take home and to answer it by phone, but when I got home I found I did not have it. Now I observe that we are invited to come before Sunday, and I must tell you that it is quite impossible to do so” (August 17, 1922).
A few years later, Catt apologizes for being too ill to attend the commencement exercises that Mason invited her to, “I am not very well this summer and, therefore, my correspondence is a little less well attended to than usual. I hope some day I shall have some time and strength so that I can come visit your school which, I am sure, would be highly interesting and enjoyable” (June 10, 1925). Six months later, Catt wrote a similar letter postponing a visit: “I prefer waiting until my return before giving you any date, for I do not know just what my condition will be when I come back” (January 30, 1926).
In her next letter, Catt thanks Mason coming to her defense, possibly at an anti-war meeting or a lecture. She hopes that Mason’s action sets an example,
I think that that ought to be done every time that such a woman makes an attack upon decent people. I think the tide is now somewhat turning, and that the threats of the patriotic gentlemen and ladies who think all the rest of us are inspired with the desire to overturn the government is proving a boomerang which is recoiling upon themselves. (April 14, 1927)
Catt apologizes again for being unable to visit Mason’s school, due to her preoccupation with a conference on the “Cause and Cure of War” to be held in Washington. She explains that she has also been ill, and not doing many speaking engagements. She admits to feeling sorry, “because I disappointed you once before, and I feel it is up to me to make good at some time” (February 28, 1928).
Catt’s letters are addressed to Mason at “The Castle,” but the Castle was a privately owned home, built in two stages in 1897 and 1910 and owned by the Carroll family. Af
Print Inquire