Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, Jenny June | Page 9

them on for the executive work of others to fulfil. I
can assure you she was everything to us. Her English birth gave her an
instinctive insight into English character. English women seemed to
know and understand her, as she knew and understood them, and there
has been no finer link between the women of America and the women
of the Old World than Mrs. Croly. It was my privilege to be with her
personally a great deal while in London, not only when she stayed in
my own house, but when I have gone back and forth with her as her
guide to the many functions we attended together. We can all be proud
of her. Wherever she went she was not only hailed as the pioneer
woman, but also as one who did honor and credit to the name of

American womanhood, for, although born in England, she still claimed
that she was an American woman, as you know.
I shall never forget a little picture she gave of herself one day. She told
us of her life in her home in a little town in the north of England. Her
father was a Unitarian, and often had classes in his house for teaching
the working people. His views, as you may imagine, were quite
contrary to the views of the orthodox Church of England, and the
people there rebelled, stoned the house, and wanted to turn them out of
the town. The mother said to the father: "I wish you would take little
Jennie by the hand, in her white frock, and lead her out to the people;
perhaps when they see her they will not throw stones." That was her
earliest memory of that little English town. Later, I believe, they left in
the night and came to America, in order that they might live out the
courage of their faith.
At our luncheon Mrs. Croly said: "I want English and American
women to love each other. I remember with pride and honor my
English birth. I can see my little room now--a small room with a lattice
window over which the roses grew, and as I stood at the window on
tiptoe, I could look into the old-fashioned garden below. I stood on an
old chest. In the winter my summer frocks were kept there, and in the
summer my red woollen dress. I loved it; it was beautiful, and it made
me love England. When I am in England and I hear anything not quite
kind about America, I am sorry and my heart aches, and if, when I am
in America, I hear something not quite kind about England, my heart
aches again, because I love it all."
In talking with Mrs. Croly, she said to me, "I hope some day you will
come to a General Federation." Quoting Matthew Arnold, she said: "If
ever the world sees a time when women shall come together, purely
and simply for the benefit and good of mankind, it will be a power such
as the world has never known." And she said, "There you will find it."
We had talked about it and looked forward to seeing it together, but
that will never be. It was her hope and dream that there should be such
a General Federation of clubs as to bring in the women of the Old
World with the Federation of Clubs in the New, that we might stand
hand in hand together. She said to me, "I think you are narrow in your
society--its members are only Americans." We have often talked this
over, and have decided that in order to strengthen our centre we must

keep it, at present, to American woman; but it may be possible to have
an associate membership--the thin edge of the wedge looking toward
the realization of her dreams.

Address by Cynthia Westover Alden, Vice-President of the Women's
Press Club, and President of the International Sunshine Society
Mrs. Croly has left us. Yet I cannot think of her work as ended, of her
mission as closed. You may go over every line she ever wrote, you may
recall with, microscopic exactness every word she ever spoke, without
finding one single grain of bitterness towards any human creature. Her
active life was such as must find the ripe continuance of its activity in
the better country whither she has preceded us. I feel that there is no
hyperbole in applying to her memory the striking words of Lowell's
Elegy on Dr. Channing:
"I do not come to weep above thy pall And mourn the dying-out of
noble powers; The poet's clearer eye should see in all Earth's seeming
woe, seed of immortal flowers.
"No power can die that ever wrought for truth; Thereby a law of Nature