Ei PRAM TIER SELON TORI Se SRLS SRE ASS NL a a ei z i £ so SOE TET ETT ig >» n AS WE WERE A Personal Sketch of Family Life By Mec Bruce Cotten e “Honor thy father and thy mother; that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.” PRIVATELY PRINTED FOR THE FAMILY ONLY. | BALTIMORE MCMXXXV 50 COPIES

ioneer service in this field. The movement in North Carolina was never radical in nature, our southern women being, by their situation and background, necessarily con- servative, and, even for long, they hesitated to accept the club movement which has been the principal manifesta- tion of the woman’s movement in the South. North Car- J oe 64. AS WE WERE olina is an ideal State for the useful woman’s club. Having no large cities, it has a hundred attractive towns where these clubs have accomplished very great awakening, be- sides furnishing, as well, healthy activity and needed rec- reation for hundreds of women. The men at first were in- clined to be shy and suspicious of the thing, but as soon as they found that the clubs would not, after all, interfere with their comforts at home, they came in quite gener- ously, which helped matters enormously. Mother was absorbed in the organization and well-being of these clubs for twenty-five years. She gave freely of herself and time to this work and was amply rewarded, not only by her success, but especially by the regard and high feeling of affection and esteem in which the club wo- men of the State held for her. They established a State wide Loan Fund designed to assist poor girls in securing an edu- cation which is called The Sallie Southall Cotten Loan Fund and at two of the State’s Institutions for the educa- tion of its women: the North Carolina Women’s College at Greensboro and at The Teachers Training School at Greenville each have a handsome building named in her honor. The club movement in North Carolina naturally took on some political significance. The pressure from without was too great for it to escape this, but the political activi- ties of these North Carolina clubs was on the whole very slight. In the matter of votes for women, mother was, in the early days of the movement, against it. She strongly expressed her feelings this way in a diary she kept while in Chicago during the World’s Fair. She told me, as well, upon several occasions, that she was opposed to it, because she feared it might lead to some “embarrassment of our men”. “North Carolina”, she said, “has made the pluck- AS WE WERE 65 iest fight against distressing odds of any State in the South and I don’t think that we women ought to do anything that might embarrass our men politically.” Yet—as the movement grew apace, she became to favor it, at least she could never oppose it, though she was never a militant on this subject. She was glad when the matter was settled and glad, I am sure, that it was settled in the affirmative, and hoped that after all it would introduce something into politics af a cleansing and softening na- ture. In after years she expressed to me, almost bitterly, her disappointment in this matter of votes for women. The women in America had disappointed her in this mat- ter and had done as she had first feared—at least in places —embarrassed and handicapped good government. But the vote was not the only disappointment that ' mother experienced in this woman’s movement. As she grew older and riper in experience, she discovered many things about women that she little dreamed could exist in such abundance. Not about her North Carolina women, she knew them and they had never dissappointed her, but about certain phases and leadership of the movement that did not touch North Carolina, except as it affected the whole nation. She began to realize by degrees that dishonesty, corrup- tion, immorality, bribery and destructive radicalism, exist- ed without regard to sex. She discovered, too, that these sorts of women too frequently were able to disguise their real objectives and work themselves into positions of in- fluence, or would organize clubs or societies with com- mendable sounding names behind which they worked for very different objects. i i f Lt i 66 AS WE WERE Mother was profoundly affected by the World War. She was among the first of my acquaintance to realize its scope and real significance. She saw a changed world ahead but not at all the world that was being so widely proclaimed at the time. The popular phrases of the day, that seemed to mould so much loose opinion, such as “war to stop wars” and “making the world safe for democracy”, made no im- pression whatever on her. She early assigned Woodrow Wilson to the incompetents. She had no faith in prohibi- tion or in the League of Nations, and saw ahead a world of far more bitterness and strife than had heretofore been known. To her, many things that women had for years now been striving for, were at the end of the war utterly useless, even insipid. Old problems had disappeared and others vastly more serious and dreadful in their aspect, were about to be ushered in. How would women behave in these matters? And would they assist helpfully? These were questions that were very constantly on mother’s mind during the last years of her life and she was very un- certain about much of it. The fierceness and ruthfulness of the future struggle made her shudder for women. “They are far less prepared to resist communism than they were twenty-five years ago”, she once told me, “and I can not even picture what it is going to be like.” Yet I am sure she never really despaired about the fu- ture of women. She had watched this so-called woman’s movement with the keenest interest and approval. It would lead, she believed, to a better womanhood, a better manhood and to a better world. The only time that I ever discovered her faith serious- ly wavering, was during those years immediately after the war, when the young people revolted against all conven- tionalities and many essential decencies. Mixed drinking, AS WE WERE 67 free discussion of sex, self determination and unseemly behavior, being the order of the day. This new freedom quickly gripped the young married set as well as millions of middle-aged married couples, who began petting and necking as promiscuously as their sons and daughters. It was a licentious and libertine period without parallel, and a condition deliberately incited and insisted upon by wo- men. This extraordinary phenomena puzzled mother consid- erably and at times caused her to have great misgivings as to the stability of womanhood turned loose. But she always maintained that woman would right herself, though a generation might be sacrificed in the process. Had she lived only a few years longer, she would have seen ample manifestations of this—for the debutante of 1931 was al- most as reactionary in her deportment as her sister of 1921 was radical. Woman had again rediscovered that old adage: “The woman pays.” Well do I remember the last long conversation I had with her covering such subjects. It was at Cottendale and she sat in a little low rocker that she was very fond of. She had just read an article on Feminism in Europe which had not encouraged her. I think mother at that time had some decided mis- givings about the future of mankind and civilization in general. She noted how politics had changed the world over, how it had become a great boiling caldron of passion and greed, that it had gotten from control of common sense, and that no restrain could be imposed by merely counting paper ballots. As for the women, they had won- dered far afield and she shuddered sometimes for them. Not her North Carolina women—they were well balanced and sane, but for the thousands of other women who had 68 AS WE WERE gone into this movement intensely believing that they could honestly help mankind; that women now had prac- tically every right; yet something was missing. The men had changed, did not treat women at all as they used to, fine feelings and manners were passing; so, after all, maybe the average woman had swapped her birthright for a mess of porridge and would be better off back at the old fireside with her toes stuck in bedroom slippers, darning the child- ren’s stockings as of old, Like most thinking women of her period, mother ar- dently hoped for light and the development of some so- cial system in which women would be economically free of the male. And in this I am sure that upright manhood would cooperate if any system of promise developed, for the handicap of women in this respect has been oppres- sive through the ages. Mother, therefore, quite approved of the feeding of our young womanhood into industries of all sorts, a system that has reached such stupendous proportions. She hoped from this that some system of eco- nomic independence would be evolved. But this system has led to much disaster and the disruption of important human ties and obligations, one being the development of an amazing indifference on the part of the male as to the economic condition of his female, or her condition in every other respect as well; too often to a complete will- ingness to dump all responsibility in regard to her, either wife or daughter. And so mother went on nobly and almost with an inspired zeal, grapling with these human problems that have been the despair of ages, while father, with equal nobility and faithfullness of purpose, went on with his problem which ever remained the same—getting on in the world as it is. AS WE WERE 69 The marriage of my youngest sister, at Cottendale, in 1908, and her departure for her new home in Massachu- setts, marked the end, so to speak, of an era at Cottendale. For twenty years now there had been young people in the house who had brought their friends from a distance on visits or houseparties; so that our simple little home was for years almost crowded with cheerfulness and an at- mosphere of youth and gayety. On many occasions the house would be given over to the girls alone, for weeks at a time, while the boys would quarter in what was called “the office”—a one-room struc- ture, built originally for a school house. Looking back upon this office, it seems now, that it must have been a magic space. It had an extraordinary power of accomo- dating itself to any number of young men and making them superbly comfortable and cozy besides. All were supremely happy on these occasions and the memory of Cottendale, I know, lingers sweetly in the memory of very many, besides the family, who like us, were young then and would come to us for friendship sake and the joy of companionship, and our simple unpretentious hospitality. The volumes of guest books covering this period are inter- esting remaining evidence of those happy days as well as of the wholesomeness of our entertainment and the char- acter of our friends gathered from very far and near. No one enjoyed a house, overflowing with visitors, more than father and mother. They were of the crowd always, fh 70 AS WE WERE and in truth, father and mother retained their youthful spirit until the very end. They never became venerable, neither of them, no more venerable than I am urban and it was impossible to ever associate the word with them. Yet Cottendale was very naturally changed after the marriage and departure of the last child. Many visitors still came and went, and young people as well to a less ex- tent; then, too, children returned from time to time and grandchildren began to appear with them; so Cottendale remained fully intact and functioned to every family need for twenty years yet. I think, in fact, with father and mother, that the last twenty years of their lives were the most satisfactory of all. They had raised their family and launched them in the world; they were proud of their children and anxiety over many things had passed. They were financially com- fortable, so a great relaxation came over both of them, a relaxation that was beautiful to behold and more beauti- ful still, to look back upon now. Mother was able to take even larger participation in her club work, was away from home a great deal and maintained an enormous correspondence. Father, not to be outdone in activity, for the first time in his life began to take some interest in politics and went to the Legislature several times. He also was fond of taking little journeys of a few days to any sort of place and on any pretence and began to take a great interest in the Confederate Veterans, an organization that he had no time at all for during his more active years. He was made a Colonel on the Gener- al’s Staff and attended all reunions for a number of years before his death. AS WE WERE 71 It was a perfect joy to see father enjoy life after he was eighty years of age, yet we frequently had some apprehen- sion about him on some of those long trips he insisted upon taking alone. He became subject to serious heart attacks and his persistent activities became the subject of numerous family consultations. I recall that I was once especially detailed to dissuade him from going to a Con- federate Reunion at Dallas, Texas, when he was eighty- five and far from well; but father had no idea of being in- fluenced by a mere lad like myself and went on down to Texas where he had a glorious time and came back per- fectly well. Finally, in spite of the persistent warnings of the doc- tor, I advised that we let father do as he pleased in these matters, that if he died on a train somewhere on one of these trips that I would go to him and bring him home. This policy was adopted and I think prolonged father’s life a number of years. We used to tease father, or at least try to tease him, about his willingness to attend any convention anywhere on any conceivable subject whatsoever; but father enjoyed these trips, and gave full rein to his natural sociability and always had experiences that were interesting to him. His last Confederate Reunion was held at Memphis, Tennes- see, when father was eighty-eight years of age. He attend- ed but was not at all well; also someone picked his pocket of $175.00, as he confided to me, which humiliated him exceedingly and made him feel that he was no longer able to look out for himself. I asked him why he wanted to go on such a trip in mid-summer, and he said that he “just felt that he wanted to be a boy again for a day or two;” a feeling so natural and understandable that no comment was necessary. 72 AS WE WERE On his numerous trips to see me in Baltimore, it became increasingly difficult to keep him over any length of time. All his numerous friends in Baltimore had passed beyond and even the streets that he once knew so well in years gone by had completely changed in appearance so at last he had no one to call upon and I was rarely able to keep him longer than a day. During the last decade mother continued her club work and did, I believe, what she considered some of her best work. She would spend much more time on visits to her children than father did, and was never so restless on her visits from home as father was. She would complain that she could do nothing for me, that any little present she could bring me seemed superficial; however, she was con- stantly bringing or sending me some little present, usually some North Carolina book that she had found on some of her travels. Once she came up to Cylburn and brought me a little cardboard, all nicely bound, and said that she had written a little token to her children, that it perhaps would not impress us now as we were all so well and happy, but that it would some day. It was written in her own superb handwriting and here it is: A MOTHER’S BLESSING Some day when you stand with aching heart, where I lie cold and still, For the first time deaf to your cry of pain, and your tears arouse no thrill; When my helpless hands can no longer caress nor strive for your earthly bliss, When my silent lips can no longer heal your wounds with a mother’s kigs: Oh! then be glad that you gave me love, while warm with life I could know it, Be glad that by tender words and deeds, you never failed to show it, AS WE WERE 73 Be glad that you crowned my age with joy; nor brought me grief, nor shame, And comfort take that your worthy lives brought honor to my name, God grant us many happy years ere I am called above; And then I fain would soothe your hurt with a mother’s deathless love, Think then of all the joy you gave, let the pain at your heart soon cease, : For in life and in death, I bless you, let my blessing bring you peace. Sallie Southall Cotten. To my Children. We all had been watching father and mother for some years with the keenest joy. If we had, as they ever insisted, been a source of joy and pleasure to them; they very amply repaid it and deserved it, for no parents had ever lavished more wholesome care, pains, or gave more freely of love or sacrifices than they. So it was a positive joy now to see them both enjoying life in their extreme old age, so gen- erously, and for so many years, after what might have been considered a reasonable span. Yet, our apprehension about them started fully ten years before their death. We knew, of course, that the icy hand of death must come and put an end to it all, but the break in the long family record of health and happiness commenced where none of us in the least expected. In January, 1925, my brother, Lyman Cotten, Captain U. S. Navy, died after a few days illness of pneumonia at the Naval Hospital in Norfolk, where he had been rushed from aboard his ship. It was the first death in our family since my brother was drowned in Tar River in 1884. His death was a very great blow and sorrow. He was a very important member of the family, had graduated at USs 74 AS WE WERE Naval Academy in 1898, and had attained a most enviable reputation and standing in the service—a standing indeed, that reflected great credit upon himself as well as upon the family at large. Three years later we were further be- reaved and heartbroken by the death of our sister, Agnes, Mrs. Julian Timberlake, who, all her life, had been a most devoted daughter and sister to us all. She alone, among the girls of our family, was known as “Sister”, and it was a roll that she lived up to all the days of her life. Her home at Raleigh, had always been as open to every mem- ber of the family as Cottendale itself, and all of us loved her devotedly and had spent many happy days with her and with Julian Timberlake, who was ever a member of the family. Sister had come to Cottendale to attend the sixty-second anniversary of father’s and mother’s marriage. The occa- sion was on March 14, 1927. The event was a very happy one, father and mother being very strong and well. Num- bers of people called during the day, some from a great distance and none seemed to enjoy it more, or be in better spirits, than Mrs. Timberlake. The following day she was stricken down with a dreaded disease that we all hoped had been arrested, and died at Cottendale where she had been reared and where she had been married thirty-six years before. Both father and mother were naturally stunned by these tragedies, one so shortly after the other. Neither had ever thought of outliving their children and neither of them ever really recovered from the shock. Father was now 89 years of age, mother seven years his junior. They had been man and wife for sixty-two years and had seen a vast change in human affairs. Consider, if you please, what AS WE WERE 75 had taken place in the world between Martin Van Buren and Calvin Coolidge. Neither of them, I am sure, had the slightest fear of - death. Both of them frequently spoke to me about their death in a manner s0 casual and unconcerned that I would be amazed. I am sure that there is something about old age that prepares people for death, a resignation and will- ingness to go. Father had been frequently ill during the last years of his life, and mother as well, to a less alarming extent. Dur- ing these years my sister, Sally, devoted herself without stint, to their care and comfort and to her love, devotion, capacity and unselfishness we are all indebted. In August, 1928, I knew that father was not well and reports that I received were very unfavorable. He was at Cottendale and both mother and Sally were with him, as well as a nurse or two, who had been kept almost on con- stant watch at Cottendale for several years now. At mid- night on August 13th, Dr. Zeno Brown called me on the telephone and told me that father had had a severe at- tack and was sinking rapidly. I caught the first morning train for Rocky Mount but the bridge having been carried away over the Rappahannock at Fredericksburg, my train had to detour over on the Southern tracks so that I did not reach Rocky Mount until 2 a. m. that night. “Gene,” our faithful colored chauffeur met me at the station and as I saw him approaching from a distance I knew that father was dead. Naturally we all watched mother very closely after father’s death. She took his death bravely, nevertheless it was evident that much had come to an end as well with | | f q Hi i 76 AS WE WERE her. She desired to remain at Cottendale for a while and some member of the family remained with her. By De- cember she was in a much weakened condition but had promised to spend the winter with Sally and Russ Wiggen, at Winchester, Massachusetts, where very loving and care- ful preparation had been made to receive her. Sally su- pervised this transfer and actually took her from her bed at Cottendale and placed her in her room at Winchester without letting her foot touch the ground. At Winchester, Mother was entirely at home, she had scores of friends there who made much of her and the young people as well, called her “Mother Cotten” as they did in North Carolina. She was always exceedingly happy with Russ and Sally, and they in turn were ever devoted and thoughtful of her comfort. She improved very con- siderably as the winter advanced, began going out some, and on one occasion she was invited to attend a mammoth convention of women in Boston, which she did, and was received with very distinguished attention, introduced as the Julia Ward Howe of the south and made a considerable address which was broadcast over a network of stations. This was her last public appearance. In April the con- dition of her heart became alarming. My brother kept me - informed by telephone, and at last, advised by attendance. Since childhood we had gone to her with our joys and sorrows, our plans, hopes and disappointments, and had always been received with sympathy and loving under- standing. On the morning of May 2, 1929, please God, she passed from us forever. FINIS.