Passionate Commitments: The Lives of Anna Rochester and Grace Hutchins

Chapter One: 1919

15 Chapter One 1919 “They shall walk in white for they are worthy.” —Revelation 3:4 (quoted in Emily Malbone Morgan’s Adelyn’s Story, p. 12) I take wings through the night and pass through all the wildernesses of the worlds, and the old dark holds of tears and death—and return with laughter, laughter, laughter: Sailing through the starlit spaces on outspread wings, we two—O laughter! laughter! laughter! —Edward Carpenter (Towards Democracy, p. 14) Grace Hutchins and Anna Rochester first met in August 1919 at the annual conference of the Society of the Companions of the Holy Cross (SCHC).1 An Episcopal laywomen’s organization, the SCHC gave Rochester and Hutchins two indivisible freedoms: the freedom to form a committed partnership with each other and the freedom, indeed, the necessity, to devote themselves to creating a more just society. The conference was held, as always, at the retreat site of the Companions, north of Boston, and this year’s theme was “Internationalism: A Consideration of the Social and Religious Forces that Make for It.” Discussions were heated, as the Companions, none of whom was even yet recognized as a voter in the US Constitution, debated the advisability of establishing a League of Nations. Both Hutchins and Rochester were raised devout Episcopalians. As young adults, both had joined the Socialist Party and with the onset of World War I had become pacifists. When they met in 1919, they found themselves on the same side of the SCHC debates and discovered that they both supported Paul Jones, the bishop of Utah, who had been censured by the Episcopal House of Bishops for speaking out against the United States’ entry into the war. They also found a shared interest in the newly formed Church League for Industrial Democracy (CLID). Anna Rochester’s mother had died in January 1919, after many years of ill health, leaving her only child financially comfortable but adrift. In June, Rochester left her position as editor with the US Children’s Bureau, giving the retreat site as her forwarding address: Adelynrood, South Byfield, Massachusetts.2 On August 18, a day before her thirty-fourth birthday, Grace Hutchins came in from New York, where she was teaching the New Testament at the New York Training School for Deaconesses. Although first Rochester, and 16 PASSIONATE COMMITMENTS then Hutchins, would leave the Companions a decade later, as if shedding an ill-fitting coat, their lives and work remained profoundly shaped by the strengths and visions of this small group of women. “To Develop the Companionship Life” Hutchins and Rochester both came to develop the Companionship life,3 a life that fostered consecrated work and unrestricted love designed to bring about a new social order. The Society of the Companions of the Holy Cross was (and still is) devoted to intercessory prayer, thanksgiving, and simplicity of life. The Manual of the Society of the Companions of the Holy Cross reminds members that “Companions shall seek to practice and to encourage systematic intercession for the coming of God’s Kingdom on earth.”4 From the beginning, the Companionship was far more than just a social organization. The organization’s founder, Emily Morgan, enjoined the Companions to “realize that we are organized for companionship as well as intercession, but for companionship on a higher plane, and with a higher bond of union than the mere ordinary social relationships of the world.”5 Although the names of most early Companions will not be familiar to readers today, some members are still recognized for their brilliance as catalysts of social change: they included Vida Dutton Scudder, a Wellesley English professor who worked to establish the first College Settlement for Women on Rivington Street in Manhattan’s lower east side; Scudder’s life partner, Florence Converse, a radical novelist, poet, and assistant editor at Figure 1.1. Anna Rochester and Grace Hutchins at Adelynrood, ca. 1921 17 1919 The Atlantic Monthly; Ellen Gates Starr, a founder of Hull House and activist in the strikes of women textile workers in Chicago; Helena Stuart Dudley, head of Denison House in Boston; and Mary Simkhovitch, director of Greenwich House in Manhattan.6 Rochester had met Vida Scudder and Florence Converse at a summer resort in Shelburne, New Hampshire, in 1904. Scudder had made every effort then to convince Rochester of the importance of labor unions. It took four years, but finally, in 1908, Rochester signaled her...