Grace Gallatin Thompson Seton (1872-1959)

In 1912, Good Housekeeping, one of America's leading women's magazines, published an article titled "Feminine Charms of the Woman Militant" to give readers a look at several prominent leaders of the women's suffrage movement, particularly at their "personal attractiveness and housewifely attainments," as the subheading stated. One feminist they chose to feature was Grace Thompson Seton, president of the Connecticut Women's Suffrage Association. Seton was also a well-known travel writer and the wife of Ernest Thompson Seton, best-selling author of animal tales, highly respected natural scientist, and co-founder of the Boy Scouts of America. The magazine title represented Seton as

Fig. 1.

Grace Seton, signed photograph, c. 1922. Archives of the Historical Society of the Town of Greenwich.

something of a paradox, implying that militancy and "feminine charm" were conflicting traits. The article continued to interpret her in this vein: Seton's "bearing in the drawing room," readers were told, "gives one the impression of a sheltered, beautifully groomed hostess and seems to contradict her adventurous spirit." There were other signs of imbalance: "In her sparkling blue eyes I can see the mischief-loving, determined, highly intelligent being" who "loves danger and deliberately courts it." But the reporter concluded reassuringly enough, for the sheltered hostess set: "With all her talents . . . Mrs. Seton is perhaps most proud of her ability to invent new dishes and design new gowns" (153).¹

Seton began her professional life as a designer, not of gowns, however, but of covers and borders for her books and her husband's. She liked to design clothing ensembles, as well, the most famous of which was unconventional disguise—a riding habit for which she created a split skirt to make the modest woman look as though she "were riding side saddle on both sides" when she was actually riding "astride" (A Woman Tenderfoot 24). And while she enjoyed inventing culinary delights, she had no intention of cooking them. In her first work, A Woman Tenderfoot, which chronicled an 1897 husband and wife camping trip through Yellowstone and the Tetons, she counsels women planning similar ventures to procure a "man cook" as part of the company. Otherwise, she warns, they may be trapped into this "really disagreeable" duty themselves (39). In the book, the only time the author picks up a frying pan is when she uses it to kill a rattlesnake (25).

While femininity and domesticity were poses, more than ideologies, for Grace Seton, they were well suited to her. A small, trim, attractive woman with elegant manners, she was indeed at home in drawing rooms and at formal society affairs.² Once, preparing for a trip to her publishers in England, she made sure to wrangle herself an invitation to the Queen's annual garden party. In good times, she supervised up to seven house servants, and her personal maid-nanny-companion, Hanna Engstrom, stayed with the family for over forty years. Nevertheless, beneath the poses of fashionable hostess and dedicated militant lodged a restlessness and craving for adventure that, while consistent with Seton's support of women's rights, carried intention and force all their own.

As the 1912 Good Housekeeping article notes, Seton courted danger as much as high fashion. By this year, A Woman Tenderfoot and its sequel, Nimrod's Wife, had earned her a fair reputation as one of an increasing number of women travel writers who braved the wild West. Through these literary outdoorswomen, a genre blossomed that capitalized on the popularity of western entertainments featuring women such as Annie Oakley, Buffalo Bill Cody's star, as well as on the increased mobility of women generally and the greater ease of cross-continental travel.³ Certainly Seton's book sales also benefited from her husband's fame, and he was happy to promote her image as a lady daredevil. As a hunting companion, he later declared, "she was a great success, never grumbled at hardship, or scolded anyone. She was a dead shot with a rifle, often far ahead of the guides, and met...