2025 Readings 34

 Yesterday I finished reading Vida Scudder's autobiography, On Journey. I included a Family label on this post, although I think that's a stretch. Yes, there aren't that many Scudders in the world, but I think our lines of the Scudder crew veered apart back in England. Still, I still claim her, mainly because, as I say way too often, she's the other socialist Scudder (socialism is definitely a recessive gene in our broader family). She certainly led an amazing life, from being born in India (as so many Scudders have over the years, which is why I think I was genetically determined to go to India), but then leaving early on after the drowning death of her missionary father, to eventually being a college professor and author and socialist and having her own feast day on the Episcopalian calendar. She was also lived a committed relationship with Florence Converse for decades, so I guess she has so many qualities that the radical right would hate today. I think their relationship was a well-known fact at the time, although it's handled gently in the autobiography, which I completely understand and respect for multiple reasons. However, she also doesn't dodge the reality of their relationship entirely, but instead handles it in a very understated and casual fashion. In this passage she discusses her living arrangements with her mother and with Florence: "So we settled at Wellesley (gs - where Vida taught); and it was lucky that the house had grown bigger than first planned, for neither my mother nor I wished seclusion. Someone always shared our home, and in 1919. Florence Converse and her mother came to make one family with us. Miss Converse had for years shared my life in all ways except in living under the same roof. Now that Joy was given us, and we have never been separated since."

There are so many beautiful passages, ranging from her views on socialism to faith to even her cats. Here's one of my favorites, reflecting up on her view of immortality:

"I fear I have never really made that Act. Immortality does not interest me. Stress on duration seems to me the note of an imprisoned mind. Now, this fleeting instant, I experience the Eternal and it suffices me:

          'He who kissed a joy as it flies/Lives in eternity's sunrise.'

Survival? It is to me an unreal conception. Moreover, by what right do I demand from Deity a privilege which I have no reason to expect my cats to share? Or the roses in the garden? Though looking at the matter from another angle, I should not be surprised to find that all the roses which have ever bloomed on earth, blossom forever in the Paradise of God."

Maybe I'll come back to this post and amend it later, adding more of her observations on life.

It's sad that she doesn't receive more attention. Her book Socialism and Character is queued up for one of my next reads.