THE COMPANIONS

Vida Dutton Scudder (1861-1954)

Social Justice Advocate, Educator and Writer

Vida Dutton Scudder was a fearless advocate for social justice and a renowned educator and writer.  She was an active member of the Society of the Companions of the Holy Cross from its early founding years until her death in 1954. Scudder’s wisdom and experience shaped generations of Companions.

The Lectionary Calendar of the Episcopal Church commemorates Vida Dutton Scudder on October 10.

We often think of Vida Dutton Scudder (1861-1954) as a young woman—a firebrand radical for social justice whose passions were fueled by her youthful idealism.

A reflective Vida Scudder

We remember the picture of the prim college graduate with a lace collar and a jeweled brooch, and don’t stop to think that she took her most forceful stands and wrote the books, articles and pamphlets for which she was most well known much later in her life at the height of her professional career and after her retirement. The convictions of the “young firebrand” matured into lifelong advocacy for the causes of socialism and justice, and for their integration into the Christian life of prayer and action.

In her autobiography On Journey—published in 1937 when she was 76 years old—Vida Scudder recalls the moment of her social and spiritual awakening. In the 1880s and ‘90s, privileged families often took their young adult children on a “Grand Tour” of Europe, but this visit by Mrs. Scudder and her daughter was different. Harriet Dutton Scudder insisted on educating her daughter to the same standards as male students. She enrolled Vida in the Girls’ Latin School as soon as it opened in 1878. She encouraged Vida to attend the new Smith College because it offered a full baccalaureate program—an adventurous and exciting chance to prove that the minds of young women were equal to those of men. The Vida Scudder we remember today was launched.

Vida’s “Grand Tour” included a year of study at Oxford University—she and her school friend Clara French were the first American women admitted. When she wrote about this 52 years later, we can still feel her excitement to hear John Ruskin, English art critic and social thinker, denounce the excesses of industrial capitalism. Ruskin urged the students at Oxford to follow Leo Tolstoy’s example to “Return to the People.”

This movement was, Scudder wrote,

… a force impelling the best of the young ‘intellectuals’ to break restlessly loose from their class and to throw in their lot with the unprivileged. … Something within me stirred, responded, awoke.

Within four years, Vida and a group of other women college graduates, began the Rivington Street Settlement House in New York City. The social settlements opened their doors in slum neighborhoods. They offered working families education and social support, nursing services and day care. But the settlements also gave purpose and meaning to the lives of the women who ran them, women who yearned to put their education to use. Scudder wrote this in 1890, hoping to persuade other college graduates to join them:

Into this world: — a world of paradox, weary with age, yet eager with the excitement of youth: ardent with hope, yet sick with half despair; rife with bewildering and contradictory theories, yet bent, as no other age has ever been, on the analysis of social evil and the righting of social wrong – we, the first generation of college women. … Surely, I may at least say, that we may make ourselves significant if we will. We stand here as a new Fact – new, to all intents and purposes, within the last quarter of a century. Our lives are in our hands. In a sense, the lives of the two or three generations of college women who are to follow us, are in our hands also. What is the relation which these lives should bear to the needs and demands of the time?

Vida Dutton Scudder taught English for 40 years at Wellesley College. Along with her volunteer work with the settlements, she published widely in scholarly and religious journals and in magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly. She joined the Socialist Party in 1911. She served on the editorial board of the Anglican Theological Review and contributed to its first publication advising the General Convention of 1919 on the social, economic and religious issues of the day. She was a leader in several pro-labor church organizations.

Lawrence Textile Strike of 1912

These activities—no longer the result of the passions of youth but of a mature and reasoned middle age—carried a cost. In 1912, at age 51, and a full professor at Wellesley College, Scudder participated in the massive strike at the textile mills in Lawrence, Massachusetts. This was the famous “bread and roses” strike led by the multi-ethnic coalition of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). She planned only to walk the picket line in solidarity, but was surprised when the leaders called her up to speak. Her speech was published the next day in the Boston newspapers.

I would rather never again wear a thread of woolen than know my garments had been woven at the cost of such misery as I have seen and known past the shadow of a doubt to have existed in this town … If the wages are of necessity below the standard to maintain man and woman in decency and in health, then the woolen industry has not a present right to exist in Massachusetts.

The cost of her words and actions was high. Some Wellesley administrators and trustees called for her resignation, but in the end she stayed on the faculty. Scudder claimed both of her loyalties: she was free to speak and to act—her socialist convictions were well known—but she also acknowledged the respect she owed the college as a member of its community. She retired from Wellesley in 1927.

We Companions of the Holy Cross know well the other deep loyalty which held Vida Scudder for decades: she was a Companion from its early founding years until her death in 1954. Her wisdom and experience shaped generations of Companions, for she served as C-in-C of Probationers for 40 years.

New York Times review of Vida’s book, On Journey

Her most influential books, and the ones Companions perhaps cherish the most, were written after she retired. The dust jacket called the already-mentioned On Journey, “the story of a famous woman’s spiritual career.” She published The Franciscan Adventure in 1931, at age 70, part of a flurry of writing about the Francis, his followers and other Italians such as Catherine of Siena. In 1933, she organized and led an international conference of Franciscan scholars at Adelynrood.

We hear often from each other that becoming a Companion opens one up to a life-long journey. Within our Companionship we learn from each other. We bring our commitments and passions, as Vida Scudder did, and in so doing we influence each other. We hear what each other cares about, prays for, yearns for, and our prayers and actions inform the prayers and actions of our Companions.

Vida Scudder joined a group of young praying activists when she became a Companion, and she brought others with her—to act and to pray. But the true richness of the Companionship is revealed through days and decades, changing, growing, adapting with the times in which we live, but seeking always the challenges and blessings of the Way of the Cross.