ELIZABETH CADY STANTON: As Revealed in Her Letters and Diary and Reminiscences, Volume Two, 1922, Pages 248-249, 357

• AUTHOR: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Edited by Theodore Stanton and Harriot Stanton Blatch
• DATE: 1888.02.19, 1901.05.01
• ORIGINAL PUBLICATION: ELIZABETH CADY STANTON: As Revealed in Her Letters and Diary and Reminiscences
• SOURCE: N/A
• NOTE: These are two journal entries by Elizabeth Cady Stanton that mention Peter Kropotkin. I find them an insight into Kropotkin's character and personal life. In the first entry, only that pertaining to Kropotkin is included. The second entry is complete.

Basingstoke, February 19. [1888]

...When last in London, one Sunday afternoon, we went to Harrow to see Prince Kropotkin. We found him upstairs in his study, if so simple a room can be so named. The house was the usual two-story cottage built in dreary rows all over England. The room devoted to his work contained nothing but a kitchen table acting as a writing-desk, and two rush-bottom chairs. To accommodate herself and the visitors Madam Kropotkin brought in extra chairs from another room. As we were ushered upstairs we found Kropotkin seated at the table busy with a manuscript, with his slippered feet wrapped in an old shawl under the table. A tiny fire burned in the grate. The minute I saw him I felt as if I were in contact with a galvinic battery. When we shook hands my hair seemed to rise and stand out just as his does. I noticed how thin and fine his hair is, and yet how bushy. He is short and very slender and as active as quicksilver, all smiles, all charity and hospitality. He told us about his imprisonment in France, and how his wife lived near by and visited him whenever permitted. They seemed greatly attached, and he spoke with a genuine touch of pathos of how he was brought to see her in his prison and placed behind one iron screen and she behind another. They could not touch each other, but they could talk. He described how a beam of light sifted down from a window high above their heads, and how, if he lifted himself up on the grating, the light fell on his face and his wife could see how he looked. He added with a sweet smile, "She asked me to climb up every time." He spoke without a bit of rancor. A beautiful nature shone out. After we had talked a long time and had tea--very good tea, by the way--he turned to Madam Kropotkin and asked her to bring in their baby girl, a splendid specimen, dark and solid like its mother. He said as he looked proudly at the child, "She's our little anarchist. All children are anarchists--perhaps all women too." We had two hours of interesting talk. He told us of his prison experiences in Russia, so painful and unjust. He said that the series of articles in the Century by George Kennan was not too highly colored, that the suffering of men and women in Siberia and the Russian prisons cannot be overdrawn. I came back to London with a heavy heart...

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New York, May 1. [1901]

Prince Kropotkin was to have called to-day, but he writes me from the Hotel Gerard that he was attacked with the grippe in Chicago, and has had a relapse which has upset all his New York plans. He is confined to his room and sails for Europe to-morrow, I believe. He sends me his Memoirs. A grand man who has suffered much for his principles.

Last Updated 2007.12.26