An American Battle-axe: Notes on the Life and Times of Caroline Nation

Caroline Amelia Nation (1846-1911) aka Hatchet Granny  

Photo c. 1900 

 

 

I.

 

One rarely hears people today using the amusing twentieth-century term battle-axe to describe a tough old bird who can at times be belligerent, overbearing, and bullying. 

 

I suppose it's now regarded (perhaps rightly) as sexist and derogatory in nature, although originally it was a gender-neutral descriptor and usually said with a certain amount of affection; who doesn't love Hattie Jacques's Matron in the Carry On movies, or Violet Carson as Ena Sharples in Coronation Street?    

 

Arguably the greatest (non-fictional) example of a battle-axe, however, was Caroline Nation [1]; a militant member of the temperance movement, who played up to her own popular image by actually wielding a hatchet and making it her trademark symbol. 

 

 

II.

 

Caroline Nation (née Moore) was born in Kentucky, in 1846. 

 

Although he suffered financial difficulties from time to time, her father, of Irish descent, was a successful farmer and slaveholder. Her mother - like other members of the family - suffered mental health issues; believing, for example, that she was Queen Victoria [2].  

In 1865, Caroline met and fell in love with an alcoholic young doctor and, despite parental objections, she married him in November 1867. They separated, however, shortly before the birth of a daughter the following year and he died of alcoholism in 1869. 

 

Perhaps not surprisingly, Caroline thereafter developed a vehement hatred for liquor and, after qualifying as a teacher, gaining a history degree, and marrying a much older second husband in 1874 [3], she convinced herself she had a divine mission to sober up America.

 

And so this formidable woman became involved with the more radical wing of the temperance movement which demanded prohibition long before it was passed in 1920. Caroline soon gained a fiercesome reputation for attacking establishments which served booze, justifying her actions by saying she was carrying out God's work:

 

I am a bulldog running along at the feet of Jesus and barking at what the Good Lord hates [4].     

 

III.

Initially, Nation would simply protest outside saloons, singing hymns accompanied by a hand organ and telling bartenders they were responsible for the destruction of men's souls. This had little effect, however, and she was mostly laughed at. 

 

And so Nation prayed for guidance and, finally, in the summer of 1900, the Lord spoke unto her; instructing her to enter the saloons and smash them up with rocks and promising that He would stand by her. 

 

As her arrest sheet lengthened [5] and her notoriety increased in Kansas and other mid-western states, such as Missouri and Oklahoma, she became increasingly violent and, at her husband's suggestion, she put down the rocks and picked up a small hand axe (or hatchet) in order to inflict maximum damage.  

 

It was this that really made her name and before long she was publishing her own newspaper, The Hatchet, which promised its readers that all drinkers would get what they deserved. 

 

In a very American manner, Nation also exploited her fame by appearing in vaudeville in the United States and music halls in Great Britain [6] whilst promoting her autobiography [7] and selling all manner of merchandising, including photos like the one above, in which she holds a hatchet in one hand and a Bible in the other. 

 

Nation died, aged 64, in 1911, having told her family, friends, comrades, and supporters: I have done what I could. 

 

Those who might wish to pay their respects will find her grave in Belton, Missouri. And any readers who happen to find themselves in Wichita may also like to visit the life-size bronze statue of the old battle-axe erected in front of the Eaton Hotel [8].   

 

 

'I am the destroyer of the works of the Devil 

by the direct command of God.'

Notes

 

[1] Her name was originally shortened to Carrie, but she changed it to Carry A. Nation believing she was ordained to carry a nation to sobriety (and salvation).

 

[2] Sadly, Caroline's mother Mary died in an insane asylum in 1893, having been placed there by her son (Caroline's brother Charles) three years earlier.  

 

[3] The couple divorced in 1901. 

 

[4] It might be noted that Nation also regarded herself as a suffragette or women's rights activist, and campaigned against tight clothing, including corsets, on the grounds that such garments not only restricted movements, but had a damaging effect on internal organs.

 

[5] Between 1900 and 1910, Nation was arrested more than thirty times for her militant activities. She paid her fines from lecture-tour fees and sales of stick pins in the shape of hatchets and which had the words Death to Rum engraved on the handle. 

 

[6] Sadly, she wasn't really cut out for showbiz, more given to sermonising than entertaining as she was. Whilst appearing in London in 1909, she was hit with an egg thrown by an audience member and not only did she immediately leave the stage, she ripped up her contract with the theatre and returned to the States. Like many self-righteous and self-serious types, she couldn't stand being embarrassed or made to look foolish (i.e., having egg on face).

 

[7] The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation (F. M. Steves & Sons, 1908): click here.  

[8] The six-foot bronze statue was sculpted by local artist Babs Mellor and erected in 2018. 

On Lost Girls and Swarthy Italians

I.

Although not published until November of 1920, Lawrence completed his sixth novel - The Lost Girl - 100 years ago this month (May 5th). 

In letters, he repeatedly describes the work as quite proper and expresses his hope it might actually be a popular success. Perhaps that's why, for me, it's the most boring of all his fictional works and one I hardly ever return to. If only Alvina had been morally lost, then maybe it would hold more interest. 

Still, her decision to marry an Italian and "move towards reunion with the dark half of humanity" [1], is something we might discuss ...

II.

Exogamy and the idea of interracial relationships always fascinated Lawrence and there are many instances to be found in his work of wealthy white women running off with Mexicans and dark-skinned gypsies, etc.

Thus it is that in The Lost Girl - which Lawrence had at one time thought of calling 'Mixed Marriage' - we are presented with the tale of Alvina Houghton, daughter of a widowed Midlands draper and fleapit theatre owner, who decides to throw in her lot with Ciccio, a travelling performer from southern Italy:

"His skin was delicately tawny, and slightly lustrous. The eyes were set in so dark, that one expected them to be black and flashing. And then one met the yellow pupils, sulpherous and remote. [...] His long, fine nose, his rather long, rounded chin and curling lip seemed refined through ages of forgotten culture." [2]

Fleeing with Ciccio to the Old Country, Alvina abandons her life in Woodhouse and enters a new world of desire ...   


III.

Now, of course, contemporary readers in England, many of whom are used to thinking of themselves as European and who regularly fly off for long weekends all over the Continent, will ask what's the big deal about this: is there really any significant difference in terms of culture and ethnicity between an Englishwoman and an Italian? 

Probably not.

However, when Lawrence was writing - despite many centuries of mixing and mingling between peoples of different blood and opposing spirit - there remained, in his view, a gulf in existence and in being between two essential European types: "The dark-eyed, swarthy, wine-loving men from sunny lands" and the Germanic peoples, "born of the northern sea, the heavy waters, the white snow, the yellow wintry sun, the perfect beautiful blue of ice" [3].  

And, crucially, at the beginning of the 20th-century, it wasn't just Lawrence who thought along these lines, separating ostensibly white Europeans into distinct races. In the United States, for example, Italians, particularly from the south (and especially from Sicily), were still regarded in some quarters as racially suspect; i.e., if not black exactly, then not-quite white either. Italians were sometimes refused entry to schools, cinemas, even churches and were invariably described in the press as wops and regarded as innately inferior.

In the Southern states, they even found themselves subject to shocking violence; in March 1891, for example, when Lawrence would have been six years old, eleven Italian immigrants were lynched in New Orleans, resulting in a serious diplomatic incident that brought the US and Italy to the brink of conflict. As one commentator on this incident notes: "The New Orleans lynching solidified a defamatory view of Italians generally, and Sicilians in particular, as irredeemable criminals who represented a danger to the nation." [4]

I suppose the key point is that racial categories are mostly the product of cultural mythology, rather than biology: whiteness - like blackness - is a political designation rather than a natural fact. And whilst Lawrence fetishistically exploits these categories for an erotic rather than a racist motive, we should still be alert to the dangers of so doing.     

Notes

[1] D. H. Lawrence. The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. III, ed. James T. Boulton and Andrew Robertson, (Cambridge University Press, 1984), letter number 1985, to Compton MacKenzie [10 May 1920], p. 521.

[2] D. H. Lawrence, The Lost Girl, ed. John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 160.

[3] D. H. Lawrence, Movements in European History, ed. Philip Crumpton, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 44.

[4] Brent Staples, 'How Italians Became "White"', The New York Times (12 Oct 2019): click here to read online.