Kate Remembered by A. Scott Berg Page A

long as I can remember,” Kate told me that day. In fact, I later learned, it had been a topic of conversation among Houghtons and Hepburns before that. Edith Houghton never became a doctor (ultimately marrying a classmate, Donald Hooker, instead); but she did travel to Germany to study the hottest medical topic of the day. And she came home sufficiently informed and inflamed to incite several around her. Venereal disease was, of course, directly related to prostitution, which had all sorts of sociopolitical ramifications, including the white-slave trade and teenage pregnancy. Thus, venereal disease was directly linked to issues relating to the oppression of women, a connection that was not lost on either Dr. or Mrs. Hepburn.
    Kate would never forget the regard her mother held for her mother, how the young Caroline Garlinghouse Houghton had died so young, full of expectations for her girls—envisioning something more than traditional homemaking, pleasing a husband, and raising children. “And there was Mother,” Kate said of those early years of marriage, “thrilled to be Mrs. Hepburn. But she was also a woman with a really good mind and an advanced degree. She was a wonderful speaker and an attractive woman. And she felt she should do more with her life. She became restless—a real rebel without a cause.”
    One day Dr. Hepburn noticed in the newspaper that Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst, the English suffragist leader, was speaking in town that very night. He insisted they attend, and an activist was born. Mrs. Hepburn became the head of the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association and later a friend and colleague of birth control advocate Margaret Sanger. She worked at the grassroots level—trotting young Kate out in parades and having her pass out pamphlets—and took on all opponents up to and including local newspaper editors and the mayor. “But Mother’s secret,” Kate would tell me repeatedly—and this was true of the most effective early feminists—“was in remaining extremely feminine. She dressed beautifully, she tended to her husband, she showed off her well-groomed children. And then, while she was pouring the mayor a second cup of tea, she would discuss with great intelligence some great injustice being heaped upon his female constituents. And then she’d smile and say, ‘More sugar?’” Dr. Hepburn supported his wife in all her campaigns.
    As regularly as possible, he came home from work at teatime, so that he could spend time with his children—discussing adult matters with them, playing with them, challenging them to support unpopular causes. More than once, the Hepburns had rocks thrown through their windows.
    Four and then six years after Kate was born, the Hepburns had two more children, both boys, named Richard and Robert. Five and seven years after that came two girls, Marion and Margaret (known as Peg). Each pair was born in a different house in Hartford, each house a little bigger than the last. There “Jimmy”—pairing off with her older brother, Tom—used to race the trolley cars down Farmington Avenue on her bicycle. She said there was not a single tree in town she could not climb, not even an especially dangerous one on Hawthorn Street. She delighted in telling of the neighbor who called Kate’s mother and said, “Mrs. Hepburn, Kathy is on the top of the hemlock tree . . .” and how Mrs. Hepburn replied, “I know, Mrs. Porritt, please don’t frighten her or she might fall out.”
    Kate and I rode in the golf cart to the western side of Fenwick, beyond the tennis courts, to a few gridded streets with pleasant-looking houses. “You must meet Marion,” she said. “Hey,” Kate yelled, as we walked unannounced into a handsome place, then undergoing renovation. Marion appeared, obviously a Hepburn. While very pretty, she was less glamorous than Kate, her face rounder and her features