Voltairine de Cleyre (; ; November 17, 1866 – June 20, 1912) was an American anarchist feminist writer and public speaker.
Born into extreme poverty in Michigan, de Cleyre taught herself how to read and write, and became a lover of poetry. She was educated at a Catholic convent, which improved her literary and linguistic capabilities, but also influenced her turn towards anti-theism and anti-authoritarianism. After graduating, de Cleyre began her activist career in the freethought movement, lecturing around the country and writing for a number of rationalist publications. Drawn towards socialism and individualist anarchism, she converted fully to anarchism in the wake of the Haymarket affair, which radicalized her against the state and capitalism.
She moved to Philadelphia, where she lived for most of her adult life and taught many of the city's Jewish anarchists. By the late 1890s, de Cleyre was a leading figure in the American anarchist movement, regularly speaking at events, writing for publications and organizing anarchist groups. She also went on a lecture tour of the United Kingdom, during which she was introduced to Spanish anarchists, who influenced her adoption of the philosophy of anarchism without adjectives and her later defense of the propaganda of the deed.
Following a murder attempt by Herman Helcher, a mentally ill former student of hers, her physical health rapidly deteriorated and she never fully recovered, but was able to return to writing and public speaking after a few years. During the free speech fights of the early 20th century, she was arrested for inciting a riot in Philadelphia. Towards the end of the 1900s decade, she grew increasingly depressed and lost her faith in anarchism. But by 1910, she had returned to the movement and moved to Chicago, where she lectured on progressive education. During the final years of her life, she was a keen supporter of the Mexican Revolution. She died in 1912, and was buried near the grave of the Haymarket anarchists.
Although eulogized by many anarchists of her time, she was largely forgotten or ignored in many histories of the anarchist movement, due in part to her short life. Her biographers, Paul Avrich and Margaret Marsh, and collectors of her writings, such as A. J. Brigati, Sharon Presley and Crispin Sartwell, brought her life and work back to public attention by the turn of the 21st century.
Early life
Voltairine De Claire was born on November 17, 1866, in Leslie, Michigan. She was the third daughter of Hector De Claire, a French-American artisan and socialist, and Harriet De Claire, a New Englander whose family was involved in the abolitionist movement. Her father named her after the French philosopher Voltaire. After their first child's death, the family moved to St. Johns in May 1867, where De Claire grew up in extreme poverty. Adelaide De Claire later attributed her sister's radicalism to their experiences with poverty. The family's financial difficulties made De Claire's father bitter and demanding, while her mother withdrew her affections from her. De Claire never forgave her mother for her cold behavior towards her.
De Claire developed a love of nature and a "headstrong and emotional" personality. At age four, she was refused entry to primary school due to her young age. Indignant, she taught herself to read and was admitted the following year. She and Adelaide spent much of their time reading poetry and novels by British writers, particularly Lord Byron, who strongly influenced De Claire's writing style. She began writing her own poetry, in which she wrote of her wishes to be different and her love of nature. Anarchist Hippolyte Havel described her earliest poems as including a "vein of sadness".
In the 1870s, De Claire's father left St. Johns to seek work and never returned. In early 1879, after Adelaide fell gravely ill, De Claire was sent to live with her father in Port Huron. In September 1880, her father enrolled her at the convent of Our Lady of Lake Huron in the Canadian city of Sarnia, hoping to discipline her and curb her love of reading. De Claire considered her three years at the convent a prison sentence and felt abandoned by her father. She attempted to escape, but was not able to return home on foot. At the convent, De Claire attended services and classes given by the Carmelite nuns. As a Protestant, she was not required to recite Catholic prayers and was allowed to read the Bible. Her correspondence was monitored and sometimes withheld by the nuns, who punished her by isolating her from other students. Despite these conditions, De Claire improved her writing and music skills, became fluent in French, and learned piano.
Her anti-Catholicism was tempered as she developed sympathy for the Church's aesthetics and charity towards the poor, even briefly considering joining the Carmelite order. However, her skepticism intensified and she began doubting the existence of the Christian God. During this internal struggle between disbelief and religious conviction, she became a freethinker like her father, leading to increased punishments for insubordination. By graduation, De Claire had become a committed anti-theist and anti-authoritarian. She later recounted that this experience with "Ignorance and Superstition" convinced her that her own will was supreme and laid the foundations for her conversion to anarchism.
Political career Freethought At 17, De Claire returned to St. Johns, where the she found that the convent's education had left her unprepared for work. In late 1885, she moved to Greenville, Michigan, where she tutored in handwriting, music, and French. By this time a convinced freethinker, De Claire gave lectures and wrote for the movement's periodicals. She began referring to herself as an "infidel" and a "radical". Through atheism, she first encountered anarchism, as both movements reject clerical and political authority.
In 1886, she moved to Grand Rapids and became editor-in-chief of the weekly freethought magazine The Progressive Age. She published under the pen name "Fanny Fern" (adopted from the popular writer) and changed her signature from Voltairine De Claire to Voltairine de Cleyre in 1887. Her speaking tours drew large audiences, who came to hear her recount her experiences in the convent. As a self-described "writer" rather than orator, she carefully prepared and read her speeches from paper. She would publish hundreds of works throughout her life, including lectures and political essays, as well as poems and short stories. Her form of progressive literature aimed to provoke a psycho-social liberation in her readers, whom she hoped to free from oppressive ideologies.
Her growing fame led to lecture tours for the American Secular Union throughout the Midwestern and Northeastern United States. Her family disapproved of her radical politics and talked very little about it when she visited them in Michigan. She contributed to several freethought periodicals, including The Truth Seeker, and enjoyed traveling despite the poverty and repression she witnessed. Eventually finding the freethought movement too narrow in focus, she began exploring other social reform movements, including feminism, socialism, and anarchism.
Conversion to anarchism In December 1887, a lecture by Clarence Darrow introduced de Cleyre to socialist programs for improving working-class conditions. She quickly became an anti-capitalist and a socialist, denouncing monopolies, labor exploitation, and all forms of oppression. Debates with Jewish anarchists in Pittsburgh influenced her to study anarchist theory, particularly the individualist anarchism of Benjamin Tucker's Liberty. She soon abandoned state socialism for anarchism.
The Haymarket affair accelerated her conversion to anarchism. Her initial reaction to the Chicago workers' rally bombing had been to call for the perpetrators to be hanged, which she immediately regretted. Following the trial of eight organizers, she concluded the men had been falsely accused in a show trial and questioned whether "justice under the law" was possible. When four were executed, they became martyrs in her eyes, and she embraced anarchism for the rest of her life.
A series of romantic affairs in the following year left lasting impacts. She fell in love with Scottish labor organizer Thomas Hamilton Garside, but he abandoned her after months, leaving her devastated. Dyer Lum, 27 years her senior, became a stabilizing influence with whom she developed her understanding of anarchism, adopting his mutualism and evolutionary ethics. Though their affair was short-lived due to his marriage and her other relationships, they remained collaborators until his death in 1893.
Philadelphia
In June 1888, de Cleyre visited Philadelphia for the first time, having been invited to speak at a freethinkers' meeting. She was so impressed by the city that she decided to move there the following year, making the city her home for the next two decades. There she met the freethinker James B. Elliott, with whom she had a brief romantic relationship. As de Cleyre refused Elliott's proposal of marriage, it quickly broke down and they separated, although they remained friends and lived together for several years afterwards. During this time, de Cleyre became pregnant; it was not a happy memory for her, as her pregnancy was characterized by long periods of pain and sickness. She considered having an abortion, but her doctor advised against it, believing her health was not strong enough to sustain one. On June 12, 1890, de Cleyre gave birth to their son Harry, but her chronic condition and depressive mood made her feel physically and emotionally incapable of raising him. She soon went off to lecture at freethought events in Kansas, where she remained for almost a year. There she joined Matilda Joslyn Gage's Woman's National Liberal Union, a feminist-freethinkers' organization which opposed the centralization of power by both the church and the state. She returned to Philadelphia in 1891, but she largely stayed away from her son. Her sister Adelaide, herself childless, asked if she could take care of Harry, to which de Cleyre responded that it was up to Elliott to decide; he refused. The rest of de Cleyre's correspondence from this period never mentions her son.
In Philadelphia, de Cleyre began tutoring Jewish anarchist immigrants in the English language, which provided her with a small income. She still lived in poor conditions and her work exhausted her, but her lack of professional education meant that she had no options for alternative lines of work. Her income was only occasionally supplemented by translation and publishing work. She lived an austere lifestyle, possessing few clothes and eating very little, which, combined with overwork, worsened her chronic illness. During this time, she took on hundreds of Jewish students and became friends with many more. In her later essay, "The Making of an Anarchist", she praised the Jewish community's dedication to their education and commitment to the radical movement, even in the face of extreme poverty and antisemitism in the United States. But she was also worried by the tendency of some of her Jewish comrades to assimilate into the dominant American capitalist culture, relinquishing social change for individual advancement.