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SCUDDER, VIDA DUTTON 291came under severe attack from members of the Wellesley College community.This criticism led her to resign from the CSA lest her affiliation with socialismdamage the reputation of that organization. Although she initially supported theAmerican entry into World War I, she joined the Fellowship of Reconciliation in1923 and by 1930 she had become an absolute pacifist.Scudder grounded her socialist beliefs in the Christian faith, especially in thedoctrine of the incarnation, and she used the sacramental emphases of Anglo-Catholicism as the basis for an assault on Protestant individualism. She publishednumerous books on the Catholic tradition, including several popularized biographiesof medieval saints. The art, architecture, and religious beliefs of the MiddleAges, she thought, pointed toward “a life . . . sweetly ordered through the acceptanceof supernatural verities.” Thus, in one of her most important books, Socialismand Character (1912), she asserted the spiritual and political unionbetween Marxism and Catholicism. Scudder’s commitment to a disciplined religiouslife also led her to join the Society of the Companions of the Holy Cross,a women’s organization practicing regular intercessory prayer, in 1889. Sheserved as companion-in-charge of probationers between 1909 and 1942, and sheremained active in the Companions until her death. As she wrote in 1934, “thereis one sure . . . way of directly helping on the Kingdom of God. That way isprayer. Social intercession may be the mightiest force in the world.”Scudder retired from Wellesley College in 1928, and she spent the rest of herlife writing. She published the first volume of her autobiography, On Journey, in1937, and she later wrote a second volume, My Quest for Reality (1952). Amongher many other publications was a hagiographic biography of James O.S. Huntington,*the founder of the Order of the Holy Cross. Scudder died at her homein Wellesley, Massachusetts, in October 1954.BibliographyA. Papers at the Wellesley College Archives, at the archives of the Society of the Companionsof the Holy Cross in Byfield, Mass., and at the Sophia Smith Collectionof the Smith College Library; “Social Problems Facing the Church in 1934,” inDW, 357–61; “Democracy and the Church,” Atlantic Monthly 90 (October 1902):521–27; The Witness of Denial (New York, 1895); The Life of the Spirit in ModernEnglish Poets (Boston, 1895); Social Ideals in English Letters (Boston, 1898);Introduction to the Study of English Literature (New York, 1901); A Listener inBabel (Boston, 1903); Saint Catherine of Siena as Seen in Her Letters (New York,1905); Socialism and Character (Boston, 1912); The Church and the Hour: Reflectionsof a Socialist Churchwoman (New York, 1917); Social Teachings of theChristian Year (New York, 1921); The Franciscan Adventure: A Study in the FirstHundred Years of the Order of St. Francis (London, 1931); On Journey (New York,1937); The Privilege of Age: Essays Secular and Spiritual (New York, 1939);Father Huntington, Founder of the Order of the Holy Cross (New York, 1940); MyQuest for Reality (Wellesley, Mass., 1952).B. ANB 19, 544–45; DARB, 481–82; EDC, 471; FD, 119–27; NAW 4, 636–38; NCAB 4,468–69; WWWA 3, 769; NYT, 11 October 1954; Elizabeth Palmer Hutcheson Carrell,“Reflections in a Mirror: The Progressive Woman and the Settlement Expe-