Posted on by Sydney Johnson

Women Writing (a LOT)

Over the past week, our assignment for our class has been to find publications from the women in the Club. I was assigned Maud Early, Marguerite Easter, May Evans and (my personal favorite) Christine Ladd Franklin.

I was able to find published works for all of these women, but the one who sparked the most interest for me was Mrs. Christine Ladd Franklin who is exclusively referred to as Mrs. Fabian Franklin in the minutes.

Marina touched on Mrs. Franklin in her most recent post, which was fascinating for me to read after all of her work I was able to find. Mrs. Franklin was born in 1847 and went to Vassar College. She then went on to study at Johns Hopkins and was the first woman to have finished the requirements for a Ph.D in math and logic. Unfortunately, she was not given this title until much later in her life because of Johns Hopkins’ policy on coeducation at the time.

All of Mrs. Franklin’s publications are focused on her studies of math, logic and psychology. Her ideas about color vision were revolutionary in the field of psychology and mathematics. She has published over 50 articles in various magazines and journals. That being said, on her Wikipedia page, there are only eight publications listed. Hopefully by the end of the semester I will be able to update that to include all of her works that were published.

Another issue that I have with Mrs. Franklin is that all of her work is under the name of Christine Ladd Franklin. I have even seen Ladd and Franklin hyphenated because Franklin is her married name. Yet in the meetings, she is only referred to as Mrs. Fabian Franklin. We talked about this in class and have decided that the Club was very strict with their procedures as one of their mottos is “consistency, thou art a jewel.” So maybe the Club wasn’t necessarily trying to stifle Mrs. Franklin and her accomplishments so much as they were trying to keep control over the small things that mattered to them. These small things were sometimes all women had control over and so I don’t blame them…that much.

Posted on by Marina Fazio

Science and Fiction

To be completely truthful, I was not extremely excited when faced with the task of transcribing meeting minutes.  I knew that it had some historical significance, and I do believe that making historical documents accessible is a fantastic project, but I thought it would be a mindless activity.  I had done some transcription of files for a summer job, and it was absolutely soul-sucking. However, as I began to read the minutes from the Woman’s Literary Club of Baltimore, I became fascinated with their activities.

Some of the most fascinating minutes I have transcribed thus far came from the 78th meeting.  This meeting was noted to be directed by the Committee on Fiction, so I expected the minutes to include short stories or excerpts from novels written by club members.  Instead, the first work presented was actually a presentation on scientific hypotheses.  Mrs. Fabian Franklin presented an article titled “The Sensation of Color,” explaining the different ideas about sensation and perception of light and color.  What was most interesting was what the secretary recorded about Mrs. Franklin’s presentation: “Mrs. Franklin advanced to a new theory of her own, differing from those mentioned,– and supported it with skill and ability.”  This line, though short, absolutely astonished me.  I had not expected to read that the women in a literary club were presenting their own original scientific theories! I wish the secretary had included more information about the theory, besides saying that it was well presented.  I can only hope that this theory was published and will be recovered by one of my classmates as we continue on with this project.  Otherwise, her ideas will be lost in history.

Posted on by Jean Lee Cole

An Obscurity among Obscurities: Miss Laura de Valin

One thing that has surprised me about the members of the WLCB is that so many were published authors. As I’ve been reviewing the transcription of the minutes taken by the indefatigable Lydia Crane, I’ve looked up members here and there to see what became of the works they read during the club meetings, to see if they had a life outside of the club.

Today I found an interesting connection between Club members’ writings and Hunter’s research on the Lutherville Female Seminary.

The minutes for April 10, 1900 relate that a Club member named Miss Laura de Valin read two of her poems, “In the Heyday,” and “A Sonnet.” A quick initial Google search for “Laura de Valin” uncovered this interesting document held in the Johns Hopkins University Library Special Collections, a piece of sheet music titled “A Parting Ode” written by Miss de Valin for the Lutherville Female Seminary in 1859!

The music has a frontispiece for the school which corresponds closely to the image Hunter included in his post.

parting ode
Front cover of “Parting Ode” by Laura de Valin, 1859.

I am leaping to the conclusion that this Laura de Valin is the same as the one who belonged to the WLCB because their names are so unusual– additional genealogical research would be necessary to confirm that this is true.

Assuming it is, then finding this sheet music tells us something about the age of Miss de Valin, and also links her with the Lutherville Female Seminary. Based on the amateurish quality of the verse, I would guess that de Valin may have been a student at the Seminary when she wrote this “ode,” which would make her about 60 years old at the time of the Club meeting where she read her poems.

That would mean that she would have been a young woman during the Civil War, which perhaps explains why she remained unmarried. Membership records show that she lived at 1214 Madison Ave., just a few blocks west of where I live now. She joined in 1899-1900, and left the club (or passed away) sometime before the 1904-1905 season. So her tenure in the club was brief.

Miss de Valin, I discovered, also was a playwright– a “Bibliography of Plays by Marylanders, 1870-1916” published in the Spring 1972 issue of the Maryland Historical Magazine lists two plays by a Laura V. de Valin: The Chaperon; A Comic Opera in Three Acts, from 1892, and Elisa, A Drama in Five Acts, from the same year.

In search of copies of the plays, I checked the MD Historical Society catalog (MDHS publishes the Maryland Historical Magazine, so I thought perhaps the bibliography of plays was based on manuscripts in their collection). I didn’t find the plays there, but I did find out that she edited a journal titled The New Pedagogue: A Monthly Journal Devoted to the Public School Interest of Baltimore, right around the time she belonged to the club. So that tells you that she was a teacher. Perhaps she was a teacher, rather than a student, at Luther Female Seminary. (Again, I am assuming that all of these Laura de Valins are the same person.)

It all makes you wonder: who was Laura V. de Valin? What kind of life did she lead? Did she crave a theatrical life, or was she committed to her work as a teacher? Did she live alone, or with family? What was she like? And what were her dreams?

Only further research will be able to answer these questions about this member of the Club–and we will probably never know about her dreams. But this little tidbit of information points to the ambition and wide-ranging intellect and interests of even the most obscure Club members.

 

Posted on by Clara Love · 1 Comment

Titles, Texts, and Some Sapphic Poems

When I started compiling a list of the poems Lizette Woodworth Reese shared with the Woman’s Literary Club, I realized that my primary challenge would be tracking down the actual titles of her works mentioned on the meeting programs I’ve transcribed (1890-1905). More often than not, her original works are just listed as something unhelpful like “Three Poems, Lizette Woodworth Reese.” Fortunately, I was able to find many of these missing titles in the minutes that have been transcribed so far (1890-1895, 1910-1912), and hope to find the rest by looking through the minutes of the 1895-1905 seasons.

Another related challenge/question I encountered whose answer also lies in the minutes is that since the formatting for almost every kind of presentation given to the Club follows more or less the same = format on the programs, it’s tricky to tell whether something Lizette shared that actually was titled something other than “Poem” is a poem or something else–an essay, a review, a story. Again, referring to the corresponding meeting minutes usually clears this up.

Of the 20 readings I’ve been able to both identify as poems and confirm titles of, I’ve been able to track down the text of 13 so far. I’ve found the texts Lizette chose to read to the Club scattered all over the place–some in her published volumes, some in her papers held at the Enoch Pratt Free Library, and some on generic poetry sites and in periodical records online.

One of her poems that struck me in particular is called “Lydia,” and it stood out to me for a couple of reasons. At first glance, I thought it could perhaps be written about the longtime Club recording secretary, Lydia Crane, especially since it was one of the first things Lizette shared with the Club. However, upon closer investigation, the poem references Sudbury, a town in Massachusetts, twice, so that doesn’t seem likely.

The other reason this poem caught my eye has to do with our prior group discussion about how many of the Club women, including Lizette Woodworth Reese, remained unmarried. We’ve also discussed ‘Boston marriages,’ and the possibility that the reason for some of these women remaining unwed could be because they weren’t heterosexual. In “Lydia” and the poem that immediately follows it in the collection of poems I found it in, “Anne,” (which also references Sudbury), I hear what, to me, could definitely be the voice of a woman who loves other women. Both of these poems are celebrations of another woman’s beauty, grace, and glory (“Anne” even raises its subject to the level of divinity, and romanticizes her from afar) and both contain strong violet imagery, which has long been associated with lesbianism thanks to the Greek poet Sappho.

I don’t want to make broad claims about a dead woman’s sexuality without evidence, or claim that these two poems that caught my eye are necessarily evidence themselves. However, following our prior conversations (and even before that), it’s been on my mind, so discovering this sort of poetry leaves a strong impression on me, and I’m looking forward to uncovering more of what Lizette Woodworth Reese chose to share with the Club.

Posted on by Katie Kazmierski

It’s 1909 and I smell drama

In my last post I mentioned how that week I found a lot in the Board of Manager’s minutes that stuck out to me. The main story I wanted to tell happens to be one that Dr. Cole has asked me to share, too, about a bit of drama that’s recorded in May of 1909.

The entry is from May 8th, 1909, but it refers to events that happened in late December 1908/early January 1909. What struck me initially was that the minutes were supposedly taken by the President, not Miss Lydia Crane, the Recording Secretary. It’s weird though because it all appears to be written in the same handwriting but then there are notes supposedly differentiating between who was writing what; Crane or Wrenshall. Why Wrenshall would be writing as opposed to the Secretary at all, I don’t know and I probably never will know–but I almost get the feeling that she wanted to make sure the story was relayed the way she wanted it to be told.

The matter actually concerns the Edgar Allen Poe Association, the Executive Board of which was, at the time, nearly identical to that of the WLBC. I’ll go into that in a later post–what’s important now is just to know that the Board members of the two groups are almost exactly the same, and so they took up affairs of the EAPA in the WLBC meeting.

The Edgar Allen Poe Association took part in the Centenary of Edgar Allen Poe, a celebration commemorating the 100th anniversary of Poe, held at Johns Hopkins University. The ladies worked closely with a few very important men at the time to organize the event, including the president of the university, Dr. Remson, and a man referred to as Professor Bright, who Wrenshall says Remson appointed as his “representative”. Wrenshall, in a lengthy statement to the Club, tells of three visits she had with Bright, the first two in December planning the program for the celebration. The speakers included the university’s pick, Dr. W. P. Trent, who was designated 40 minutes to speak, and two selections by the EAPA ladies, Dr. Huckel and Mr. Poe, who were to have 20-30 minutes each.

Wrenshall then explains how on their Janaury 6th meeting, Bright insisted that she cut Dr. Huckel’s time speaking to eight to ten minutes, and to reduce Mr. Poe’s to only four to five minutes. So to reiterate: the two speakers chosen by the EAPA were given less time to speak than the Hopkins choice to begin with, but then Bright had the nerve to try to compel Wrenshall to shorten her speakers’ time to nearly nothing.

The minutes read, “To do this Mrs. Wrenshall positively declined,–with difficulty maintaining the position of the speakers as asked by the Association.”

Already, this sounds like an uncomfortable position for Wrenshall to be in, especially for a woman at this point in time. Saying no to a prominent man was considered taboo, so I was impressed with Wrenshall in this moment for standing her ground. But then it gets more complicated.

Apparently, this whole time, Wrenshall was supposed to ask about incorporating a poem, written by Miss Reese, in the celebration. Because the meeting didn’t exactly go swimmingly, she didn’t end up bringing it up. This is ultimately why Wrenshall makes the whole statement on May 8th to begin with: to put it bluntly, Miss Reese is pissed off.

At this point, minutes from the meeting of January 11th are read to the group, recalling that Miss Reese was unhappy with the way matters stood so she insisted on going to Dr. Bright herself to ask permission to read her poem. After some back and forth over whether Wrenshall thought that was “suitable”, it was decided that the President would write a letter to Bright on the Board’s behalf, politely asking for the poem’s inclusion. She did so that night, she insists. After some more trivial commentary in the statement, it’s clear that Wrenshall means business:

In concluding Mrs. Wrenshall said she wished to emphasize the facts: First, that Miss Reese’s poem was not written when the poem was decided on, in Dr. Bright’s two visits of December 15th and 20th. Second, that after hearing from Miss Reese that she had a poem, (this in the last week of the year,) she was willing to forego her own judgment, and ask Dr. Bright for Miss Reese to be placed on the programme, according to the letter asking him to call before the programme was finally arranged.

Thirdly, that when he came on the evening of that day, the situation was so uncomfortable and strained that she could not consistently with the dignity of the Association ask for any further addition to the programme from the Association.”

That third ‘fact’ is what got me. From Wrenshall’s initial description of the encounter with Dr. Bright, I knew it was unpleasant, but that last sentence says it all. It sounds to me like Wrenshall felt helpless. I get the feeling that she did want to support her fellow Club member by including her poem, but the position she was put in with this awful man made it, she felt, impossible to push for it. It would be ‘inappropriate’. It also strikes me how she speaks of how doing so would sacrifice the ‘dignity of the Association’.

At the end of her statement, Wrenshall is met with a chorus of loving expressions of gratitude from her colleagues. They “agreed that [their] President had done all that she could have done under trying circumstances; and more than could have been asked or expected.” The strength of their affectionate response is interesting– in one way, it shows the Club’s dedication and appreciation for their President. But it also might show an underlying understanding–maybe these women reacted as strongly as they did to this particular story because they’d all been there, in one way or another. They’d all had their ideas and passions stifled by a man. Some of them, so much so, that their names have vanished from history in favor of “Mrs.” slapped onto their husband’s full names.

Posted on by Clara Love

Publication

I ran into Dr. Cole on campus this week, and we had a brief chat regarding my upcoming assignment, which is to track how Lizette Woodworth Reese’s poetic career grew and was shaped over the course of her experience with the Club. One thing we touched upon was how determined many members of the Club were to get their works published, or at least to share their own original works with their peers. In thinking about the work I’ve done so far with the Club programs, I’m pleasantly surprised at how frequently these women brought their own literary and artistic talents to the table right alongside readings and discussions of established works of (men’s) literature. Whether they read or presented their own works or had a fellow club member do so for them, I have come across hundreds of instances of original writing and art being given a platform at club meetings.

Reading Sydney’s post about searching for information about Club members when we often have only a husband’s name to work with made me similarly frustrated. Especially in the context of producing original content, it’s a little disheartening to reflect on how little I know or would be able to know about a married woman who wrote something still under her husband’s name. This issue is further complicated in my corner by the fact that very often, the actual titles of the women’s original work is not listed on programs. Instead, title of the reading or presentation was often just something like “A Story,” “Two Poems,” or “A Sketch,” with no further clues as to what it might be about. Sometimes however, this was not so, and I am fortunate to have some actual titles on record. In fact, some readings of original works have titles that include the title of an actual upcoming published volume, particularly Miss Lizette Woodworth Reese, who alongside Miss Virginia Woodward Cloud and a few others, I have noticed reading most frequently.

I’m still curious as to how much of a collaborative process these public readings of original work were, particularly the ones that come from or led to publication. Are the works just labeled “Story,” or “Poem,” works in progress? Did these women provide feedback for each other like a writing workshop, or were they simply enjoying one another’s pieces? I hope to find out more this week as I delve into this topic through the lens of Lizette.