Posted on by Jean Lee Cole

Going public

Yesterday I had the honor & privilege of speaking about the WLCB at the institution that has made this project possible: the Maryland Historical Society, located in the Mt. Vernon neighborhood of Baltimore.

The H. Furlong Baldwin Library at the Maryland Historical Society, where much of the research on the WLCB has taken place over the years. Photo courtesy MDHS.

I provided an overview of the WLCB project, including some of the major issues we’ve encountered– the historical invisibility of women! Victorian propriety! the sheer quantity of literature produced by Baltimore women! the sheer quantity of documents about the WLCB! the Virtual Library & archive! Lydia Crane!

One of the best things about the talk was that Cynthia was able to attend, and was able to contribute some of her vast knowledge of the WLCB, gleaned through many hours of transcribing minutes, during the Q&A. The other best thing about the talk was that I was able to incorporate excerpts of other team members’ writings about the Club into my talk, including Cynthia’s historical overview of the Club and how it operated, Katie’s writings about the Club library, and Clara’s thoughts about the Club members’ troubling attitudes about race and the Civil War.

I was also able to share some snippets of writings by Club members. I chose a few short poems: “Motherhood,” by Clara Newman Turner (cousin of Emily Dickinson), “A Monosyllabic Tragedy” by humorist & journalist Louise Malloy, and “Lydia” by Lizette Woodworth Reese. These, I thought, showed a range of attitudes about gender roles–ranging from adherence to the values of Victorian womanhood, to more complicated views of marriage and same-sex relationships. When I was putting the talk together, I was struck by how far we have come in the past 2 years in our understanding of these women and how they have contributed to the literary landscape, and what potential there is for this project to put Baltimore women writers, finally, on the map.

Not a lot of people came–it was scheduled over lunch, for one thing–but whose who did were engaged and interested. More than half of them, it turned out, were current members of women’s clubs!

One group of women was very curious about why the WLCB disbanded in 1941. I said that we had not uncovered any direct evidence, which is not really surprising since clubs frequently end after a period of inactivity, a process which by its very nature is not documented. They speculated that perhaps it was because an organization like the WLCB may not have been needed by that time in order to support women writers– and that there might be other organizations that could perform that work.

I actually wonder if part of it was that the Club members, gradually migrating to the suburban neighborhoods north and west of downtown, may have simply gravitated toward clubs in those areas. I suspect that some of these clubs, like Mount Washington’s Lend-a-Hand Club and the Roland Park Women’s Club, likely absorbed many of the WLCB’s members over the years.

It was exciting to see how interested present-day women’s club members were to learn about historical antecedents of their own clubs.

I was also struck by a comment made by a staff member from the Maryland Historical Society. She said that for her, what was most interesting about the WLCB project is that it showed the importance of literature in understanding the history of women’s experiences. The poetry I shared, she said, provided a glimpse into what women were actually thinking– which is impossible (or at least very difficult) to get from traditional historical sources, such as census documents, biographical dictionaries, and so on. I debated whether or not to include any literary analysis in this talk, since I was presenting at a historical society. But now I’m glad I did!

The best part about a public humanities project is actually connecting with the public. Next time, I hope to bring some students to join in the fun.

Posted on by Jean Lee Cole

Elizabeth Latimer’s Christendom

Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer (1822-1904)

The class has been busy researching the published authors of the WLCB. I’ve assigned each of them a group of texts for the Parole Femine anthology to annotate, and they are also doing research to flesh out the introductory headnotes for each author.

Researching annotations is a fascinating process. I think so, anyway! I realize that many people never look at annotations–members of the class have told me as much. But they can provide fascinating subtexts and suggest all kinds of ways to interpret literary texts. That said, researching and writing those annotations can feel a little bit like diving down the rabbit hole . . . over and over again.

One of my students, Alyssa Schilke, discovered just this when she tried to annotate the title of Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer’s poem, “St. Anthony.” Through her research, she was able to trace a complicated story of knights, crusaders, and saints, and how they got all thrown together in the Victorian imagination. Her research spurred us to dig deeper into the career of one of the Club’s most prolific authors. Read on.

Alyssa posted this to the course blog in March:

I spent time investigating “St. Anthony, A Christmas Eve Ballad” by Elizabeth Latimer. What bugged me the most is trying to solve which St. Anthony Latimer is writing about. She refers to him as Italian, which brings to mind St Anthony of Padua, a Franciscan monk from the 12th century.

But the poem features Latimer’s character recounting a tournament and the saint’s knightly duties, and the copy-text even features an image of a crusader resting against his horse. St. Anthony of Padua was a monk his whole life, entering the religious order at 15. [My note: So I guess he never went on a crusade.]

I came closer with a scene featuring St. Paul later in the poem. St. Anthony of Egypt is featured in a story with St. Paul of Thebes, where, as in Latimer’s poem, Anthony is present for the hermit saint’s death. But this Anthony was an early Christian ascetic from the 4th century, never a knight and too early for the Crusades. Although Latimer is using this story of a St. Anthony, this is not who she is discussing in the beginning.

Finally I found it.  A reference to Anthony as “One of the world’s great Champions Seven”  led me to a brief Wikipedia page, attributing the term to a Richard Johnson’s The Seven Champions of Christendom published in 1597.

Through some more searching and reading, I confirmed that Latimer’s St. Anthony is in fact, Johnson’s fictional character based off of St. Anthony of Padua. But in the style of Arthurian romances, St Anthony of Italy, decked out in blue, wins a tournament in front of the Byzantine Emperor in Chapter 12. This passage is exactly the piece Latimer references in her Christmas tale.

Through this long journey, I grew in appreciation for annotated works. Reading this poem the first time through, I had no idea that there are 2 St. Anthonys, nor would I have ever connected the story to Johnson’s work.

In fact, I found that Johnson work was edited to a ‘modern tone’ in 1863 by W. H. G. Kingston and republished. Perhaps Latimer encountered Kingston’s edition and it inspired her poem published in 1891. Her audience would have better understood her reference as well because the tale had been recently republished and was not 200 years old.

Latimer clearly enjoyed this story of the Champions of Christendom. She even presented a piece on St. Patrick, another of Johnston’s characters, for St. Patrick’s Day in 1903 to the club.

Alyssa’s persistence helped her succeed in solving this riddle of a monk who rode a horse and acted like an Arthurian knight. My discovery at around the same time of the 1895 list of Club publications gave us new leads to pursue– it claimed that Latimer had published several poems about Seven Champions of Christendom in popular magazines.
Today, I found one of them– the aforementioned St. Patrick, which was published in Harper’s Monthly’s sister publication, Harper’s Weekly, 3 years before the publication of “St. Anthony.” And searching for this led to additional works by Latimer we hadn’t yet recovered. So her author’s page in the Virtual Library continues to grow … and grow. The output of some of these women is difficult to believe!
 Latimer was clearly fond of these poems. The fact that she chose to read “St. Patrick” to the Club fifteen years after it was published shows that she was still proud of this work. Interestingly, the Club minutes from this meeting state that Latimer “prefaced her reading by saying that the poem was simply one of her own imagination not founded on fact.” Whether it was actually based on Johnson’s– or Kingston’s– text is another question to think about. 
Posted on by Jean Lee Cole

New finds

The EN344 Book, Edition, Archive class’s research on the WLCB is kicking into high gear, which means new discoveries are in the offing.

For one: a couple weeks ago while rooting around in the Maryland Historical Society catalog looking for other things, I happened across a listing which ended up being a notebook containing meeting minutes from spring 1895-spring 1899– a notebook that had been deemed lost.

First pages of newly discovered volume containing WLCB minutes from 1896-1899. MD Historical Society MS 1181.

I’m guessing that this notebook got misplaced because it was quite a bit larger than the other minutes books. It probably got stuck on a shelf above or below the other materials, which is why it got catalogued under a different call number than all the other notebooks.

This means that we have historical/documentary evidence for 3 more years than we originally thought– a significant addition to the 17-18 years of meeting minutes that we have already transcribed. Cynthia (thank god for Cynthia!) is in the process of transcribing them now.

Even more significant, perhaps, is another discovery I made on the same day: an 1895 bibliography of works published by members of the Club.

I had gone to MDHS to look for the different versions of the WLCB Constitution, just to see if and how it had changed over the years. As noted in the Club history on the WLCB archive site, the Club was nearly torn apart in the early years of its existence over proposed amendments to the Constitution that would have made the Club more than literary in nature–which is to say, engaged in philanthropy and social reform. The outcome of that debate was not to change the Constitution in any significant way, and I just needed to compare the different versions to make sure that was indeed the case.

So I wasn’t really expecting to find anything. Mostly, I was going with the expectation of not finding anything interesting.

But as is so often the case when doing research in the archive, I found exactly what I wasn’t looking for. One of the versions of the Constitution I was examining was an entire pamphlet, beautifully printed on thick, creamy paper, which appeared to have been printed in honor of the Club’s 5th Anniversary. It included the Constitution, the names of all current members, the entire list of programs from 1894-1895 and 1895-1896 seasons, and … a bunch of pages that were still uncut.

Of course I had to get them cut. And when I opened them I was shocked– and thrilled– to discover that the last 12 or so pages of the pamphlet were a detailed listing of all of the Club members’ writings to that date. A gold mine!

MDHS PAM 842
First 2 pages of 1895 bibliography of WLCB member writings, MDHS, PAM 842

 

If only we had known about this bibliography two years ago, when the five students who worked with me in the summer of 2017 were in the archive transcribing documents. If only we had known about it last spring, when my Aperio seminar students were searching through catalogs and databases and online archives looking for Club member publications. If only I had had the bibliography when planning for my current semester’s class, where students are editing the works located by last year’s class. If only.

That was my initial thought. But then, I thought, maybe it was best this way. Because we may have stopped with this list, rather than finding so many of the other publications that emerged from the Club after 1895.

Of course, my first question was, did we find all the pre-1895 publications and writers? I went through the list with some trepidation, afraid that I would discover lots of writers and publications that we hadn’t located, and thus tanking the entire book project we’d been working so hard on for the past 2 years.

Luckily– or perhaps, a testament to the thoroughness of last year’s students– we only missed a few. One is Sallie Webster Dorsey, sister of Club founder Hester Dorsey Richardson and fellow member Mary Dorsey (who published under the name Marion V. Dorsey). Another is Lily G. Early, daughter of founding member Maud Graham Early (one of the “Miss Early”s referred to in Club minutes).  I am in the process of tracking down the publications listed for these writers.

And I was able to confirm that Elizabeth M. Reese (Mrs. Percy M. Reese) did, indeed, publish; we were unable to confirm this last spring and had cut her from the anthology, but now we can add her back in. And the list reveals additional publications by other Club members. One of the most tantalizing is a Civil War memoir by Lucy Randolph Cautley, for whom we thus far had only been able to locate one published poem. Her memoir “A Child’s Recollection of the War” was apparently published in the Philadelphia Times–an interesting fact because Cautley was a Southern sympathizer. Unfortunately, there is no date listed for the publication of the memoir, and the Philadelphia Times is only available on microfilm … which is being sent from the Pennsylvania State Library, 5 reels at a time. Finding this work will be a summer 2019 project for yours truly.

We also now know of additional novels by Elizabeth T. Graham, poems by Elizabeth Latimer, and more works by Katharine Pearson Woods (yes, there were members of the WLCB not named Elizabeth). And today I was able to locate two stories by Louise Clarkson Whitelock  that we previously didn’t know about, published in Godey’s Magazine and Harper’s, both well-known and well-respected national magazines of the day. (These stories were published under her maiden name, incidentally: “L. Clarkson”; by 1895 she appears to have married her husband, politician George Whitelock, because her 1895 story collection A Mad Madonna is published under her married name.)

These discoveries, to be sure, will continue! I hope to share things that this year’s class of students are discovering in upcoming weeks.

In the meantime, I’ll be giving my first public talk about the WLCB at the Maryland Historical Society on April 16!

Posted on by Jean Lee Cole

Baltimore Literary Culture tour–or, Field Trip 2.0

Hey Aperio Log followers– we have a new class working on the Parole Femine/Woman’s Lit Club of Baltimore project, and things are kicking into high gear.

We went on a field trip yesterday to get a sense of the literary environs of Mount Vernon, where many of the early members of the WLCB lived, and a neighborhood that served as the cultural center of Baltimore for much of its history. This tour was a follow-on to a tour I organized for last year’s class, which focused on the homes of writers in the Bolton Hill and Midtown/Belvedere neighborhoods, just north and west of where we were this weekend.

We visited the Maryland Historical Society, where the WLCB papers are housed, and took a walking tour of bookstores and authors’ residences, including the home of Hester Dorsey Richardson, one of the brainchilds behind the club. And of course we had to have lunch at Mt. Vernon Marketplace.

Baltimore Literary Culture Tour itinerary
Baltimore Literary Culture Tour–Mt. Vernon

Here’s where we went–including a few stops that were planned but we didn’t quite get to. Bookstores and libraries are cross-referenced to my “Books in Baltimore, Then and Now” tour on the izi.TRAVEL app.

  1. Maryland Historical Society
  2. 113 W. Monument, former home of Hester Dorsey Richardson
  3. 711, 825, and 829 Park Ave., residences of Maud Graham Early (and daughters Lily & Eveline), Eliza Ridgely, first secretary of the WLCB, and Elizabeth King, the WLCB Vice President who led the faction wanting to expand the scope of the Club in 1893
  4. 515 N. Howard, site of Frigate Book Shop (#14 on Books in Baltimore tour)
  5. SW corner of Mulberry & Park, in Baltimore’s old Chinatown, former site of Abe Sherman’s bookstore (#4 (#14 on Books in Baltimore tour)
  6. 408 Park Ave., site of New Era radical bookstore (#5)
  7. Mt. Vernon Marketplace (LUNCH!)
  8. Enoch Pratt Free Library (#6)
  9. SE corner Mulberry & N. Charles, site of Remington’s Book Shop (#7), shop frequented by the ladies of the WLCB (and publisher of some of their works)
  10. 411 N. Charles, former home of Jane Zacharias
  11. 18 E. Franklin, former home of Annie Weston Whitney
  12. 516 N. Charles, site of A People United clothing store, Cokesbury religious bookstore (#8), and Haughton & Haughton dressmakers (owned by Louisa C. O. Haughton; read a post about Haughton & Haughton here)
  13. 518 N. Charles, site of Louie’s Bookstore & Café (#9)
  14. Peabody Library (#10)
  15. Peabody Book Shop and Beer Stube (#11)
  16. 115 E. Eager, former residence of Mary Spear Tiernan
  17. 1024 St. Paul, former residence of Louise Clarkson Whitelock (she later moved about a block away to 5 W. Biddle St)
  18. 1037 N. Calvert, home of Letitia & Katharine Wrenshall
  19. 937 N. Calvert, home of Elizabeth Mullin

Here are some pictures.

Strolling through the MDHS galleries
Union and Confederate dresses on display
Quiltmaker Mimi Dietrich talks about her quilts in an impromptu gallery tour at MDHS.
Atlas of Baltimore–with David Armenti, Head of Education at MDHS.
Maryland Suffrage News–front page.
Reading Lydia Crane’s handwriting in the WLCB Minutes books.
Perusing programs at the Maryland Historical Society
Puzzling over programs and minutes books in the WLCB collection at Maryland Historical Society
Site where the Frigate Book Shop once stood, in the middle of what was once Baltimore’s theater district
New Era Bookstore building, 400 block Park Ave.
The interior of New Era today.
Lunch!
Enoch Pratt Free Library, desegregated from its inception in 1888
The group on Mt. Vernon Place, just south of the Washington Monument

The only letdown was that we had hoped to see the gorgeous interior of the Peabody Library reading room at 17 E. Mt. Vernon Place. The library was established by George Peabody and opened in 1878, just a few years before the Enoch Pratt Free Library a few blocks away. Like the Pratt, it was intended “for the free use of all persons who desire to consult it.” After becoming part of the Pratt Library system, it was absorbed into the Johns Hopkins University system in 1982 and now houses part of their Special Collections department.

As a wholly inadequate consolation prize, here are some images of the interior taken by others.

And we hit the Baltimore Book Thing in Waverly on our way back to campus– where all the books are free! (Which still doesn’t seem to help Garrison Keillor <cue sad trombones>…)

Book Thing
More Garrison Keillor than you could ever possibly want — free for the taking at the Baltimore Book Thing

We had a great time– but I can’t help but wish all those old bookstores were still open.

Posted on by Jean Lee Cole · 2 Comments

Haughton & Haughton, dressmakers to the (Baltimore) stars

I’ve been trying to find out more about Louisa Courtauld Osburne Haughton, one of the original founders of the WLCB in 1890 and its final president—for twenty-three years (1918-1941). Very little about her remains in the “official” historical record: she is not included in biographical encyclopedias of Maryland society women and did not descend from or marry into any prominent Maryland families. Remaining single for her entire life, she left few traces of herself in ways that were considered worth documenting at the time.

She is referred to on occasion in newspaper accounts of the WLCB as a successful dressmaker, co-owner with her sister Maud (who, so far as I know, never belonged to the WLCB) of the firm Haughton & Haughton, So I went to the Baltimore Sun historical archive to see what I could find.

It turns out that by the early years of the twentieth century the two were in a shop at 713 N. Howard St., in the area now known as “Antique Row” (though to tell the truth, very few antique stores remain). By 1909 they were ensconced at 516 N. Charles St.—most recently, interestingly, the longtime home of the imported clothing and home furnishing store A People United.

Interior of A People United at 516 N. Charles St. It’s fascinating to imagine how the interior was configured when it was the Haughton & Haughton dressmaking establishment.

The Haughton “modistes,” as they were called, employed several dozen people at the height of their success, and frequently advertised for dressmakers, apprentices, “waist drapers,” “skirt helpers,” and “finishers,” sometimes in as many as three different ads in a single issue of the Sun. For the most part, the workers they sought were women, but in one Oct. 1909 ad, they placed an ad for a male “first-class ladies’ tailor.”

For two women to run a successful clothing business would not be unprecedented at the time. Edith Wharton’s hapless character Lily Bart in The House of Mirth (1905) even entertains the thought of establishing her own millinery business, though she—predictably—fails to succeed, having been brought up to be adorned by hats rather than to be able to adorn them.

Nevertheless, I find it striking that the Haughton sisters were able so clearly to succeed in the socially conservative world of turn-of-the-century Baltimore. Here’s a great article from the 1948 Sun, written just a few years before Haughton’s death and decades after Haughton & Haughton shut its doors in the mid-1910s, which gives a sense of how Miss L. C. O Haughton— as she preferred to be called— remembered the atmosphere and clientele of the shop.

“From neck to hem line, [Haughton related,] dresses of that period were heavy with passementerie jets that gleamed like trappings of circus horses; or else were loaded with bows of satin ribbon or loops of velvet ribbon. It was not unusual to use on one dress several bolts of ribbon, each bolt carrying about a dozen yards. In the trade we facetiously called such decorations ‘soup-dippers,’ because they frequently dangled into dishes on the table.

“Bands of fur, even costly ermine, were used as trimming on dresses, sometimes 8-inch bands around the bottom of a skirt, and narrower bands for waist or sleeves” . . .  Miss Haughton explained that these elaborate dresses belonged to settings of the period: large town houses of the wealthy; in drawing rooms the walls of which were covered with satin brocades; to the ballrooms of these homes, gleaming with crystal chandeliers, draped with yards upon yards of amilax, and with a string orchestra concealed behind palms, ferns and banks of roses or other flowers from hothouses on the country estates of the hosts. . . .

When the Misses Haughton were in business, gowns, except in emergencies, had to be ordered far in advance. Many and minute were the measurements taken of the customer, and the dress was designed to suit just her and no one else, to accentuate her good features and to conceal imperfect ones.

The foundations for the costumes constituted first a drafting problem in which a tight-fitted waist with standing high collar, skin and sleeve linings were cut to exact measurements. Nothing was haphazard, A fitting was then given, and alterations, if necessary, were made in the lining which was usually was of taffeta.

The many basted seams then were stitched, bound with narrow binding ribbon or pinked on a pinking iron of that day. Down the front of the waist lining were sewed numerous hooks and eyes. At least six sturdy covered whalebones were sewed into the waist, giving the foundation a rigid support. The high collar was lined with canvas and wired with “collar bones.”

From the many adjustable wire “Marias,” or dress forms, in the workroom one was selected that approximated the proportions of the customer’s figure. The foundation was placed on it and any gaps were filled in with cotton wadding or rags for padding. . .

All the foregoing preparations were in a way equivalent to the preparation of canvas for a painting. At this point the real creative work started. The modiste, either verbally or by drawing (if she could draw) communicated the special design that had been germinating in her mind. Highly specialized sewing women, including foreladies, fitters, drapers and others were called into play to execute the design.

Materials were brought from a stockroom and necessary lengths to drape on the foundation were cut with shears . . . Walls were whitewashed at the end of each season. Floors were bare. Into the cracks between the wide planks dressmaker pins fell and formed a thin line of silver. In addition to the “wire Marias,” sewing machines, tables, chairs (their legs sawed off to make them low), a large cabinet stocked with spools of sewing silk, and a clock completed the furnishings of the room, or rooms as the case may be, dependent upon the size of the establishment.

On the low seats sat the sewing women. They were usually slight of build and stoop-shouldered because of their occupation . . . Under their long slender fingers, which were pricked from needles and pins. fell their dreams, translated in a perky bow, the flow of beautiful drapery. They were articulate as poets in satins, linens, silks.

—Amelia Muller, “Carriage-Trade Modiste: Magician with Shears,” Baltimore Sun, Feb. 29, 1948: A5)

It was not a simpler time, nor was it likely a better one, especially for those “sewing women.”. But fun to reimagine nevertheless.

Posted on by Jean Lee Cole

The minutes are finished!

A huge milestone achieved today: all of the extant minutes from the Woman’s Literary Club of Baltimore meetings from 1890-1920 have been transcribed and published to the online WLCB archive!

You can see them in all their glory right here.

This is the work of 14 Loyola students, 10 Baltimore Friends School seniors, 2 volunteers, and yours truly, undertaken over the past 18 months. Over 3000 pages of manuscript, the vast majority handwritten.

As an added bonus, Marina from the Spring 2018 Aperio seminar has been working for me as a research assistant this fall and has begun annotating the names of the members in the minutes, so that we can read them referred to by their actual names, not as their husbands’ wives. She was able to complete the minutes through the first half of 1903. This work helps to restore these Club members to their full humanity. And it also makes the archive much more easily searchable. (1903-1920 still need to be done; I may see if there’s a willing volunteer next semester. Let me know if that person is you!)

Transcribing the minutes is also important because it enables anyone using the site to use keyword searching to find the topics of Club discussions, the names of the members, and titles of works they discussed. Anyone who has done research in manuscript archives knows how huge this is. If you haven’t done this kind of research, you can use your imagination for about 8 seconds and you will quickly understand.

Three cheers for the transcribers!

 

Posted on by Jean Lee Cole

Sign posted

Christine Ladd-Franklin’s plaque is finally up!

Jon Kucskar, who now lives in Dr. Ladd-Franklin’s former abode, wrote me this week to say that the “Blue Plaque” commemorating 1507 Park Ave. has been installed.

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Jon and his wife Emily learned of this illustrious former resident of their home through the work of Aperio seminar students Sydney Johnson, who was assigned to research and collect publications by Ladd-Franklin, and Marina Fazio, who ran across one of Ladd-Franklin’s scientific contributions to a meeting of the WLCB which she transcribed as part of an assignment. Both students became fascinated by the hard-nosed, iconoclastic “lady scientist” who studied mathematics and psychology, taught courses at Johns Hopkins and (eventually) Columbia universities, yet nevertheless was referred to in Club minutes as “Mrs. Fabian Franklin” rather than as Christine Ladd-Franklin, the name she used in print.

It took some research before we even realized they were the same person! Such is the power of names, and the ease with which they can be effaced.

I collaborated with Sydney and Marina to write an article about Ladd-Franklin for Women’s History Month last March; our piece was published in the Bolton Hill Bulletin, a newsletter for residents of Ladd-Franklin’s former neighborhood. And that’s where Jon and Emily first learned that they lived in the house of someone famous–or, perhaps more accurately, someone who ought to be famous. As it turned out, the Bolton Hill neighborhood was in the middle of selecting a new round of honorees for their “Blue Plaque” program, and Jon and Emily succeeded in getting Ladd-Franklin added to the list.

When Jon wrote to tell me about the installation of Ladd-Franklin’s plaque, he wrote, “We are honored to have Christine recognized on our house.” We are, too.