Posted on by Ellen Roussel

Documenting the only voting these women were allowed to take part in because they lived, and we continue to live, in a patriarchal society

Throughout the first three seasons, the Woman’s Literary Club has gone from a small gathering of women to a quite larger, established organization. It is easy to forget (as I am often guilty of) that this club of women is one of the first of its kind. During this period of history, there were not many clubs of only female participants, and certainly not many partaking in intellectual and cultural discussions. As the researcher who has taken over the first three seasons of the Club, I have had a very clear window into all that has taken place to establish the Club as an actual organization of women. At times, it has been tedious to transcribe all the voting the women have taken part in throughout the Club’s run, from voting on various Articles while establishing their Constitution, to voting on the membership of proposed women, it seems that nothing can take place within the Club without a vote.

Despite the tedious work that this sometimes presents, it is so so important to realize how monumental the act of voting is for these women. The Club is formed in 1890, nearly thirty years before women are allowed the right to vote in the United States. The Woman’s Literary Club is, for all members throughout the 1890-1920 lifetime of the Club, the only medium through which these women can assert their voices and opinions through voting. It is impossible not to wonder whether women being afforded more liberties within the United States has something to do with the disintegration of the Club.

It was not until I reached the third season of the Club that I noticed any serious dissent between the women in regards to voting. On October 11, 1892, at the 60th general meeting of the WLC, the women met to discuss and vote upon whether or not the Club should elect a Corresponding Secretary to the Board. To set the context, this is after Eliza Ridgely, the previous Secretary, stepped down from her position. Lydia Crane has taken over the role of Recording Secretary, but has refused to take responsibility for the correspondence part of the Secretary’s duties. Therefore, the topic has been broached to elect a Corresponding Secretary to act as a counterpart to Lydia Crane’s position of Recording Secretary. Eliza Ridgely has stressed on numerous occasions how necessary it is to have a Corresponding Secretary, which makes me think that Eliza stepped down from her role because it simply became too much work for one person to handle.

Several women proposed that a Corresponding Secretary be appointed by the President and act as the President’s assistant. However, Miss Edith Duer “made some very decided objections to the motion” which, in WLC speak, basically means shit went down. Edith Duer’s main objection was to the point about the Corresponding Secretary being appointed by the President–this comes after the President was declared to have power likened to a governor. Several women spoke in support of Edith, including my girl Eliza Ridgely, who said the Corresponding Secretary should be voted in just like everyone else (you go girl!). The vote was taken orally, was not super conclusive, so they took a standing vote–14 for, 14 against.

The women were then reminded that the President of the United States got to choose his own Cabinet, and the President piped up that it would be super helpful to the wellbeing of the future club if she could pick her assistant, because why wouldn’t she want more power?

Votes were then taken to amend the Articles on Officer Duties to split the duties of the Recording and Corresponding Secretaries, to allow the President to nominate several people for the position to be voted upon by the Club, and then to allow the President to nominate people for the position for the Club to vote upon by ballot. None of these votes ended in the two-thirds majority to be passed. The meeting took so long, it seems, that several women “left the room” and the President motioned to move this discussion to a different day. It took several meetings and many votes before it was eventually decided that the President could make nominations, but that the position would be filled by Club votes.

This is the first instance I have seen in which dissent amongst Club members has been documented. This vote, which really comes down to how much power the President should be afforded, is really a pivotal moment in the history of the Club. This is the moment where several women–Edith Duer, Eliza Ridgely, and others–spoke up to ensure that things were done fairly. Unfortunately, women with the mindsets of Edith and Eliza still had to wait nearly thirty years before their opinions mattered in actual votes.

Posted on by Ellen Roussel · 1 Comment

Arguing for Creative Ability in Women by Ignoring the Topic

Since the beginning of the Aperio research project, I have been steadily plugging away at the first recorded seasons of the Woman’s Literary Club– 1890-1891, 1891-1892, and now, the 1892-1893 season. Even though I am in the thick of the third season, I’d like to take this time to rewind a few paces and talk about something I came across during the second season of the Club. This is a topic I came across that, initially, I found very troubling. However, the more I have looked into this, the more disturbing I have come to find this topic, both in regards to the Club, as well as to this time period–and history–as a whole.

Let me preface this by saying I cannot do justice to this topic of study; there is far too much to say, and far too little a space to say it. At this time, I do not feel equipped enough to make any kind of philosophical, historical, or, frankly, academic, statement about this. However, what I can speak to is why this particular topic caught my eye and got my wheels turning.

Without further ado, let me explain how the Woman’s Literary Club, for the umpteenth time, has left me greatly distressed.

The 42nd meeting of the Club, on January 5, 1892, began like any other. The ladies met in their usual place, 12 East Centre Street, reviewed the Secretary’s minutes from several meetings prior, and discussed membership in the Club–a very common topic of conversation it seems.

Following this discussion, Lydia Crane read an article from “The Critic” by Molly Elliot Seawell called “The Absence of the Creative Faculty in Woman.” In it, Seawell makes the claim that “woman–not excepting Sappho, George Eliot and Austen–has created nothing that will live in music, art, literature, or even in mechanical invention, and is made up of emotions; while man possesses intellect.”

Following this article, Miss Szold read a response to it, also published in “The Critic”, and the President facilitated choosing women to lead a debate on the question: does the creative faculty exist in woman?

After some digging, I was able to find the article “The Absence of the Creative Faculty in Woman” which made the argument, without substantial evidence it seems, that woman cannot be genius because no woman has made anything eternal, and even when woman is praised, it is only praise because it is coming from man.

The article is not brought up again until the 14th Salon on January 26th. At this meeting, of the two women who were supposed to engage the Club in a discussion of whether or not women have creative ability, one of the women was absent. Therefore, the Club only listened to the views of the woman arguing for creative ability in women. To do this, Mrs. Sioussat read an article from “The Critic” in support of woman having creative ability. I have issue with this because it seems a little counter-intuitive to me to argue for the creative ability of women by reading an article written by someone else on the topic. It just seems, for a women’s literary club, these women should be more concerned with giving validity to this topic. Their work is being called into question and being denied a reputable place in history by another woman. Instead of discussing this, it seems like the women almost do everything in their power to not talk about it. In fact, after the reading by Mrs. Sioussat, the President immediately switched into “Sidney Lanier groupie” mode, which seems to be her default at nearly every meeting. It doesn’t sit well with me that these women can allow themselves to be belittled, not talk about it, and then immediately jump into the hundredth discussion of a white man and his poetry. It says a lot to me that the Woman’s Literary Club didn’t do justice to this issue.

I have struggled to make my peace with various aspects of the Woman’s Literary Club in the past, but this is one under-step by the Club that I am having a very hard time looking past.

Posted on by Hunter Flynn

What we lost in the fire

This past week, I finished the transcriptions for a Club season I’d been greatly looking forward to: 1903-1904. The reason for my interest: the Baltimore fire of 1904, thought to be the third most devastating fire in United States history. (Dr. Cole already touched on it briefly in an earlier post.)

Amazingly, the Club met the very day after the fire ended: Tuesday, February 9th. The fire had hardly been under control for twenty-four hours. “Few members were present,” the recording secretary wrote. “But the president decided that the record of our meetings should be kept unbroken.” Only a portion of the program was therefore given.

Aftermath of the conflagration. This photograph could have been taken the very day the Club met.

But what shocks me about the minutes from this time period is that, save this one meeting, there is not a single other reference to the devastation in the season. Here’s what they do have to say about it, though:

In a few strong words, [Mrs. Wrenshall] alluded to the great financial loss, from which we must all suffer; but pointed out the comfort that was ours, in the dauntless spirit shown by the people. Especially, she thought, should we unite in thanks, to the press which had risen so wonderfully above the difficulties of the time, to give the public information and cheer. The magnitude of the loss Baltimore had sustained, was almost incredible. The city had been laid low; but we had been spared the worst and greatest agony, in that, there had been no sacrifice of human life, except in one instance. Had the fire begun on any day but Sunday, what horrors would have been added. There could be no shadow of doubt that much of the great misfortune, must be laid to the charge of building those high structures which helped to carry the force of the fire beyond all human reach.

That’s it—one paragraph. What interests me most in this account is the reference to the loss of life “in one instance.” I’m from Baltimore, sort of. My elementary and middle school allegedly owes its existence to the fire. But the narrative of the fire I’d grown up with held that not a single person perished in the fire.

So I did some poking around. In his volume, The Great Baltimore Fire, Peter B. Petersen notes that no one challenged this claim until 2003, when an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins University by the name of James Collins, dug up a story in the February 17th issue of The Sun, entitled “One Life Lost in Fire.” The story reported that the charred remains of an African American man were pulled out of the basin—that is to say, the harbor. We don’t know his name.

The story slipped under the radar, and went practically unnoticed. Peterson theorizes, “Officials may not have deemed a single black life sufficient in 1904 to warrant undercutting the supposed—and astounding—lack of deaths related to the fire.” But not even Afro-American reported it.

And the women of the Club couldn’t have been referencing it either. The body was found a full week after their meeting. Whose death they were referencing is beyond me. It could have only been hearsay. But, more likely, this only supports my longstanding hunch that we lost more in the fire than we think.

Posted on by Ellen Roussel · 2 Comments

A Bit About Loyola

The fifty-fifth meeting of the Woman’s Literary Club, held on May 3, 1892, was of particular interest to me because of one piece of information that seemed to be thrown in, never to be touched upon again. Namely, the Woman’s Literary Club was invited to a Loyola College debate at Lehmann’s Hall.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog about the vibrant life of Lehmann’s Hall, yet I found no mention in my research of any Loyola affiliation with this destination. It came as a surprise to me that my university, and the Club on which I am doing research, both met at this destination that I have previously written about.

I am disappointed to say that the minutes of the Woman’s Literary Club never again mentioned Loyola or this debate (at least not that I have come to find). However, I decided to do a little digging to see what I could further uncover about this Loyola/Woman’s Literary Club connection.

According to the archived text of “Historical Sketch of Loyola College, Baltimore, 1852-1902”, Loyola held their annual debate at Lehmann’s Hall on the topic of: “Resolved, That the Golden Age of English Literature is Our Own Century” on May 5, 1892, two days after the WLC announced their invitation to be present. While I could not find a transcribed text of this particular debate, I did find that Charles C. Homer won the coveted Jenkins Medal at the end of the debate. This, of course, sparked more questions as to whom Charles C. Homer was and what the Jenkins Medal was.

What I could dig up about Charles C. Homer, Jr. was that he is of German descendant, and was born and raised in Baltimore. He and his brother attended Loyola College, received a Bachelor of Arts degree, and was an involved alumnus. The Loyola Annual is quoted as saying,

“At the recent meeting of the executive council of the Alumni Association Mr. Homer was retired as president of the body. Mr. Homer said a few weeks ago that he was interested in Loyola and everything that appertains to her.”

Charles Homer and his brother both attended Maryland University Law School, and went on to practice in Baltimore until Charles C. Homer left to become Second Vice-President at the Second National Bank of Baltimore.

What I could find on the Jenkins Medal was that it is of high prestige, and is awarded to renowned alumni after the Annual Debate.

I feel as though I have only scratched the surface of the connection between Loyola, the Woman’s Literary Club, and Lehmann’s Hall, and I think further sleuthing is in order to fully uncover the intricate web that has been weaved between these three institutions.

Posted on by Clara Love

Consistency, Thou Art a Jewel

In my last post, I looked at the lack of emphasis the Club placed on the transition between the years 1899 and 1900. Now, I’ve transcribed the minutes of the Club’s first meeting of 1901, since their first meeting of 1900 implied that they would view this point in time as the true ‘turning of the century.’ And this is true! Mrs. Wrenshall acknowledges the new century at the beginning of the January 8th, 1901 meeting.

The President in greeting her fellow members on this first regular meeting of the year, —and the century—congratulated us on the work done in the past, and on the prospects of the future; especially on our continued adherence to the aims which have form the beginning of the Club claimed our allegiance.

So, now they profess to enter the 20th century, a year later than we thought they would. However, just like the last time, the hoopla surrounding the new era ends there. No proclamations of upcoming goals or changes, no discussion of development or anything of the sort. The most important part of the President’s statement is about sticking to the Club’s original, steadfast aims and policies. For the Club members, the turning of a new century is more about preserving what they’ve already established than creating something new.

I noticed this same sentiment during the minutes of the Club’s prior tenth anniversary meeting on March 27th, 1900. The meeting opens with a reading of the minutes of the Club’s very first meeting, and the President’s address includes a similar urging to the Club to stay close to its original roots,

For ten years we have followed the lines marked out at the formation of the Club, never making novelty our loadstone, never deserting our original aims–nor giving up our allegiance to them.

As the world changes around these women, they retain these old values from ten years ago, and never seek to grow or change their Club except to add new members who fit within their preset boundaries. The President’s address at this anniversary meeting ends with the motto, ” Consistency, thou art a jewel.” The Woman’s Literary Club of Baltimore so treasures their original aims and borders that, it seems, it will continue to retain them without addition or adaptation for the new century.

Posted on by Clara Love

A Moment in Time/What Kind of Legacy?

This week, I began transcribing my first set of minutes. Previously, I had been working on the typed programs, so working with the handwritten, far more detailed minutes has been an exciting and interesting shift, especially since I’m getting more information about talks and readings whose titles I’ve already seen on the programs.

I’m transcribing the minutes for the 1899-1900 season, a season chosen because of its potential for discussion about the turn of a new century and what that could mean for the club, for women, or for the world. The women do take note of this important moment in time, but not quite in the way we had hoped. An excerpt from the minutes of the Club’s January 2nd, 1900 meeting reads,

The President then made a few remarks as to where we do, or do not stand, with regard to the Burning question, “Is this the 19th or 20th Century?” and read from the Sun of Jan. 2nd a short notice of Flammarion the astronomer’s decision, that we are in the closing year of the nineteenth century.

There is no further discussion on the topic beyond this brief mention, either in this meeting or subsequent ones. It seems that the Club members do not see their present moment as a significant change-over. Maybe the minutes of the 1900-1901 season contain the kind of declarations of intention and importance regarding a new century that these minutes, unfortunately, do not.

Despite my disappointment on that front, there is still a great deal of fascinating content in these minutes. I’ve transcribed through the meeting of February 6th, so I still have a couple of months left, but even in the incomplete season I’ve read so far, I’ve noticed what seems to be a great frequency of race-centric presentations that I didn’t quite catch on to when I was only working with the programs. A lot of this type of programming sounds, as you’d guess, unsettling at best.

The first talk that caught my eye was part of the October 7th, 1899 meeting. The Club welcomed a series of “Book Notes,” or individual members’ reviews of books they’ve read on their own. Miss Ellen Duvall presents on two books, one of which is titled Anglo-Saxon Superiority: To What It Is Due, by Edmond Demolins, published that year. Miss Duvall says of the book,

The treatment of this question in this book from a French point of view, is, she said, something almost miraculous,–and there is a sweet a reasonableness in it also.

After some cursory research, this book (originally published, as Duvall mentions, in French) seems to focus on the “originality and superiority” of Anglo-Saxon-based society in England and America. A full-text version of this book can be found here.

Later, a talk by Miss Anne Weston Whitney on the “Art in Doll-Making” at the January 7th, 1900 meeting also makes a point of highlighting how dolls not specifically modeled after the “Anglo-Saxon type” are undesirable.

The final piece of programming in this vein (that I’ve seen so far) is a talk by Mrs. Walter Bullock on January 23rd, 1900, titled “Anglo-Saxon Character,” which gives “a clean and comprehensive account of the two most prominent theories with regard to the origin of the Aryan race,” and uses some very particular language that I find very, how do I put this? Indicative of someone with what I’d in our current day call white-supremacist leanings. Mrs. Bullock says in her talk,

There, it has been said, was the white race first found in its greatest purity.

I guess reading about Mrs. Bullock’s talk about when and where the white race came to be its “purest” isn’t totally surprising given all our recent discussion and concern with how to reconcile the legacy of this club with Confederate legacies and the brutal racism that accompanies them, as well as non-Confederate-specific racist conceptions and attitudes of the time.  But even in that context, this kind of programming being shared among the elite and powerful is…Not Good. At the end of this particular talk, Miss Brent proposes that it be type-written and placed in the Club library so others can read and revisit it. Again, these attitudes aren’t shocking in context, but this kind of content is still something that we have to process and/or expose as part of the Club’s legacy, whatever that legacy may be.

Posted on by Ellen Roussel

Lehmann’s Hall–What are you?

Taken from http://www.mdhs.org/digitalimage/street-scene-lehmanns-hall-café-des-arts-852-north-howard-street-baltimore From the Julius Anderson Photograph Collection

In the early years ofthe Woman’s Literary Club, they met at 861 Garden Street. Some time later, they began meeting at Lehmann’s Hall, which is addressed as 858 N. Howard Street, but, as Dr. Cole told me, used to be at 861 Garden Street. My assignment for this week was to research the history behind Lehmann’s Hall, and how the women came to meet there.

After some research, I came to the conclusion that any discoveries I made would not come about easily. In fact, there was remarkablylittle information on Lehmann’s Hall, and virtually nothing about 861 Garden Street. I assumed the address change of Lehmann’s Hall from 861 Garden Street to 858 N. Howard Street occurred after the Great Baltimore Fire in 1904 that left a huge portion of the city decimated.

I cannot paint a complete picture of Lehmann’s Hall, nor can I answer the questions of why the women started meeting there and why they eventually stopped. However, through my research, I found some interesting tidbits about Lehmann’s Hall, which, today, is right behind the popular coffee joint, the Bun Shop.

The earliest record I could find of Lehmann’s Hall is from the Maryland Historical Society, which credits various musical performances, concerts, Glee Clubs, and plays as being performed at Lehmann’s Hall between 1875 and 1914.

Lehmann’s Hall was also mentioned in an 1890 edition of Locomotive Firemen’s Magazine, which described the “Orioles” Subordinate Lodge as meeting at Lehman’s Hall [sic] on 861 Garden Street on the second and fourth Sundays of the month.

In the 1898 Volume XXVIII of The National Druggist, the forty-sixth annual meeting of the American Pharmaceutical Association met at Lehmann’s Hall, though the address was written as 856 N. Howard Street, which would debunk my hypothesis about the fire sparking the change of street names.

In the August 22, 1907 edition of the “Daily Bulletin of theManufacturers’ Record”, the single mention of Lehmann’s Hall is to highlight the remodeling and addition to the building by the Ellicott and Emmart architects.

By 1935, right before World War II, Lehmann’s Hall was a popular destination for Nazi sympathizer rallies, as well as the local bowling alley and dance hall. In a photograph in the Maryland Historical Society archives, Lehmann’s Hall has a sign out front describing it as a “Café Des Artes,” and it is addressed as 852 N. Howard Street.

I cannot fully uncloud the mystery behind Lehmann’s Hall, nor can I provide conclusive, definitive answers as to how the Woman’s Literary Club came to find itself there. However, it does seem that, despite road changes and address inconsistencies, Lehmann’s Hall remained a gathering spaced for quite a number of years, and even lends itself to a popular gathering space today. It was the primary meeting space of the Woman’s Literary Club during their genesis and early years, and I wait with anticipation to see where/when/and how Lehmann’s Hall falls off the radar of the Woman’s Literary Club, should that information come about through further transcription of club minutes.