This post from Rector Grey Maggiano at the Memorial Episcopal Church website hits close to home.
New deacon Natalie Conway, they recently discovered, was descended from people who had formerly been enslaved by Memorial Episcopal’s founding rector, David Ridgely Howard, whose family owned the Hampton plantation north of where Towson Town Center mall stands today.
This discovery inspired some 50 members of the congregation, including Deacon Conway, to travel together to Hampton plantation last week to learn more about their collective history.
Parishioners of Memorial Episcopal and St. Katherine of Alexandria churches tour the grounds of the Hampton plantation, formerly owned by Memorial rector David Ridgely Howard. Photo courtesy Memorial Episcopal Church, Baltimore.
This history intersects with the WLCB because David Ridgely Howard was the half-brother of Margaretta Sophia Howard Ridgely, the mother of Eliza Ridgely, first secretary of the WLCB. Eliza grew up at Hampton and later lived in the Mt. Vernon neighborhood, just around the block from founding member Hester Dorsey.
A number of other Club members also attended Memorial Episcopal–during a time when the church fervently supported segregation. In fact, Clara Love and Katie Kazmierski spent some hours poring through church records early on in our research, when we were trying to find WLCB club members and where they lived.
As we’ve discovered, the history of the WLCB is intertwined with some ugly, long-hidden (and carefully hidden) truths about Baltimore and racial attitudes in the United States as a whole. The present-day parishioners’ visit to Hampton is a step toward reconciling this past with a more hopeful future. Read Grey’s post here.
This 1912 cartoon from the pro-suffrage Woman’s Journal offers arguments from, left to right, “White Slavers,” “Antis,” “Big Biz,” and “Liquor.” https://ehistory.osu.edu/exhibitions/1912/womens_suffrage/interest
We have been puzzled and disappointed throughout our research on the WLCB by their reluctance to embrace suffrage. Many, in fact, were adamant “antis,” the name given to those opposing the women’s vote. This group happened to coincide with Club leadership, and as a result very little by way of pro-suffrage expression appears in any of the Club documents. Members who worked for the women’s vote did so outside the Club meetings.
How could these women, who sought artistic and professional independence and autonomy, NOT want the right to participate as full citizens?
A key reason, as documented in this op-ed by Goucher history prof Jean Baker appearing in today’s Baltimore Sun, can be encapsulated in a single word: racism. They were willing to sacrifice their own right to vote in order not to extend it to black women.
After the 19th Amendment passed, it was left up to the individual states to ratify and implement it in state law. And in Maryland, Baker writes, “Democratic legislators argued against women moving beyond the domestic sphere into a male public space and also expressed their fears about enfranchising black women.”
It’s mind-boggling to think that women were so committed to white superiority that they were willing to sacrifice their own rights. It’s mind boggling, but true. And it’s worth keeping in mind that people will overwhelmingly opt for self-interest over equality when given the choice.
Amazingly, Maryland did not ratify the amendment until 1941, which was also the year the WLCB officially disbanded. A revealing coincidence, one might say.
Church bells are an essential part of Baltimore’s sensory landscape. Some ring every day; some only on Sundays. The bells at Old St. Paul’s Episcopal Church downtown have been ringing since at least 1812, when they warned Baltimoreans of British invaders during the War of 1812.
Old St. Paul’s Church, at Charles and Saratoga Streets. The bell tower dominates the left side of the building.
Alice Emma Sauerwein Lord (1848-1930) wrote a poem about the church bells of Baltimore, which was published in her book A Symphony in Dreamland in 1899. One imagines her penning these lines as the carillons wafted in through an open window at her house on St. Paul St. just north of Penn Station, on a quiet summer Sunday morning.
Sabbath Bells (1899) Alice Sauerwein Lord
Hark! I hear the murmuring of bells– Distant bells that pulse the city’s heart! Silvery throb from hill to hill that tells, What their wordless messages impart! Murmuring Bells!
List! The many voices rise and fall With a resonance that fills all space, Many-toned, yet blending, each with all, Till sonorous echoes reach this place. Chiming Bells!
Wherefore should my heart respond so fast To this far-off music of the bells? Is it that they whisper of the past? Can it be hope’s voice that still foretells? O ye Bells!
You can still hear the church bells chiming across Baltimore on Sunday mornings, from the Baltimore Cathedral and the New Refuge Deliverance Church (formerly Christ Episcopal) in Mt. Vernon, to Little Italy’s St. Leo’s, to St. Brown Memorial Episcopal and Corpus Christi in Bolton Hill. And the bells at Old St. Paul’s are still ringing, more than 200 years after the British were repulsed from American shores.
One wonders which of the bells inspired Lord’s poem, and whether one still hears them today.
Summer farewells (Dalea pinnata), courtesy Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.
There’s a certain slant of light . . . not quite the same slant of light Dickinson made famous, the somber light of winter afternoons and cathedral tunes—but a light that lets you know fall is on its way. I’ve been noticing it during the past week or so, and with the beautiful, hazy late summer days, this poem by Marguerite Easter, one of the WLCB’s more accomplished poets, keeps coming to mind. That put it in my mind to share with you. Enjoy summer while it lasts. Fall is a-comin’.
Summer’s-Farewells (1892) Marguerite Easter
(Local name in Virginia for late wild-wood flowers of Aster genus.)
Unto the complaining woods suddenly they came, To the fields so desolate but the day before, To the unsmiling paths and to the hills that wore Such sullen looks; there was no further need to blame Nature’s improvidence, for lo, where pin oaks flame, And large leafed yellow hickories sprout with more Than Spring’s abundance seemingly, they bloomed o’er Her lately bereaved breast. I asked their name—
That suddenly to wood and path and meadow came— And that on warm upland slopes were white in hue, But in hollows, where I had thought but shadows grew, Were purple-petaled, with calyxes the same As ragged-robins have, and stamens that became Golden or red, as by chance of birth they knew Of sunlit clearings, or of depths where pines renew Themselves perpetually. I asked their name.
“‘Summer’s-farewells,’ we call them here.” Summer’s farewells! They are the final gift of sentiment to sight. O certainly, the earth should be contented quite To be remembered so.— “We call them here ‘Farewells.’” O love, I am the field, the wood, the path, the hill Before these come. Alas, I bide thy coming still—
Who have been gone so long, so long. E’en summer days Send back greeting to the earth they loved of late, But thou abidest in silence, and I must await Thy recognition. Hateful clime! whose woodland ways No Summer’s-farewells have;—I am that clime that stays Wrapt in November’s loneliness, my woods debate Their dolor, my falling leaves deplore their fate,— There are no Summer’s-farewells to my Autumn days.
“‘Summer’s-farewells,’ we call them here.” Summer’s farewells! They are the final gift of sentiment to sight. O certainly, the earth should be contented quite To be remembered so.— “We call them here ‘Farewells.’” O love, I am the field, the wood, the path, the hill Before these came. Alas, I bide thy coming still.
The manuscript of Parole Femine: Words and Lives of the Woman’s Literary Club of Baltimore, has been edited. I mean, it’s been EDITED.
This work has taken me and my summer assistant, Miranda, all of June and July. Here is the MS in all its glory– some 2000 pages (the pages you see are printed double-sided).
The 2000 pages of Parole Femine: Words and Lives of the Woman’s Literary Club of Baltimore, in all its edited glory.
In all, comprising:
a 33-page introductory essay
50 section and author introductions
2 complete novellas
Over 200 poems
21 short stories
3 plays
Excerpts from 7 novels
26 pieces of newspaper journalism and nonfiction
21 illustrations
Hundreds of annotations identifying people, places, historical events, and literary allusions
Bibliography with over 1000 discrete publications listed from over 50 authors
Each of those little post-its you see above indicates a different work, grouped by color according to author and section. It’s all very exciting!
This has been a lot of work, but it really pales in comparison to all the work that’s been put in by students over the past two years. Students selected the texts, transcribed them, checked the transcriptions, annotated them, and researched and wrote the headnotes. To the students: YOU DID A WONDERFUL JOB.
What next?
Once I check everything one more time, it goes to the designer at Loyola’s Apprentice House Press, Kevin Atticks, who will pour all the Word files into InDesign pages. As a teaser, here’s the cover design, in case you forgot.
The cover was designed by Ellen Roussel, with help from Jill Fury.
Then I will get a few days to check the proofs. And soon after that, you’ll be able to order your very own copy on Amazon.com. We should have books in our hot little hands by the end of September– just in time for Bmore Historic, the annual Baltimore history conference held at the Museum of Industry the last Friday of September.
Students who have worked on the project will get complimentary copies–if you want one and I don’t have your address, please send! And if you are in the area and want to be part of the book launch at Bmore Historic, let me know that also. We could stage another salon!
Congrats, team! The book is finally becoming a reality!
On a beautiful summer day, this untitled poem from Lucy Meacham Thruston’s Songs of the Chesapeake (1905) seems apropos. The poem is one of hundreds by WLCB members that we will be including in our forthcoming anthology, Parole Femine: Words and Lives of the WLCB.
Enjoy–especially if you’re one of the lucky ones to be at the beach this week! Here’s the poem.
Under the old gray wharf The waters ebb and flow; And the jellied nettles, with milk white tentacles Pulse, and curl, and beat the barnacles On the wave-worn piles below.
There’s a low swift hush, And a short crisp rush Where the gray blue streak, with the wind at its heel, Runs with the rippling and dark curled wave; till we feel Our boat and our sails are a-flush.
So ho swing wide the sail Where lasts this feathery gale!– With toss and turn, with quiver and strain, and rushing sound Of music made by waters cleft, filling the air around So ho, we sail! We sail!
See, through the misty flow, Green and blue, the bright rainbow Curves at our keel. The cloud is past: with shimmering haze Now runs the stream like molten silver ’neath the rays Of the sun strong his glow.
The sail hangs loose against the mast There’s not a breath: so fast Sped wind and wave together. Peacefully now we rest With rock and lurch, soft cradled on the river’s breast- The tide has turned at last.
Borne homeward by the tide And splashing oar along our side We reach the wharf–Quick, slip the mast, And seek that cool green shade betwixt the piles.–How fast The ripples form and break and float away at last– Now listen to their song–
It is the eternal flow Of waves that ever go Running to the sea. It has an under moan That touches the deepest tone In the heart of you and me.
I am in the process of compiling the Club bibliography (more on this in a future post) and discovered that Lizette Woodworth Reese, the WLCB’s best-known poet and first woman poet laureate of Maryland, published several poems in the final years of her life in a magazine called Gardens, Houses, and People, which turned out to be the neighborhood newsletter of the up-and-coming development of Roland Park in North Baltimore.
Cover of the January 1936 issue of Gardens, Houses, and People, published by the Roland Park Company, Baltimore.
Reese did not live in Roland Park. Why would she have published her poems in this little fly-by-night publication? Initially, I assumed that the newsletter simply reprinted her poems, by way of adding some local flavor, seasonal interest, and cultural cachet to their pages. This seems to have been true for the poem “Hallowmas,” published in Gardens, Houses, and People in November, 1934. But several other poems appear to have appeared solely in this publication.
I still haven’t completely figured out why, but in looking up the poems in the pages of the magazine I encountered a fascinating story about the final poem published there, a sonnet with the intriguing title, “To an Indecent Novelist,” published in the January 1936 issue. Why would a poem critiquing the decadence and prurient inclinations of contemporary authors appear in a neighborhood newsletter, I wondered? And why would they publish it?
Well, it was because Reese had just passed away, on December 17, 1935, just a few weeks after having sent this poem, along with one titled “A Christmas Song” (appropriately, if tritely, published in the December 1935 issue of Gardens, Houses, & People), to the magazine’s editor, Warren Wilmer Brown. Thus, Brown concluded, it was highly likely that “To an Indecent Novelist” was “the last poem by Lizette Woodworth Reese.” He featured the poem on the first page of the issue, alongside a poignant depiction of Reese in her final days. I include a bit of it below. But first, the poem:
To an Indecent Novelist Lizette Woodworth Reese
You measure by a ditch, and not a height, Make life no deeper than a country bin One keeps for apples on a winter’s night, Thence prate the immaturities of sin. You weigh by littles, by some cracked emprise. Why not by that one thing a man has done, In some vast hour, beneath hot, hating eyes, When, hard against a wall, he fought and won? The spirit still outwits the lagging flesh: Cross but one lane, and you shall find again That righteousness is older still than lust; Strict loveliness of living find afresh, Sound women, too, and reasonable men, That not yet all the gentlefolk are dust.
Of this poem, Brown wrote:
“She sent it to us shortly before the inception of the illness that culminated, after a few weeks, in her death. . . . Whether it has appeared elsewhere in the meantime we do not know, but fancy it has not; the fact that she wanted it finally to reach the direct attention of our readers, many of whom were her warm friends, touched us very deeply and intensified the feeling of gratitude and honor that she had chosen these columns to the first appearance of a number of her later poems.
“That feeling was very keen, indeed, when we called upon her – it was Thanksgiving Day – shortly after she had been taken to the Church Home And Infirmary, where as Henry L. Megan pointed out in his fine memorial tribute in The Evening Sun, another great poet, Edgar Allan Poe, died.
“She was looking so pitifully pale and exhausted that it was not necessary to be told that the visit must be very short, but suffering and weak as she was her courage was superb, since her spirit knew no vanquishing. . . .
“Never was there a soul more impervious to the mercenary and otherwise debasing influences of modern times; never was there one that looked facts more valiantly in the face and took its stand once for all on its own high ground of idealism and faith in the fundamental decency and dignity of man.
“She saw loveliness wherever she turned and wrought the materials of her impressions into verse that often gleamed pure gold… She never was tempted even to change her own lyrics style, anymore than she was impelled to condone the license, to say nothing of the licentiousness, that so many contemporary poets and their readers indulged in complacently.
“She did not hesitate to express her opinion on such matters very freely and emphatically in conversation, but the only time, to our knowledge, she ever made it the subject of the poem was when she wrote ‘To an Indecent Novelist.’ Read the sonnet again, study it carefully, if you would find the dominant influence that shaped her moral outlook and kept the stream of her inspiration as a poet unsullied.”
