The WLCB log

While the birth and death dates of Florence MacIntyre Tyson are unknown to us today, remaining records paint the picture of an intelligently and worldly woman. Florence was born in Hanover, Delaware and married Mr. Frederic C Tyson of Maryland in 1872, and the couple went on to have a son, Malcom Van Vetchen Tyson, the following year. While the career and accomplishments of Mr. Frederic Tyson are unknown, records show that Malcom graduated from the Johns Hopkins University in 1894, and he is shown in the picture below. The family resided, at least part-time, at 251 West Preston Street in Baltimore, Maryland.

While these facts help us gain a more in-depth understanding of Florence MacIntyre Tyson’s lifestyle, pertinent and riveting discussion revolves around her great accomplishments in translation, as well as her apparent ability to juggle many responsibilities, and languages, while practicing her craft. Further, Mrs. Tyson, as portrayed in the Meeting Minutes, was a very globally-conscious and, dare I say, open-minded woman for her time. Undoubtedly, Mrs. Tyson was an asset to the Woman’s Literary Club of Baltimore during her 15+ year membership in the sense that she broadened the club’s definition of “culture.”

Tyson’s most notable work is certainly her translation of “Russia” by Theodore Gautier. The 600-page volume, translated from French, has been made widely accessible on the internet today, and meeting minutes from the early 1900s indicate that the book was warmly received by critics, the public, and the Club itself.

In addition to this looming volume, Tyson is known to have published several translations of short stories, from the French and Italian, notably. Meeting minutes indicate, though, that Tyson spoke French, Italian, German, Russian, and Spanish, in combination with her native English. Certainly, Mrs. Tyson was very well-educated, and worthy of her title of Chairman of the Committee on Translations, which she held until stepping down from the position in 1910 due to her frequent absence from Baltimore. It was also during the timespan from 1902-1909 that Tyson published Russia and the short stories that I have so far encountered in my research.

Mrs. Tyson seemed particularly enamored with the Italian language and culture, and meeting minutes indicate a concentrated fascination with the author Matilde Serao. Mrs. Tyson translated and shared with the Club several works by this author, one of which, “Sister Giovanna of the Cross,” was published in Littell’s Living Age in 1901. Meeting minutes indicate that it was an honor to be published in this esteemed magazine, and the elegant work of Mrs. Tyson speaks for itself. In a rather scandalous excerpt from the story, Clementia, a young woman, bluntly explains to Sister Giovanna, her aunt, that

married women too have lovers. I wish them joy and think they had better keep to their proper place. The lover of our portress for example, who you know is married, is a policeman, who comes to her house every evening and finds a cup of coffee and glass of wine waiting for him. On the second floor, the lawyer named Gasperle receives a woman–married too–who comes two or three times a week after nightfall and does not go away until the next morning.”

The dynamic characters of the story are perhaps what prompted Tyson’s interest in translating the works of Serao, and it is clear that, contrary to the conservative nature of the WLCB, Tyson enjoyed such bold literature.

While I am still learning more about Florence MacIntyre Tyson, I am already thoroughly intrigued by her character, and I looking forward to continued intimacy with her work.

Louise Clarkson Whitelock (née Sauerwein) was born in Baltimore in 1851. She was a founding member of the WLCB in 1890, and remained a member until 1897. She married George Clarkson, a Baltimore lawyer, in December of 1878. They had a daughter, Roberta, and a son, William, who both grew up to be writers! Roberta also became an illustrator like her mother, and she contributed to and illustrated her brother’s book Britanny With Bergere. Louise died in 1928.

Louise was both an author and illustrator, and published most of her works under the name L. Clarkson. She was active from 1877 to around 1898. Many of her publications are books of children’s verse, which she illustrated herself. Her most famous work appears to be Violet, with Eyes of Blue—almost all of her other publications refer to her as its author. She also published collections of poems for more grown-up audiences, including Heartsease and Happy Days, a novel titled The Shadow of John Wallace, and two collections of short stories, called A Mad Madonna and How Hindsight Met Provincialis.

The 1878 Christmastime volume of The Publishers Weekly advertises her collection of poems The Rag Fair as “The most remarkable book of the year” and “the gift book of the season.” Other publications, including an 1884 volume of Literary News, also refer to her works as ‘gift books.’ The same Publishers Weekly volume advertises one of her children’s books, Little Stay-at-Home and Her Friends, as “a charming gift book for the little ones.” The full advertisement for The Rag Fair, however, does more than simply advertise–it praises her poetic prowess.

The Rag Fair is a poetic rumination on death and the redemptive power of Christ. Each page is illustrated by Louise herself, like most of her poetic publications. Below is an example page from the collection:

Her poetry for children has a very different style from her poetry for adults. Some poems in her children’s verse collections take on an infantilized voice, imitating a sort of children’s dialect. For instance, her poem “Just Born,” from Little Stay-at-Home and her Friends is written from the perspective of a freshly hatched chick,

Not had nuffin’
Since I’s born!
–Wonder if zat sing
Might be torn.

‘Fraid it’s most too
Big for me;
Fink my mamma
Might tum see.”

The childlike voice is an…interesting choice. It appears in many poems across all her works for children, though some “normally” voiced poems also populate these collections.

Her children’s poetry focuses on magical portrayals of natural beauty–flower fairies, personifications of flowers or other natural items like seashells, and poems about and “by” animals, like the aforementioned baby chick, sometimes with  religious themes.

Louise Clarkson Whitelock is an interesting Club member because of her diversity of publications for readers of all ages, and her prowess as an illustrator for both her own and others’ works. It is also notable that she chose to publish under the name ‘L. Clarkson,’ which would not betray her womanhood, even when writing books of verse for small children. There seem to be no known photographs of her, but photos of her rich illustrations are available.

Grace Denio Litchfield, poet and novelist, was born November 19, 1849 in Brooklyn , New York. She is the daughter of Grace Hill Litchfield and Edwin Litchfield, and the sister of Francese Hubbard Litchfield Turnbull, the first president of the Woman’s Literary Club. Litchfield began writing at an early age, as she was bedridden due to illness for much of her life. Many of her poems, such as “In My Window-Seat”, “Pain”, “Day-dreams”, “In the Hospital” are reflective of the pain she experienced due to illness, as well as the time she spent in recovery within the confines of her room. She spent much of her time in Europe before moving to Washington D.C.

Litchfield is one of the more prolific writers in the Woman’s Literary Club, and as such, she was named an Honorary Member of the Club. Though some of her publications were at first rejected, following her first publication in 1882, Litchfield was published many times in Harper’s Magazine, The Century, The Atlantic, and others magazines.

I am very intrigued by Grace Denio Litchfield for several reasons. First of all, she is the sister of my least favorite person in the Club, Francese Turnbull. I spent much of last summer transcribing the minutes from the first few years of the Club, and thus know Mrs. Turnbull very well. From my research, my transcriptions, and my own imagination, Mrs. Turnbull seems like an evil dictator who shuts down some of the more progressive women of the Club. So it was surprising when I read about the kindness, modesty, and optimism that characterized Grace Denio Litchfield. How could these two drastically different women be bred from the same family? To this question I have no answer.

Another reason I find Litchfield interesting is because of her fiction writing. While her poetry focuses heavily on themes of nature, all I can really say about it is that it’s nice. Her fiction, however, has a lot more depth I think than her poems. For one, her fiction is funny. I was taken aback when I found myself laughing out loud to some of her sentences. For instance, in Only an Incident, Litchfield writes,

“It was another article of the Joppian creed that there was no such thing possible as a purely Platonic friendship between a young man and a young woman; there must always be ‘something in it’: either a mitten for him, a disappointment for her, or wedding-cake for all–generally and preferably, of course, the wedding-cake;–and belonging to such friendship as lawfully as a tail belongs to a comet, was a great, wide-spreading area of gossip.”

See, funny right? Even Grace Denio Litchfield had her fair share of disappointing boys. Her works focus heavily on women, especially societal expectations of women marrying, women working, and women writing. I am pretty interested to discover what other gems Grace Denio Litchfield has to offer.    

Last Friday, Hunter, Dr. Cole and I decided to make the trek to the Johns Hopkins University library in order to search the Baltimore Sun Historical Archive (which Loyola doesn’t have access to…) Both Hunter and I were assigned women in the Club to research that were some of the first female reporters for the Sun and we were very excited to see what we could find.

May Garretson Evans is accredited as being the first female reporter for the Baltimore Sun and there have been many articles written about her and her life. She has published two books about music and another book with her sister, Bessie Evans, about American Indian Dance Steps. I knew all of this going into the JHU library and was expecting to find an abundance of articles written by her. Unfortunately I was wrong.

I guess being the first female reporter in a rather large newspaper has its downsides. I was able to find one article stating Miss Evans as the writer. It was surprisingly about Edgar Allan Poe (these women are obsessed!) I believe that she wrote other stories or at least reported on other stories but because of her controversial employment was not given credit. In an article in the Sun written in 1947 she is quoted as saying,

My adventure into the newspaper field created a commotion. At first I was more interviewed then interviewing. I had to explain myself everywhere in that gaslight period. It was a perfect nuisance.

May Garretson Evans is just another example of some of the women in this Club that were venturing into territories previously unoccupied by women. Miss Evans along with Mrs. Christine Ladd Franklin remind me that these women’s stories need to be told so they can get the recognition they deserve.  I hope that over the course of this semester I will be able to find more of Miss Evan’s writing so that she can received the credit that is due.