Posted on by Jean Lee Cole

Club authors, team authors

Henrietta Szold
A young Henrietta Szold, at about the time she was a member of the WLCB.

Starting next week, members of the WLCB research team will be posting profiles of the various published authors who were members of the Club. We’ve been collecting their works and discovering that this was a pretty interesting group of women– more interesting, in fact, than the Club meeting minutes made them seem. While the minutes are fascinating in their own right, the varied and sometimes adventurous lives of the actual Club members made us realize that the Club’s desire to appear orderly and unified under the ideals of Southern womanhood imposed a staid– or at least studied– propriety on the entire group.

In this post, I actually want to celebrate the work of our own team members. Yesterday, the Maryland Historical Society published an article by Sydney on one Club member, “Miss Henrietta Szold: A Jewish Idealist in the WLCB.” Sydney encountered “Miss Szold” in the team’s work in the archives last summer. In her piece, she gives us a glimpse into her brief tenure into the Club in the early 1890s, and reflects on the importance of discovering her presence in the Club in the wake of racialized violence and anti-Semitism today.

And the publication of Sydney’s piece also gives me a chance to share with our new team members and followers of the blog the team’s first publication, which appeared last fall: Hunter’s evocative ruminations about the Club’s response– or lack of one– to one of the most momentous events in Baltimore history, the “Great Fire” of 1904.

Both of these essays were published in the Maryland Historical Society’s Underbelly blog, which claims to limn “the Deepest Corners of the Maryland Historical Society Library.” In future weeks and months, we’ll be seeking other ways to get our own works into print– here on this blog, on Wikipedia, in the book we will be publishing that will collect some of the Club members’ works, and who knows where else?

Posted on by Sydney Johnson

Meeting the Members—Henrietta Szold.

Over the past weeks, I have been looking at the members of the Club—who they are, where the lived—and finally I am able to say what some of them look like.

With the help of the Maryland Historical Society and their Portrait Vertical File Collection,  I have been able to find some images of the women from this club. For this blog post I wanted to focus on one in particular, Henrietta Szold.

Miss Szold was a member of the Club from 1890-1894. The picture below was taken while she was still a member of the Club in 1893. Born in 1860 to Rabbi Benjamin Szold, Miss Szold was the only Jewish member of the club, making her, to our knowledge, one of the only—if not the only—member who was non-christian.

Miss Henrietta Szold. Image taken at the Maryland Historical Society.
Miss Henrietta Szold. Image taken at the Maryland Historical Society.

Miss Szold’s wikipedia page (which I linked above) talks about her legacy as a Jewish Zionist and the founder of Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America. It also talks about the many different roles she played in the Jewish community from Jewish education and being the first editor for the Jewish Publication Society. In 1933 Miss Szold emigrated to Palestine and was a part of Youth Aliyah, an organization that helped to rescue more then 30,000 Jewish children from Nazi Germany.

In 1945 Miss Szold passed away in one of the hospitals that she helped to found in Jerusalem. She is remembered around the world for the work that she did.

In the entire Wikipedia article about Miss Szold, it does not mention once that she was a member of the Woman’s Literary Club of Baltimore. I think that because she was a member for such a short period of time, there was no mention of her membership. In general I think it is astounding that the ladies of the club let someone like Miss Szold in. These are women who have been known to hold discussions on why the Anglo-Saxon race is superior, as mentioned in Clara’s post. So the question must be posed, did Miss Szold leave once she realized the nature of the majority of the women in the Club, or was she asked to leave because of her religion?

Women like Miss Szold are few and far between in the Club, but it is important to try to find them and tell their story and also try to figure out their involvement in the Club. Miss Szold is remembered as a world renowned leader and activist but not as a member of the Woman’s Literary Club. We can only hope to bring recognition to the Club with the help of members such as Miss Szold.

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.