Posted on by Jean Lee Cole

Lizette Woodworth Reese’s last poem?

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.

Gardens, Houses, & People cover
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.”

Posted on by Katie Shiber · 1 Comment

Work to remember, Fast to Forget: The Life of Lizette Woodworth Reese

Although today few may know her name, Miss Lizette Woodworth Reese may very well have been one of Baltimore’s most gifted writers. H. L. Mencken, Baltimore writer, critic and scholar, said of Reese upon her death, “I believe, that of all the women who have ever lived in Baltimore, she will be remember the longest, just as Poe will be remembered the longest among men.”

Miss Reese and her twin sister Sophia were born on January 9, 1856 to Louisa Gabler and David Reese, a former confederate soldier, in what is now Waverly, Maryland. Waverly, a still pastoral suburb of Baltimore, served as one of Reese’s favorite subjects of poetry.

After her education in the Baltimore Public schools, Miss Reese began her teaching career at the age of seventeen. She began at St. John’s Episcopal Church’s parish school, but soon moved on to the Number Three School, a German-English school, which largely served immigrant families. Reese than continued her career at City High School, an exclusively African-American school, where she was exposed to the hardships her students faced at the hands of poverty and racism. She finished her teaching career at her alma mater, Western High school.

Reese was widely praised for her passion and dedication to teaching, but found her truest talent and purpose in writing. From poetry to short fiction to memoir, Reese had a gift for eloquence and profound insight. In 1874, her first piece, a poem titled “The Deserted House,” was published in Southern Magazine. She found a fruitful platform in magazines, and continued publishing regularly until the release of her first poetry collection, A Branch of May, in 1887. Reese proceeded to published 15 volumes of her work, two of which were autobiographies and a novel. Reese’s work was not only locally recognized, but nationally. In 1914, a New York Times Poll, asked current well-known writers, “What is the best short poem in the English language?” In response, the writers named 68 poems by 10 different authors, Reese being one, ranking her beside poets like Keats and Wordsworth. Miss Reese’s most famous and critically acclaimed poem, “Tears,” was published by Scribner’s Magazine in November of 1899. In response to its publication H. L. Mencken called it, “one of the imperishable glories of American literature.”

In 1931, Reese was elected the poet laureate of Maryland by the General Federation of Women’s Clubs and received an honorary doctorate from Goucher College. She also served as the honorary president of the Poetry Society of Maryland, the honorary president of the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore, and a co-founder of the Woman’s Literary Club of Baltimore, where she served as chair of the modern poetry committee from 1890 until her death in 1935.

Reese wrote until the day she died, passing before the completion of her novel, Worley’s. She was deeply dedicated to her craft, both education and poetry, manifesting this passion in her work with the Woman’s Literary Club of Baltimore. Miss Reese’s life embodied everything the club sought to achieve, the engaged study of literature, the production of literary art and the advancement of women writers.

Reese died in the year 1935 at the Church Home and Infirmary, the same location of her beloved idol, Edgar Allan Poe, who passed decades before her. Although her biographical information is easily accessible and most of her texts available digitally online, I am still left to ponder if Miss Reese is remembered these 83 years later. Certainly more than her fellow club members, but not so in comparison to the poets of her time to which she was compared. Her name rarely appears in popular history of the period or anthologies of 18th century poets, and I certainly never heard her name in my literary education.

Lizette Woodworth Reese

A woman, once considered a world famous poet, is now stuck in a niche corner of literary history, and though there may be myriad reasons why, I am more interested in the undoing of the dust collected on this poet’s history.

 

Sources:

“Lizette Woodworth Reese and the Poetry of Spring.” Underbelly, The Maryland Historical Society, 16 Apr. 2015, www.mdhs.org/underbelly/2015/04/16/lizette-woodworth-reese-and-the-poetry-of-spring/.

“Lizette Woodworth Reese.” Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/lizette-woodworth-reese.

“Lizette Woodworth Reese.” The Baltimore Literary Heritage Project, baltimoreauthors.ubalt.edu/writers/lizettereese.htm.

“Miss Reese, Poet, Dies in Hospital.” The Evening Sun, 17 Dec. 1935, p. 44.

“What is the Best Short Poem in the English Language.” Baltimore Sun, 12 July 1914, p. 16.

Posted on by Katie Shiber

The House Not Made with Hands

In transcribing minute meetings, it is easy to get lost in the technicalities of accurate replication, distracting one from content that seems, at times, mundane. However, in my transcription of the 805th Meeting of the Women’s Literary Club of Baltimore held on October 27th 1914, a sentiment was put forth that piqued my interest. The meeting was conducted by the committee on poetry, led by chairman Miss Lizette Woodworth Reese, who began by reading a poem entitled “Ghosts.” However, it was not Miss Reese that brought forth this reflection, but a musing from the secretary herself that caught my eye. She wrote, “Every house where men live and die is haunted. The house not made with hands is the one we really live in. This is the modern touch, taking the place of cruder apparitions of earlier times. Our ghosts have been turned inward.”

I was immediately struck because, unlike other minutes I had encountered, the minute keeper was not simply relaying the conversation of the group, but weighing in herself. She was so moved by the topic of ghosts and apparitions that she felt it necessary to document her thoughts. It is clear that the “house not made with hands” she is referring to is the kingdom of God, quoting from 2 Corinthians 5:1. It is a religious sentiment, but perhaps a social commentary too. These minutes were taken in October of 1914, shortly after the beginning of the first world war, a time in history when the world faced the grim reality of brutal intercontinental conflict, and Americans feared their nation’s entry into the war. Death was no longer a topic easily ignored, but one in the forefront of civilian minds. Perhaps the minute keeper’s words were just a belief that religion had taken precedent over old-fashioned superstition, but maybe she was instead struck by the reality that war was raging and death looming, finding solace in her divine belief in heaven.

Posted on by Sydney Johnson

Names and Dates: Connecting the dots

Diving into discovering who the women of the Club are has come with some rewards, and many challenges. For the past few weeks now I have been in charge of figuring out who was in the Club when and where they lived. Thanks to the incredible record-keeping in the early years that is not a difficult task. Much of the same information overlaps in different notebooks. Essentially, from 1980 to 1916 we have an almost complete record of who the members in the Club and also who the board of management was. However, these are just names and nothing more. My next task was to try to figure who these women were or at least try to find some of their real names—not their husbands names.

Instead of trying to find information about over a hundred women, we thought it would be best to start small, and higher up, with the board of management. This board includes an average of twelve women. One president, two vice presidents, a recording secretary, a corresponding secretary, a treasurer, and six members of the board. These are the women that help run and decide the direction of the club. Having the lists of the board from year to year all in one place can also help explain changes in the dynamic of the club. For example, Hunter has been transcribing the minutes for Fall of 1903 where Lydia Crane was recording the minutes. In the middle of a meeting the hand-writing changes indicating that Miss Crane is not writing anymore. Looking at the board of management for 1903-1904 we can see that Miss Crane is not actually the recording secretary, but she was for 1901-1902 and then comes back in 1906-1907. These are the tiny shifts that we are beginning to pick up the longer we read what these ladies were doing. We are able to piece together to try to get a more three dimensional image of the Club.

So the board of management seemed like a good place to start, since these are the women that the club revolves around, and we picked the year 1903-1904. Here is where the difficulty lies, as I have mentioned in my previous posts: many of the women are referred to by their husbands names, which makes it hard to find out their real names. However, I have been able to use different resources such as ancestry.com and findagrave.com to be able to locate the names of the men, and then many times they have the names of the women as well.

When doing these searches it is hard to determine if the information that I have found is really for the same person that I am searching for. Without knowing the birth and death information about a person before I search for them, a slew of people can come into the found list and I am unsure of if it is who I am looking for. Another thing that I am finding more relevant and difficult in my search is the cemeteries where these people are buried. Many of the ones that I have been able to find are in either Green Mount Cemetery or in Loudon Park Cemetery, with private church cemeteries thrown in throughout. Green Mount is the place where many people of prestige were buried. While I have not found out much information about Loudon Park Cemetery, there is a large portion of the cemetery which was dedicated to the burial of Union soldiers which might have had an impact on who wanted to be buried there depending on their sympathies during the war. Another piece of information is where the two cemeteries are located. Green Mount being located in Greenmount Ave, a couple of blocks south of North Ave. This is located close to where most of the members of the Club lived, therefore making it convenient for them to go to Green Mount. Loudon Park on the other hand, is a 30 minute drive from Green Mount when I put the directions into Google. On horse that would take much longer, let along a slow moving burial procession would be about two days.

The top middle of the map is a small green square which is Green Mount, Loudon Park is not pictured on the map but would be south west of the bottom left edge of the map.

Aside from the interesting information about the cemeteries I have been somewhat successful with finding information about the women. Out of the twelve members of the board of management for 1903-1904, I was able to find birth and death years for six of the members and was able to determine the names of two of the women that had gone by their husbands names. In 1903 Mrs. Jordan Stabler, or Jennie Stabler (although I am not positive that this is her) was 35; Mrs. Philip Uhler, or Julia Pearl Uhler, was 44; Miss Lydia Crane was 70; Miss Ellen Duvall was 62; Miss Lizette Woodworth Reese was 47; and Miss Eveline Early was 35.  I was really disappointed that I could not find anything on Mrs. John Wrenshall, who is the president for many years of the Club. Thanks to findagrave.com I was able to find a picture of Miss Lizette Woodworth Reese.

This image was uploaded to findagrave.com. Unfortunately we have no ability to double-check if it is really her, but hopefully it is.

It is a sad realization that many of the women in the Club are only recognized by a name that is not really theirs. Thankfully there are tools out there that help make it possible to learn about Julia Pearl Uhler instead of just Philip Uhler.

Posted on by Clara Love · 1 Comment

Titles, Texts, and Some Sapphic Poems

When I started compiling a list of the poems Lizette Woodworth Reese shared with the Woman’s Literary Club, I realized that my primary challenge would be tracking down the actual titles of her works mentioned on the meeting programs I’ve transcribed (1890-1905). More often than not, her original works are just listed as something unhelpful like “Three Poems, Lizette Woodworth Reese.” Fortunately, I was able to find many of these missing titles in the minutes that have been transcribed so far (1890-1895, 1910-1912), and hope to find the rest by looking through the minutes of the 1895-1905 seasons.

Another related challenge/question I encountered whose answer also lies in the minutes is that since the formatting for almost every kind of presentation given to the Club follows more or less the same = format on the programs, it’s tricky to tell whether something Lizette shared that actually was titled something other than “Poem” is a poem or something else–an essay, a review, a story. Again, referring to the corresponding meeting minutes usually clears this up.

Of the 20 readings I’ve been able to both identify as poems and confirm titles of, I’ve been able to track down the text of 13 so far. I’ve found the texts Lizette chose to read to the Club scattered all over the place–some in her published volumes, some in her papers held at the Enoch Pratt Free Library, and some on generic poetry sites and in periodical records online.

One of her poems that struck me in particular is called “Lydia,” and it stood out to me for a couple of reasons. At first glance, I thought it could perhaps be written about the longtime Club recording secretary, Lydia Crane, especially since it was one of the first things Lizette shared with the Club. However, upon closer investigation, the poem references Sudbury, a town in Massachusetts, twice, so that doesn’t seem likely.

The other reason this poem caught my eye has to do with our prior group discussion about how many of the Club women, including Lizette Woodworth Reese, remained unmarried. We’ve also discussed ‘Boston marriages,’ and the possibility that the reason for some of these women remaining unwed could be because they weren’t heterosexual. In “Lydia” and the poem that immediately follows it in the collection of poems I found it in, “Anne,” (which also references Sudbury), I hear what, to me, could definitely be the voice of a woman who loves other women. Both of these poems are celebrations of another woman’s beauty, grace, and glory (“Anne” even raises its subject to the level of divinity, and romanticizes her from afar) and both contain strong violet imagery, which has long been associated with lesbianism thanks to the Greek poet Sappho.

I don’t want to make broad claims about a dead woman’s sexuality without evidence, or claim that these two poems that caught my eye are necessarily evidence themselves. However, following our prior conversations (and even before that), it’s been on my mind, so discovering this sort of poetry leaves a strong impression on me, and I’m looking forward to uncovering more of what Lizette Woodworth Reese chose to share with the Club.

Posted on by Katie Kazmierski

What was the Edgar Allan Poe Memorial Association?

At a certain point in my transcribing, I started to notice that the minutes often mentioned the Edgar Allan Poe Memorial Association–a club which, the minutes explain, boasts nearly the same Board of Management as the Woman’s Literary Club of Baltimore. From the 1908 minutes, I got the feeling that the Club was becoming more invested in the Edgar Allan Poe Memorial Association than the original woman’s club– meetings were few in the beginning of the year and at one point an ‘informal meeting’ was held simply to cancel another Club meeting in favor of an event for the EAPMA. I started to wonder what the deal was with this other club.

I found that in 1907, the Woman’s Literary Club of Baltimore decided to create the Edgar Allan Poe Memorial Association. Their original goal was to erect a monument for Poe to be completed by 1909 for the centennial of his birth. I was surprised that I read nothing of this sort in the Club minutes, though I guess this would be discussed in the minutes of the EAPMA, if there are any. Its omission also might be due to the fact, though, that the statue didn’t end up making its way to Baltimore until 1921– some time after its 1909 goal. The monument had, well, what can be politely described as a series of mishaps.

The artist, Moses Jacob Ezekial, finished the first sculpture in 1913 but it was destroyed in a fire. The second model was also destroyed, this time in an earthquake. The third was done by 1916 but World War I delayed its shipment across the Atlantic by 5 years. Despite the bizarre delays, the tribute got to Baltimore eventually, and today it sits in Gordon Plaza at the University of Baltimore, thanks to our ladies from the Woman’s Literary Club of Baltimore. 

Another interesting thing I found was a book entitled “Edgar Allan Poe: A Centenary Tribute” which was published in 1910, on account of, again, the Woman’s Literary Club of Baltimore and the Edgar Allan Poe Memorial Association.

A page from the beginning of the text. The Board members were almost identical at this time.

The book is a published account of the Centenary Celebration–the lectures/speeches given by the speakers at the January 1909 tribute were recorded and bound together in the text, along with an introduction explaining the Edgar Allan Poe Memorial Association, written by, I’m assuming, Mrs. Wrenshall.

From the introduction I found out that the WLCB had originally talked about forming the Association in 1904, and in 1907 they officially formed it with the goal of, “erecting in Baltimore a monument to the poet worthy of his genius”. The introduction also boasts that the birth of this association and its goal was received enthusiastically among other women’s clubs in the state, and also in the press. Apparently the Association received support across state lines, all of this being completely voluntary with respect to the importance of honoring the poet. Even through all this support, though, it’s mentioned that in June of 1907 the efforts had to be halted due to the “financial stringency”. That explains why the first statue wasn’t completed until 1913, then.

As I read the introduction praising the Association and also the speakers who “graciously permitted” to record their tributes in the text, Miss. Reese was in the back of my mind–the source of the drama regarding her poem’s inclusion in the celebration. I was surprised, and delighted to see that the very first tribute in the book, right after the introduction, was Lizette Woodworth Reese’s poem. I can’t help but wonder if her poem was included first for a reason, maybe as a way to make up for its apparent omission at the celebration itself.

From my understanding, the Edgar Allan Poe Memorial Association served not only as a tribute to the infamous poet, but also as a way for the women involved to engage in a community bigger than themselves. Through it, they worked with prominent, if entitled, men from Johns Hopkins and other Poe fans across state lines to come together to form a monument for a comment interest. Where the Woman’s Literary Club seems to have been a means for sharing art and literature with each other while straying from state or national woman’s clubs, through the Edgar Allan Poe Memorial Association those same women seemed to extend themselves outward, while creating a monument that stands to this day.

Posted on by Katie Kazmierski

It’s 1909 and I smell drama

In my last post I mentioned how that week I found a lot in the Board of Manager’s minutes that stuck out to me. The main story I wanted to tell happens to be one that Dr. Cole has asked me to share, too, about a bit of drama that’s recorded in May of 1909.

The entry is from May 8th, 1909, but it refers to events that happened in late December 1908/early January 1909. What struck me initially was that the minutes were supposedly taken by the President, not Miss Lydia Crane, the Recording Secretary. It’s weird though because it all appears to be written in the same handwriting but then there are notes supposedly differentiating between who was writing what; Crane or Wrenshall. Why Wrenshall would be writing as opposed to the Secretary at all, I don’t know and I probably never will know–but I almost get the feeling that she wanted to make sure the story was relayed the way she wanted it to be told.

The matter actually concerns the Edgar Allen Poe Association, the Executive Board of which was, at the time, nearly identical to that of the WLBC. I’ll go into that in a later post–what’s important now is just to know that the Board members of the two groups are almost exactly the same, and so they took up affairs of the EAPA in the WLBC meeting.

The Edgar Allen Poe Association took part in the Centenary of Edgar Allen Poe, a celebration commemorating the 100th anniversary of Poe, held at Johns Hopkins University. The ladies worked closely with a few very important men at the time to organize the event, including the president of the university, Dr. Remson, and a man referred to as Professor Bright, who Wrenshall says Remson appointed as his “representative”. Wrenshall, in a lengthy statement to the Club, tells of three visits she had with Bright, the first two in December planning the program for the celebration. The speakers included the university’s pick, Dr. W. P. Trent, who was designated 40 minutes to speak, and two selections by the EAPA ladies, Dr. Huckel and Mr. Poe, who were to have 20-30 minutes each.

Wrenshall then explains how on their Janaury 6th meeting, Bright insisted that she cut Dr. Huckel’s time speaking to eight to ten minutes, and to reduce Mr. Poe’s to only four to five minutes. So to reiterate: the two speakers chosen by the EAPA were given less time to speak than the Hopkins choice to begin with, but then Bright had the nerve to try to compel Wrenshall to shorten her speakers’ time to nearly nothing.

The minutes read, “To do this Mrs. Wrenshall positively declined,–with difficulty maintaining the position of the speakers as asked by the Association.”

Already, this sounds like an uncomfortable position for Wrenshall to be in, especially for a woman at this point in time. Saying no to a prominent man was considered taboo, so I was impressed with Wrenshall in this moment for standing her ground. But then it gets more complicated.

Apparently, this whole time, Wrenshall was supposed to ask about incorporating a poem, written by Miss Reese, in the celebration. Because the meeting didn’t exactly go swimmingly, she didn’t end up bringing it up. This is ultimately why Wrenshall makes the whole statement on May 8th to begin with: to put it bluntly, Miss Reese is pissed off.

At this point, minutes from the meeting of January 11th are read to the group, recalling that Miss Reese was unhappy with the way matters stood so she insisted on going to Dr. Bright herself to ask permission to read her poem. After some back and forth over whether Wrenshall thought that was “suitable”, it was decided that the President would write a letter to Bright on the Board’s behalf, politely asking for the poem’s inclusion. She did so that night, she insists. After some more trivial commentary in the statement, it’s clear that Wrenshall means business:

In concluding Mrs. Wrenshall said she wished to emphasize the facts: First, that Miss Reese’s poem was not written when the poem was decided on, in Dr. Bright’s two visits of December 15th and 20th. Second, that after hearing from Miss Reese that she had a poem, (this in the last week of the year,) she was willing to forego her own judgment, and ask Dr. Bright for Miss Reese to be placed on the programme, according to the letter asking him to call before the programme was finally arranged.

Thirdly, that when he came on the evening of that day, the situation was so uncomfortable and strained that she could not consistently with the dignity of the Association ask for any further addition to the programme from the Association.”

That third ‘fact’ is what got me. From Wrenshall’s initial description of the encounter with Dr. Bright, I knew it was unpleasant, but that last sentence says it all. It sounds to me like Wrenshall felt helpless. I get the feeling that she did want to support her fellow Club member by including her poem, but the position she was put in with this awful man made it, she felt, impossible to push for it. It would be ‘inappropriate’. It also strikes me how she speaks of how doing so would sacrifice the ‘dignity of the Association’.

At the end of her statement, Wrenshall is met with a chorus of loving expressions of gratitude from her colleagues. They “agreed that [their] President had done all that she could have done under trying circumstances; and more than could have been asked or expected.” The strength of their affectionate response is interesting– in one way, it shows the Club’s dedication and appreciation for their President. But it also might show an underlying understanding–maybe these women reacted as strongly as they did to this particular story because they’d all been there, in one way or another. They’d all had their ideas and passions stifled by a man. Some of them, so much so, that their names have vanished from history in favor of “Mrs.” slapped onto their husband’s full names.