Part 14

In 1873 a critic not generally deemed too favorable to growths of the present day, recorded the opinion that there was “more force and originality,—in other words more genius,—in the living female poets of America than in all their predecessors, from Mistress Anne Bradstreet down. At any rate there is a wider range of thought in their verse, and infinitely more art.” For the change first noted by Mr. Stoddard there is no accounting; the tides of genius are incalculable. The other gains, like those in fiction, are to be accounted for partly by the law of evolution working through our whole literature, by the influence of sounder models and of a truer criticism, and by the winnowing processes of the magazines; partly also, by the altered position and improved education of women in general—not necessarily of the individual, since change in the atmosphere may have important results in cases where other conditions remain unchanged.

The poems of Mrs. Howe express true womanly aspiration, and a high scorn of unworthiness, but their strongest characteristic is the fervent patriotism which breathes through the famous “Battle-Hymn of the Republic.” The clear hopeful “orchard notes” of Lucy Larcom—it is impossible to refrain from quoting Mr. Stedman’s perfect phrase—first heard long since, have grown more mellow with advancing years.

The dramatic lyric took new force and naturalness in the hands of Rose Terry Cooke, and turned fiery in those of Mrs. Stoddard; whose contemplative poems also have an eminent sad dignity of style. The fine-spun subjective verse of Mrs. Piatt flashes at times with felicities as a web with dew-drops. Many names appear upon the honorable roll: Mrs. Fields, Mrs. Spofford,—whose rich nature reveals itself in verse as in the novel,—Mrs. Margaret J. Preston, Mrs. Mary Ashley Townsend; Elizabeth Akers Allen, Julia C. R. Dorr, Mrs. Stowe, Mrs. Whitney, Mrs. Dodge, Mrs. Moulton; Mrs. Thaxter, the sea’s true lover, who has devoted herself to the faithful expression of a single phase of natural beauty; Mrs. Mary E. Bradley, Kate Putnam Osgood, Nora Perry, Mary N. Prescott, and Harriet McEwen Kimball; Mary Clemmer Hudson, Margaret Sangster, Miss Bushnell, “Susan Coolidge,” “Howard Glyndon,” “Stuart Sterne,” Charlotte Fiske Bates, May Riley Smith, Ella Dietz, Mary Ainge De Vere, Edna Dean Proctor, the Goodale sisters, Miss Coolbrith, Miss Shinn, “Owen Innsley,” Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, and Alice Wellington Rollins. There is a kind of white fire in the best of the subtle verses of “H. H.”—a diamond light, enhanced by careful cutting. Generally impersonal, the author’s individuality yet lives in them to an unusual degree. We may recognize, also, in the Jewish poems of Emma Lazarus, especially in “By the Waters of Babylon” and the powerful fourteenth-century tragedy, “The Dance to Death,” “the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.” The poems of Edith M. Thomas, with their exquisite workmanship, mark the high attainment of woman in the mastery of poetic forms, and exhale some breath of that fragrance which clings to the work of the young Keats. Miss Hutchinson’s “Songs and Lyrics” have also rare quality. The graceful verse of Mrs. Deland has been quick to win the ear of the public. Louise Imogen Guiney, sometimes straining the voice, has nevertheless contributed to the general chorus notes of unusual fullness and strength. In other branches of literature, to which comparatively few women have chosen to devote themselves, an increasing thoroughness is apparent, a growing tendency to specialism. The irresponsible feminine free-lance, with her gay dash at all subjects, and her alliterative pen-name dancing in every melée like a brilliant pennon, has gone over into the more appropriate field of journalism. The calmly adequate literary matron-of-all-work is an admirable type of the past, no longer developed by the new conditions. The articles of Lucy M. Mitchell on sculpture and of Mrs. Schuyler van Renssalaer on art and architecture; the historical work of Martha J. Lamb and of Mary L. Booth, the latter also an indefatigable translator; the studies of Helen Campbell in social science; the translations of Harriet Waters Preston—these few examples, given at random, are typical of the determination and concentration of woman’s work at the present day. We notice in each new issue of a magazine the well-known specialists. Miss Thomas has given herself to the interpretation of nature in prose as in verse; “Olive Thorne” Miller to the loving study of bird-life. Mrs. Jackson, the most versatile of later writers, possessed the rare combination of versatility and thoroughness in such measure that we might almost copy Hartley Coleridge’s saying of Harriet Martineau, and call her a specialist in everything; but her name will ever be associated with the earnest presentation of the wrongs of the Indian, as that of Emma Lazarus with the impassioned defense of the rights of the Jew.

The just and genial Colonel Higginson expresses disappointment that woman’s advance in literature has not been more marked since the establishment of the women’s colleges. “It is,” he says, “considerable and substantial; yet in view of the completeness with which literary work is now thrown open to women, and their equality as to pay, there is room for some surprise that it is not greater.”

The proper fruit of the women’s colleges in literature has, in fact, not yet ripened. It may at first seem strangely delayed, yet reflection will suggest the reasons. An unavoidable self-consciousness hampers the first workers under a new dispensation. It might appear at a casual glance that those released from the burden of a retarding tradition were ready at once for the race; but in truth the weight has only been exchanged for the lighter burden of the unfamiliar. College-bred women of the highest type have accepted, with grave conscientiousness, new social responsibilities as the concomitant of their new opportunities.

“Pealing, the clock of Time Has struck the Woman’s hour; We hear it on our knees,”

wrote Miss Phelps for the graduates of Smith College ten years ago. That the summons has indeed been reverently heard and faithfully obeyed, those who have followed the work of the Association of Collegiate Alumnæ can testify. The deed, and not the word, engages the energy of the college woman of to-day; but as these institutions grow into the life of our land, that life will be everywhere enriched; and the word must follow in happy time. Individual genius for literature is sure sooner or later to appear within the constantly widening circle of those fairly equipped for its exercise. It would be idle to expect that the cases in which native power and an adequate preparation go hand in hand, will be frequent; since they are infrequent among men. The desirable thing was, that this rare development should be made a possibility among women. It is possible to-day; some golden morrow will make it a reality.

VI. WOMAN IN JOURNALISM.

BY SUSAN E. DICKINSON.

The pioneer woman in American journalism was Mrs. Margaret Craper, of the _Massachusetts Gazette and News Letter_, in the years of the Revolutionary War. After her to the year 1837 must be referred the first entrance of any American woman into the field of active journalism. At that time Mrs. Ann S. Stephens accepted the duties of editorial writer and literary critic in the columns of the _New York Evening Express_. Her connection with that paper continued for thirty years, but after 1857 it was limited to the editorial pages by the press of exacting duties elsewhere. In the last named year Mrs. Elizabeth F. Ellet succeeded her as literary editor of the _Express_, sustaining well the reputation which Mrs. Stephens had gained for it of a just and high standard of criticism. But in the intervening twenty years other women had followed Mrs. Stephens’s lead, and made their mark in journalism with a freshness, a vigor, and a brilliance unsurpassed by any of the numerous later comers. During the thirties Mrs. Sarah Josepha Hale and the once famous Grimké sisters, Sarah and Angelina, availed themselves of the opportunities offered for special writing by New York and Philadelphia papers. In 1841 Mrs. Lydia Maria Child, one of the most widely known authors of the day, made her appearance in the arena of New York journalism as editor of the _Anti-Slavery Standard_, a weekly newspaper published by the American Anti-Slavery Society. Mrs. Child had already demonstrated her editorial ability in the establishment and conduct, for eight years, of the _Juvenile Miscellany_, the pioneer children’s magazine of America. For two years Mrs. Child conducted the _Standard_ alone; then, for six years more, in conjunction with her husband. But her best work during these years was done in 1842–’3–’4 as special New York correspondent for the _Boston Courier_, then edited by Joseph T. Buckingham. These weekly letters of hers, original, sparkling, thoughtful, vigorous, depicting the social, literary, musical, and dramatic life of the metropolis, were afterwards republished in two volumes, which hold a wonderful fascination still, when read after the lapse of more than a generation.

It was while Mrs. Child’s letters were forming one of the greatest attractions of the _Boston Courier_, in 1843, that Miss Cornelia Wells Walter took charge of the editorial columns of the _Boston Transcript_, doing her work as ably and faithfully as any of her masculine fellow journalists. And in the next year, 1844, Margaret Fuller, who in 1840 had founded, and for two years edited, that famous quarterly, the _Dial_, came from Boston to New York at the request of Horace Greeley to fill the position of literary editor of the _Tribune_. Here she set the standard of criticism at high-water mark, and made its literary notices famed for a discrimination, sincerity, justness, and fearlessness of judgment and utterance which contributed largely to the influence of the paper. In the summer of 1846, when she sailed for Europe, its review columns had in her hands attained a reputation which in after years the scholarly editing of Dr. Ripley did but sustain.

In the same year that saw the beginning of Mrs. Child’s brilliant letters from New York, the readers of the _Louisville Journal_ greeted the advent of another woman, Mrs. Jane G. Swisshelm, in letters and editorial contributions bearing the strong stamp of an earnest, aggressive, deeply thoughtful but vivacious mind, intense in its sympathies, ready to do battle against every form of wrong-doing, and gifted with a bright humor which winged the shafts she sent abroad with unfailing vigor. It was but a little while until she became also special correspondent for the _Spirit of Liberty_, issued at Pittsburgh. She speedily proved herself a worthy compeer of her Eastern sisters in the journalistic field. In 1848 she removed to Pittsburgh and established there the _Saturday Visitor_, a paper which grew rapidly into wide circulation and influence.

But before she had reached this point in her career, while in fact the fame of this Western worker was just beginning to be heard of in the seaboard cities, the reading public of those cities was startled into a fever of enthusiasm by the letters of a Western girl in Eastern papers, the _Home Journal_, the _Saturday Gazette_, the _Saturday Evening Post_, the _National Press_. It was in 1845 and ’46 that “Grace Greenwood” first took her place, while still a girl in her teens, as one of the most brilliant, clear-headed, and versatile of newspaper correspondents, in which special province, so far as journalistic work is concerned, she has elected to remain, with the exception of the few years, beginning with 1853, during which she published and edited the _Little Pilgrim_. Mrs. Swisshelm’s ambitions, on the contrary, led her always to prefer the active duties of editor and publisher. The _Saturday Visitor_ under her management was a power in the fields of political and social reform, of home duties and graces. She enlisted the services of other women for its departments. Chief among these helpers was Mrs. Frances D. Gage of Ohio, who became afterwards widely known as a charming writer for children, an earnest woman’s rights speaker, and contributor to the _New York Independent_. In 1856, after her connection with the _Visitor_ ceased, Mrs. Gage led the van of women journalists in her own State by becoming associate editor of an agricultural paper in Columbus, conducting its Home department with marked success. Mrs. Swisshelm, attracted in 1856 by what seemed a wider sphere for work in the new Northwest, sold her Pittsburgh paper and soon afterwards started, in Minnesota, the _St. Cloud Visitor_. In this she of course continued her advocacy of Free Soil and anti-slavery doctrines, and within a year her office was raided and her press destroyed by a mob. Fearlessly she gathered her resources together, and began the publication of the _St. Cloud Democrat_, in which she afresh demonstrated her ability, and in the campaign of 1860 supported Mr. Lincoln for the Presidency. After the close of the war she returned to the duties of active journalism; having, during the years of conflict, laid them aside to perform efficient service as a nurse “at the front.” Her vigorous pen until nearly the close of her life failed not to serve every cause in whose truth and justice she believed.

Near the same time at which Mrs. Swisshelm founded the _Pittsburgh Visitor_, Mrs. C. I. H. Nichols became the editor of the _Windham County Democrat_, a Whig paper published at Brattleboro, Vermont. This she conducted for many years with admirable success, her editorials being often widely copied. In 1851 “Gail Hamilton” made a brilliant dash into journalism as special contributor to the _National Era_, Dr. Bailey’s paper at Washington, for which Mrs. Stowe wrote “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and Grace Greenwood did some of her best work. In 1854 the woman’s rights agitation, which had taken form several years before at the Seneca Falls Convention, and received a new impulse at the Worcester Convention of 1851, was reinforced by the appearance at Boston of a new paper, the _Una_, published and edited by Mrs. Paulina Wright Davis and Mrs. Caroline H. Dall. This failed of long life for want of pecuniary support, but it was energetically conducted while it lived, and is well worthy of remembrance as the pioneer woman suffrage paper of America. In 1855 Miss Antoinette Brown, afterwards Mrs. Blackwell, became for a time one of the special contributors to the _New York Tribune_. She devoted her writing to social and reformatory subjects, giving chief place therein to the bearing upon women of the vices and defects of our social system.

In any notice of American women in journalism it is needful to give thus, in somewhat broad detail, an account of the workers during those first twenty years, because of the wide influence which they wielded in behalf of noble living and high thinking, and the practical stimulus which they gave to work in the various lines of social reform.

After those twenty years were over, as the country became more widely and thickly settled, as newspapers multiplied and enlarged their departments, and called for an increasing staff of writers of varying abilities, women journalists also became more numerous, and began to take up special lines of correspondence and reportorial work. In 1856 Miss Cunningham, who soon after became Mrs. D. G. Croly, still better known as “Jennie June,” entered upon her journalistic career as a fashion writer, first on the _Sunday Despatch_, then on various other New York papers. In 1857 she invented the manifold or syndicate system of correspondence, supplying fashion items, gossip, and news of social topics and occurrences, simultaneously to newspapers all over the country. In this department of work her followers have multiplied until it would be hopeless to name or to count them. In 1860 she suggested the founding of _Demorest’s Illustrated Magazine of Fashions_, and edited it for twenty-seven years, during which time she not only maintained her syndicate work, but proved herself a good “all round” writer for the press, having held at different times a position on the staff of nearly all of the leading New York dailies. In the autumn of 1889 Mrs. Croly issued the first number of a weekly paper, _The Woman’s Cycle_, the aim and purpose of which are amply indicated by its title.

During the period of the Civil War and the few years immediately succeeding, the larger city papers began to avail themselves of the work of women as special writers, as correspondents, and reporters. The _New York Tribune_ numbered upon its editorial staff Mrs. Rebecca Harding Davis and Mrs. Lucia Gilbert Calhoun; Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton supplied it weekly with the literary, dramatic, and art news of Boston, and Miss Ellen Mackay Hutchinson began her work upon it as assistant to Dr. Ripley in its book review department. Miss Middie Morgan on the _Times_ has shown among journalists as thoroughly as Mlle. Rosa Bonheur has done among painters, that a woman may fill admirably any unusual place to which she is adapted by inclination and circumstance. Quite recently Miss A. L. Wilson has won a kindred success as manager and assistant editor of the San Francisco _Breeder and Sportsman_.

Of correspondents in this period, Mary Clemmer (then Mrs. Ames) was the first to become widely known. Her Washington letters to the _New York Independent_, and other papers, continued for a series of years to stand in the front rank of journalistic correspondence. Succeeding her come a long line whose names and work have become famed. Mrs. Burnham, afterward Mrs. Fiske, in the _Republican_ of St. Louis, later in various Chicago, Washington, and New York papers; Miss Anna M. H. Brewster, Mrs. Lucy H. Hooper, Mrs. John Sherwood, Miss Kate Field, are among those whose unmistakable gifts and conscientious work have won high place for themselves and opened the way for others.

The religious press, weekly and monthly, was not far behind its secular contemporaries in securing the aid of women as conductors of special departments. For the last thirty years there have been few or none of these that have not steadily numbered one or more women among their regular contributors.

No woman in New York had taken the editorial control of a paper after 1849, when Mrs. Child relinquished her place upon the _Standard_, until 1867 Miss Mary L. Booth took the charge, from its initial number, of _Harper’s Bazar_. Her reputation, earned as historian of New York and as a translator, had become a national one when in 1861, in a week’s time, she rendered accurately into brilliant English Gasparin’s famous “Uprising of a Great People.” It aided in drawing immediate popular attention to the new journal. How faithfully and admirably her editorial work was done for the remaining twenty-two years of her life has but recently been borne witness to over her grave.

In 1868, one year after the _Bazar_ was started, the lively agitation in favor of woman suffrage gave birth to the _Revolution_, of which Miss Susan B. Anthony was the publisher and Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton editor-in-chief. Two years later the _Woman’s Journal_ was started in Boston, with Mrs. Lucy Stone, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, and Mrs. Mary Livermore upon its editorial staff. If these two papers, and the by no means insignificant number which have arisen to follow their footsteps, have not as yet seen the accomplishment of their especial aim, they have served as potent factors in woman’s educational, industrial and social advancement, in helping to secure the repeal of unjust laws, and, if last named, by no means least, in awakening women to a sense of their solidarity as a sex—to the truth that “where one of the members suffers all the members suffer with it.”

In the mean time there were, both in the West and South, women who had demonstrated their ability and fitness for the profession of journalism. In New Orleans Mrs. E. J. Nicholson, first as coadjutor and then as successor to her husband, has for thirty years or more held editorial control of the _Picayune_, of which she is the chief owner. On her paper and on the _Times-Democrat_, also owned by a woman, women have for many years held responsible positions. In Assumption, the _Pioneer_ has, for a term second only to that of Mrs. Nicholson’s career, been owned and edited by Mrs. Susan Dupaty. Mrs. S. V. Kentzel has for fourteen years made her paper, the _St. Tammany Farmer_, of eminent practical value and importance to the agricultural and material interests of a large part of the State. Of later years there have been quite a number of additions to the list of women journalists of Louisiana, foremost among these being Miss Addie McGrath of the _Baton Rouge Truth_, who is one of the chief officers of the Press Association, and Mrs. M. L. Garner, owner and editor of the _Carroll Banner_ at Lake Providence; Mme. Marie Roussel is the editor of _Le Propagateur Catholique_ of New Orleans. A Woman’s National Press Association was formed at New Orleans in May, 1885. Two years later the addition of foreign members caused a change of name to the Woman’s International Press Association. Mrs. Nicholson is its President. Near the same time that Miss Booth assumed charge of _Harper’s Bazar_, Mrs. Mary E. Bryan entered upon the literary management of the _Sunny South_ at Atlanta, Georgia. She had served her apprenticeship to journalism as assistant editor upon an Atlanta paper, and had afterwards edited a political journal in Natchitoches. After ten years management of the _Sunny South_ she joined the corps of women editors in New York, taking charge of the _Fashion Bazar_ a dozen years ago. After Mrs. Bryan’s departure from Atlanta there seems to have been no other woman in that part of the South inspired with an ambition for newspaper work until Miss Andrews recently took a place upon the _Atlanta Constitution_. Texas has a number of women journalists, most of whom are new-comers in their profession; but one of them, Mrs. S. L. McPherson, in 1877, established and still edits and publishes at Sherman the _Daily Democrat_. For the two or three previous years her home had been in Caddo, Indian Territory, where she had aided her husband in publishing the _Oklahoma Star_. These ladies are all welcome members of the Texas Press Association. There are a number of recent indications that journalism is likely to become a favorite profession among Southern women.

In the West, while Mrs. Swisshelm was still making herself felt as a power in Minnesota, Mrs. Susan C. Vogl, of late years the successful business manager of the _Boston Woman’s Journal_, began journalistic work upon the _Western Spy_ of Sumner, Kansas. Afterwards she wrote for St. Louis and New England papers for some years before her removal to Boston. In 1868 Mrs. Myra Bradwell founded the _Chicago Legal News_, of which she has been ever since the editor and business manager. In 1871 the Illinois Legislature passed special acts making the columns of the _News_ evidence in the courts; and after the burning of all records in the Chicago fire, Mrs. Bradwell’s paper was selected by the circuit and supreme court judges as the publication to have exclusive right to publish notices in regard to their cases. Mrs. Agnes Leonard Hill’s journalistic work began as early as 1869 in Kentucky, was carried on in Chicago papers, and for the last eight years she has been engaged in editorial labors in Colorado.