Pandering to the Masses, Then and Now

Journalism, it is said, is in decline. And one proof being offered is a trend towards deciding which stories to cover based not on what editors think is important, but rather on what readers want to read--which is to be determined by what they're searching for online.

The subject came up in a recent, and rather testy, interview with Arianna Huffington that appeared in the Sunday Times Magazine. The interviewer asked Huffington about an internal AOL memo, leaked shortly before AOL acquired the Huffington Post, saying that AOL wanted "95 percent of stories to be written based on what people are searching for." (Huffington protested that she shouldn't have to defend a memo that predated AOL's acquisition of her website, and said that the document was "very, very, very far away in terms of where the company is now.")

Obviously, journalism based on what people are searching for can leave much to be desired. We could end up with, say, a bunch of stories about Lindsay Lohan's latest escapades instead of a searching analysis of what's going on at Guantanamo. Or a lot of media coverage about the supposed falsity of President Obama's birth certificate instead of a serious examination of what to do about the economy. Oh, wait a minute: that IS what we've ended up with.

But say what you will about the state of American journalism (and there is indeed much to bemoan), this trend isn't exactly new. I've been spending a lot of time lately paging through a magazine that was published in 1807 (I'm researching a novel based on the life of the woman who edited it), and--what do you know?--the same issue, more or less, existed some 200 years ago.

For example: the magazine, which was called The Observer, began serializing a translation of a French novel called Adelaide; Or, a Lesson for Lovers. I'm not sure what the "lesson" was supposed to be, but by the standards of 1807 the novel was pretty racy. It's about a couple of horny teenagers who can't wait for the sanction of matrimony (or perhaps there was parental opposition to the match--I haven't read every word). They do what comes naturally, she gets pregnant ... you get the idea. Not too spicy by modern standards, perhaps, but it apparently caused a good deal of outraged comment in Baltimore in 1807.

Somewhat belatedly, the magazine's editor--Eliza Anderson--decided to stop the serialization. Once she had seen the novel in its entirety, she said, she realized it was "too glowing, too impure, to be presented by a female, to the chaste eye of female modesty." But lo and behold, the public--or at least the segment of it that wasn't outraged by the novel's publication--was outraged by its discontinuation. "Whilst some extracts we have made, from the most valuable works, are passed by," Anderson complained, "this love-tale excites the liveliest interest, and when its publication has been suspended for a week, the office door has not stood still a moment, for the constant, the continual enquiries that were made, to know when it would be continued."

It's hard to tell if Anderson herself was genuinely outraged by the "glowing" and "impure" nature of Adelaide. For one thing, later in 1807 she herself translated another French novel that may have been even racier--according to a modern scholar, it contained perhaps "the first depiction of female orgasm in polite fiction."

For another, she was pretty sensitive to what kinds of articles sold magazines. In fact, she started The Observer because its predecessor publication, for which she also wrote, was too dull. Anderson thought satire was the way to go--partly because she thought that was the best way to reform and mold people, and partly because she thought it made for a livelier publication.

She was right about the liveliness, but she ended up alienating quite a few people through her satire. On the other hand, as she recognized, the journalistic feuds that were fought out in the pages of The Observer and other publications actually had a salutary effect on sales. She noted at one point that subscriptions reached a sustainable level only after "some strokes of satire and criticism had given zest and interest to our pages."

But Anderson didn't just publish what she thought the public wanted to hear--not by a long shot. She never lost sight of her original goal, which was to educate and elevate the reading public of Baltimore, whether they wanted to be educated and elevated or not. So, alongside Adelaide and other fluffier offerings there were dense biographical tracts on Marmontel and Lord Mansfield and analyses of the contemporary political scene in Europe--the very "valuable works," no doubt, that avid readers of Adelaide were passing by. Not to mention a lot of digs at the follies and foibles of the Baltimore citizenry.

Perhaps the moral here, if there is one, is that successful journalism has always been some kind of balancing act between what readers want and what editors, and writers, think they should want. The Internet has obviously made it easier to identify readers' less-than-elevated interests and pander to them, but the basic issue remains the same. The trick, it seems, is to somehow present serious, thoughtful journalism in a guise that will appeal to the masses.

Maybe in another 200 years someone will figure out how to do that.

Rip Van Winkle at the Library of Congress

There's nothing like a trip to the Library of Congress to lift my spirits--and to induce me to ponder the upsides and downsides of modern technology.

For those who have never experienced its delights, let me explain that the Library of Congress--and in particular the august Main Reading Room--is a shrine to that now almost obsolete format (or should I say "platform"?), The Book. The high-domed reading room is adorned with such a profusion of ornate marble and imposing allegorical figures representing all things book-related that it can sometimes be hard to concentrate on the actual, usually rather modest-looking, book in front of you.

But the Library's collection is far from modest. It's basically everything that's ever been published in this country, and a lot that's been published outside it--plus unpublished letters, diaries, maps, drawings. You name it. All brought to you on a silver platter (metaphorically speaking) a mere 30 to 90 minutes after you fill out a call slip with one of those tiny eraserless pencils otherwise reserved for keeping score in miniature golf. And all this for free--or rather, paid for by tax dollars. For my money, it's tax revenue well spent.

But as to technology: yesterday I had an experience in the Reading Room that illustrated the ways in which old-fashioned book-related research methods can lead to serendipitous discoveries. I had requested a scholarly article on the Baltimore Almshouse, which I thought might be relevant to the novel I'm now researching (one of my characters is based on an early 19th-century Baltimore doctor who tended to the poor). As it turned out, the article dealt with the wrong time period. But in the same bound volume of the scholarly magazine I found another article--on the Baltimore yellow fever epidemic of 1800--that I eagerly realized was right up my alley. I learned that the predicament of the poor during the epidemic led to the founding of the Baltimore Dispensary, where my doctor was a key player.

What does technology have to do with this? Well, if I'd looked at the Almshouse article online--in isolation rather than in a bound volume with other articles--I never would have come across the yellow fever article.

On the other hand ... after reading the yellow fever article I made my way down the hall to the Microform Reading Room, which is something of a letdown after the Main Reading Room. The last time I was there, perhaps a year ago, it looked like a forgotten broom closet that for some reason had been stocked with recalcitrant, creaky microfilm readers. It still looks like a broom closet, but the old microfilm readers have now been banished to a back room (and the back room of a broom closet is a pretty ignominious place to be banished). In their place stood sleek little black models perched next to equally sleek computer screens.

A friendly librarian, noting my confusion, explained that the new microfilm readers were actually hooked up to the computers: you viewed the images on the monitors, where you could enlarge or darken them or rotate them with the click of a mouse. Not only that, she told me, you didn't have to copy things the old way: by pressing a button that caused the image to be temporarily sucked into the bowels of the microfilm reader, only to emerge as an often illegible hard copy at twenty-five cents a pop. Now you could simply copy the images to a flash drive, take them back home, and insert them into your own computer.

Of course, being a female version of Rip Van Winkle, I hadn't thought to bring a flash drive. But the gift shop stocks them, apparently for hapless souls like myself. I was happy to fork over the somewhat exorbitant price of fifteen bucks--not that bad, really, when you consider the flash drive is a lovely shade of blue and doubles as a souvenir, since it's emblazoned with the words "Library of Congress." After the librarian gave me a crash tutorial in using the newfangled equipment, I spent a few joyful hours stalking, and saving, my microfilmed quarry: The Observer, an obscure weekly magazine published in Baltimore during the year 1807 and edited by Eliza Anderson--the first woman to edit a magazine in the United States and one of the main characters in my novel.

How happy did this make me? I can't even begin to tell you. When I started researching Eliza, I had to transport myself to the Maryland Historical Society library in Baltimore to read the magazine in bound volume form. Oh, they had it on microfilm, but the copier function had ceased working at some undetermined time in the past, and there was no money to fix it. I couldn't even xerox the hard copy pages of the magazine because they were too fragile. Nor could I even use a pen to take notes, because only pencils were allowed in the library. So I spent many hours taking notes on the articles with an increasingly dull pencil (the library did provide an electronic sharpener, which would periodically pierce the silence), and sometimes copying them word for word. Let's just say it was a bit tedious.

Imagine my joy when I discovered that the microfilm was also available just a Metro ride away from my house in Washington DC at the Library of Congress--where they had an actual working microfilm copier, albeit a cranky one. What I really dreamed of, though, was a way of having access to every page of every issue of the magazine at home, so that I could draw on them at leisure in writing the novel. It was hard to predict which pages I would need and therefore which I should copy, but it would have cost a fortune--and taken untold hours--to copy them all. And the idea of buying the reel of microfilm and a cranky microfilm reader of my own crossed my mind, but I quickly dismissed it as unrealistic. Clearly, there was no way my dream would ever come true.

Until now, that is--just a year later. It will take a while, but I can copy every single page of The Observer onto my flash drive and install them on my computer. I'm amazed. But my amazement is nothing compared to what Eliza Anderson would experience if she were to be revived and told that all 52 issues of her magazine--the publication she sweated and slaved over for many hours each week, the source of so much joy and angst, the means by which she made her minor mark on history--could be easily contained within a bright blue object that's only two inches long.

Celebutantes of the 19th Century

I recently went to a fascinating lecture about the Caton sisters.

Who, I hear you ask? Is that like the Kardashian sisters? Well, yes, kind of.

The Caton sisters were beautiful and wealthy, and basically famous for being famous. They were, if you will, the celebutantes of their time. But--given that their time was the early 19th century--they were way more discreet. And their parents--unlike the parents of Kim, Kourtney, and Khloe--weren't into alliteration. The Caton girls were named, rather boringly, Mary Ann, Elizabeth (or Betsey), and Louisa. (There was also a fourth one--Emily--but she never made it as a celebutante.)

Before I went to the lecture, almost everything I knew about the Caton sisters was filtered through the letters of the two women I've been researching for the past few years, Betsy Patterson Bonaparte and Eliza Anderson Godefroy. All five women grew up in the same elite social circle in late 18th- and early 19th-century Baltimore.

I knew enough to discount much of what Betsy Bonaparte said. Not only did she have a phenomenally venomous tongue, but she clearly saw the Caton girls as her rivals for the title of Belle of Baltimore. Beautiful and wealthy herself, Betsy was the first Baltimore girl to snare a royal title--well, sort of. She married Napoleon's youngest brother in 1803, but her hopes of someday rising to the throne herself (or at least some kind of throne--I imagine a principality would have sufficed) were dashed by Napoleon's vehement opposition to the marriage, which he had annulled. Imagine Betsy's anguish when all three of the Caton sisters ended up with titles after marrying into the British aristocracy (including one, Mary Ann, whose first husband had been Betsy's own brother).

But Betsy's animosity toward the Catons started even before their famous 1816 trip to England, during which the sisters were feted as "the three Graces." Shortly before their departure, Betsy was scolded by her friend Eliza Anderson Godefroy for badmouthing Betsey Caton at a New York boarding-house. After swearing Betsy B. to the strictest confidence (for Betsey C. had "charged me not to tell it to you"), Eliza reported the gossip retailed by two gentlemen in New York who were Betsy C.'s "devoted lovers." According to them, Eliza told Betsy B., "at a public dinner at the Boarding House you abused her in the blackest & most infamous manner, & that they made it a point to tell her to put her on her Guard against you_ I told her I did not believe a word of it & that they must be dirty Fellows indeed who would take such a business upon their hands."

Eliza pleaded with Betsy B. "not to open her lips" about Betsey C. in the future (so, despite her protestations, she obviously DID believe the report). Perhaps Betsy B. grew more discreet, but her hatred of the sisters continued to burn with a hard, gem-like flame. In her later years, Betsy B. apparently spent many hours going through her voluminous correspondence and annotating it, just for fun. In 1867--fifty years after Eliza wrote her that letter about the New York boarding house--she wrote on the bottom, "From Mrs. Anderson Godefroy about my old Enemies the Catons who hated & injured me in Europe in 1816 & were, out of the Patterson father & sons Robert John Joseph & Edward, the most pernicious foes of my life." (The Patterson men referred to were Betsy's own father and brothers, so you get some sense here of what her relationship with her own family was like. But that's another story.)

I trusted Eliza's observations a bit more, but she was ambiguous on the subject of the Catons, especially Betsey. In that 1816 letter to Betsy B., Eliza seems to be endorsing her friend's own dim view of the Caton girl: "No matter what she may be," she tells Betsy B., "you cannot but injure yourself by speaking of her. .. she will always make herself appear the unresisting victim to your unmerited dislike."

But maybe Eliza was only saying what she knew Betsy B. would want to hear. Many years later--when Betsey Caton finally snared a titled husband at the age of 45--Eliza reminisced about her with considerably more warmth. “Betsey Caton had more heart and more head than all the rest of the family put together," she told a correspondent on hearing of the marriage. Not exactly a ringing endorsement of the rest of the clan, but still pretty favorable to Betsey.

Right after she says that, though, Eliza goes on to say: "... but nothing so wastes the heart, so deteriorates all elevation of mind, as the system of coquetry she and her sisters were taught to practice almost from their cradles. It has however succeeded perfectly well with them, for the end of life is to obtain the object of our Soul’s ambition, and rank and title was theirs.”

The lecture I went to--which was given by Mary Jeske at the Maryland Historical Society--provided a more complete portrait of these three women. They certainly don't seem to have been the demons Betsy Bonaparte thought they were. On the other hand, Eliza's judgment that rank and title were their "Soul's ambition" may well have been correct (they certainly were Betsy B's!). Such an objective may seem strange to us, in this day and age, but in the early 19th century an excellent marriage was the highest ambition that most women could aspire to. And on those terms, the Caton sisters succeeded spectacularly.

Before the lecture, I found the Caton sisters' story reminiscent of all those tales about impoverished British landed gentry marrying American heiresses for their money--the most recent version being the addictive PBS series "Downtown Abbey." But as I discovered, the Caton girls actually didn't have any money--not of their own. Their grandfather, Charles Carroll of Carrollton (one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence) was indeed fabulously wealthy. But the sisters weren't able to get a piece of that until Carroll died. And he lived to be 95, which was almost unheard of in those days.

After the first Caton sister married in 1817--not to an aristocrat, yet--it was rumored that her husband was shocked to discover, after the marriage, that she had no fortune. One of Betsy B.'s London correspondents wrote to tell her that no one was going to make THAT mistake again. No one, he said, would be taking Betsey Caton to the altar "unless the money is first paid down, or put into a Train that it will be forthcoming."

It's enough to make you feel sorry for Betsey Caton, whatever her ambition was in life. And it's quite a tribute to the Caton sisters that they all managed to marry aristocrats--at least one of them, indeed, impoverished--even AFTER everyone knew they had no money. Can the Kardashians top that accomplishment?

On Sympathy and Literature

Do the protagonists of novels always have to be sympathetic?

Certainly there are examples in literature of protagonists who are hard to like, sometimes even repellent. Just look at Lolita: Humbert Humbert isn't anyone's idea of warm and fuzzy. And while Olive Kitteredge--the central figure in the eponymous Pulitzer-Prize-winning collection of stories--is no child molester, she's pretty off-putting.

The artistry of those books is that their authors--Vladimir Nabokov and Elizabeth Strout, respectively--make us care about the protagonists despite their unsympathetic character traits. Humbert Humbert draws us in with his scathing wit; Olive Kitteridge eventually becomes irresistibly poignant in her clueless self-sabotage.

But let's face it: it's a lot easier to engage readers if they like your main character from the get-go. (This is something my agent has been drumming into me vis-a-vis the manuscript of mine that is currently in her hands.) And it's not at all clear to me that I have the talents of a Nabokov or a Strout. So, while I'm not saying my protagonists have to come on like Shirley Temple, I think it behooves me to make sure my readers will basically be in their camp.

That's not to say that a main character can't be flawed. In fact, there may be nothing more unsympathetic than a character who is perfect in every way. Plus, your character needs room to develop and learn a few things--that's what allows for a plot. So, generally speaking, you need to strike a balance with your main character: not too perfect, not too imperfect ... just right.

The main problem I've identified with the historical figure I have in mind for my next novel, Eliza Anderson, is that she was, by our 21st-century lights, a raging cultural elitist who had little use for democracy. As I mentioned in my last blog post, her position may appear somewhat more understandable when you know what early 19th-century American society was like. Still, it's a problem.

So that's her flaw, or at least the main one (she had others too). It seems to me that I need to do at least three things to deal with it. First, I need to make other aspects of Eliza's personality sufficiently sympathetic that readers will be willing to more or less overlook her elitism, at least for a while. Second, I need to establish the circumstances that led her to feel the way she did. And third, I need to make that aspect of her personality change over the course of the novel. She won't become a raging democrat--that would be unrealistic--but she needs to at least begin to challenge her own assumptions.

Unfortunately, there's no evidence of that happening in reality (in fact, there's some evidence to the contrary). But that's okay: this is fiction. True, I try to write historical fiction with a healthy respect for the historical record, but to me this is one area where it's okay to turn my imagination loose a bit. I wouldn't be contravening any known historical facts--something that William Styron once suggested to me as a guide in writing historical fiction, because you don't want the reader pausing and saying, essentially, "Huh?" Beyond that, I think having Eliza change, or begin to change, in this way would allow me not only to create a more sympathetic protagonist but also to say something about what was going on in the United States in the days of the early Republic--that is, that the country was gradually moving to an acceptance of democracy as we know it.

So what will spark this change in Eliza? Since this is a novel, and novels hinge on relationships between individuals, it will have to be another individual. My ideas are still pretty inchoate, but I'm leaning towards giving her a female servant with artistic ambitions that mirror Eliza's own literary ambitions. That would feed into a story-line that is rooted in the historical record: Eliza became embroiled in controversy for her dismissive remarks about mere "workmen" who attempt to present themselves as artists.

The idea of having large historical ideas--like the the tension between elitism and democracy--play out between individuals reminds me of a terrific play I saw last night. It's called Return to Haifa, and it's based on a novella written by a Palestinian author who was assassinated--possibly by the Israelis--in 1972. The play was adapted by an Israeli playwright and performed here in DC by an Israeli theater troupe, in Hebrew. The story is essentially this: A Palestinian couple is forced to leave their house in Haifa when the state of Israel is created in 1948 and, in the chaos, end up leaving their baby behind. A Jewish couple--Holocaust survivors who have lost their own child in the war--move into the house and adopt the baby. Twenty years later the Palestinian parents, having been prevented all this time from returning, show up to claim their child.

All the tensions between Palestinians and Israelis play out between the five main characters of the play. There's plenty of anger, guilt, and recrimination. And yet, the play ends on a hopeful note. Why? Because the characters finally manage to relate to each other as individuals, each one expanding his or her imagination to encompass the experience of the other.

That's what President Obama urged after the recent shootings in Tucson--that we "expand our moral imaginations," that we "sharpen our instincts for empathy." And that's what literature--fiction or drama or poetry--does, at its best: it enables us to be "the other," to see the world through someone else's eyes. Arguably, that's especially valuable when the character whose eyes we find ourselves looking through is someone we couldn't have imagined finding sympathetic. Like Humbert Humbert, or (in my case) a member of the Tea Party. Or, in the case of some Israelis, a Palestinian. And vice-versa.

I'm not saying that if Benjamin Netanyahu sat down and watched this play with Mahmoud Abbas, we'd suddenly have a solution to the problems of the Middle East. But I do think it might be a start.

A Not So Fond Farewell

I realize there's been something of a gap between my last post and this, and that I may have left my readers (if any there be) hanging. Plus, anyone who has gone looking for my article about Eliza Anderson in the summer issue of Maryland Historical Magazine will have been disappointed: despite the fact that it is no longer summer, the summer issue is still not out. (Of course, given that the temperature in DC today hit 96 degrees, I believe we can consider summer to have been given a de facto extension -- that's good news for Maryland Historical Magazine, bad news for the rest of us.)

Anyway, with all this unfinished business in the air, I feel it incumbent on me to wrap up, at last, the story of Eliza Anderson and the Observer. Those who have been following this tale know that as the year 1807 wore on, Anderson began to feel more and more embattled. How embattled she really was -- and how much of the embattlement was due to her unusual status as a woman editor -- is difficult to determine at this point. But it is clear that Anderson attracted quite a bit of negative attention, and that the animus against her was at least intensified by the fact that she was a woman.

By December of 1807 -- after the public dispute with Mr. Webster in the pages of the Federal Gazette, the outrage that greeted the publication of Anderson's translation of Claire d'Albe, and the vendetta allegedly carried on against her by her former star columnist Benjamin Bickerstaff -- it appears that Anderson was reaching the end of her rope. In the December 19 issue of the Observer there appeared a lengthy installment of "Beatrice Ironside's Budget," beginning with a couple of quotations from La Fontaine (in the original French) indicating, basically, that no matter what you do, some people will be displeased. This was followed by a long anecdote about a miller, his son, and their ass, tending to the same moral: "who shall flatter themselves with the hope of having their conduct invariably approved by the multitude," Beatrice/Eliza concluded, "when the multitude is composed of such heterogeneous particles[?]"

She then embarks on a sort of eulogy for the Observer. It was, she says, founded as a "literary and political,and consequently as a critical, paper." Who would expect such a publication, therefore, to publish nothing but unqualified praise? Indeed, it was not until "some strokes of satire and criticism had given zest and interest to its pages" that the Observer attracted enough subscribers to support it.

So far Anderson's tone is fairly measured, and her claim is essentially that people have criticized the Observer because it criticized them. But now, turning to her nemesis Mr. Bickerstaff, she begins to spiral into the flights of savage rhetoric he unfailingly inspired in her. After quitting the Observer early in its existence, Anderson says, Bickerstaff was seized with the whim "to set his veto upon the Observer, and in quality of Grand Inquisitor of Baltimore to mark his prohibition of every idea which should not have originated in his own most sapient brain."

Anderson also now points to her gender, not the Observer's biting satire, as the real problem: "From this moment War was declared against the Observer, and every means, however underhand or contemptible, were resorted to in the hope of destroying it. It was a Woman who was its Editor, this was all that was necessary to render its enemies BRAVE, and this was enough to embolden the most pusillanimous Wight to assume the garb of the Lion."

Although Anderson refers to "enemies" in the plural, it's fairly clear that she's really zeroing in on Bickerstaff; this dispute is personal. It seems to be Bickerstaff she's referring to when she says, "Could a scholar, so profound as to know the whole Greek Alphabet by heart, allow that a Woman should know her own language? could he endure that she should venture to think and judge for herself, and what is much more sacrilegious, that she should presume to enter those lists of which he deemed himself in the whole Western Hemisphere the only able and redoubtable champion!!!"

Obviously, there's a history here, one that we in the 21st century will never know in its entirety. But, while Anderson reserved her most venomous prose for Bickerstaff, it's clear -- both from the Observer itself and the feuding that spilled over into the Federal Gazette -- that others were attacking the Observer as well. In this same column of December 19, Anderson complained (undoubtedly with some hyperbole) that "many literary works" had been undertaken in the previous six months "with the express view of sinking the Observer.

Whether that was literally true or not (and Anderson claimed that at least she had the satisfaction of seeing all these publications "fall dead born from the press"), Anderson had had enough. Since, she writes, "to continue in such a pursuit is in every sense of the word to act the part of a DUPE, Mistress Ironside is resolved to abandon a task as laborious as she finds it thankless and painful, & which she undertook only in the hope of being useful."

There is, however, a hint of another reason Anderson is choosing to cease publication of the Observer: in a final paragraph that appears in small print, Anderson chastises the "vast proportion of her Subscribers" who have not paid for their subscriptions--"those pitiful Beings who have sought in mean subterfuge to evade compliance with their small and just engagements." Even allowing for Anderson's characteristic exaggeration, the Observer was probably losing money at a rapid clip.

In the next and final issue, there is a hint that it was really Anderson's father, Dr. John Crawford, who pulled the plug. (There is also a final installment of "Beatrice Ironside's Budget," containing a few more vicious swipes at Bickerstaff.) Dr. Crawford had been writing a series of articles about his medical theories (including one that anticipated germ theory and was, of course, ridiculed), but he announces that unfortunately he won't be able to continue it as he had planned: "After having pursued this plan as far as number 22, I clearly ascertained the impossibility of carrying on the Observer farther than the engagement with the subscribers rendered indispensable, and therefore was obliged to relinquish my design." Given that Anderson was, as a married woman, prohibited from entering into any contracts in her own name, it's quite possible that Dr. Crawford was the financially responsible party.

So it seems that the demise of the Observer was due to a confluence of factors: reaction against its biting satire, reaction against its editor being a woman, that editor's exhaustion and disillusionment, and the failure of many subscribers to pay up. But for a year at least, it no doubt amused a good part of the literate population of Baltimore, and it led its detractors a merry chase. Not to mention that it appears to have been the first American magazine edited by a woman.

In her penultimate column, Anderson at one point predicted that the "reflections and observations" printed in the Observer would "one day be more fairly appreciated." Well, yes and no; some of them, like Anderson's criticism of the self-taught artist Francis Guy, now celebrated as a true American original, sound elitist and repellent to the modern ear. But what has stood the test of time is Anderson's own vigorous and witty writing style and her feisty spirit. One thing that has come to be "fairly appreciated," as it was not in 1807, is the right of a woman to enter the intellectual fray on equal terms with any man. It's too bad Anderson isn't around to take advantage of that. She'd have a field day.

Scandal, Fictional and Otherwise

In my last post, I hinted that in 1807 Eliza Anderson may have been up to something--something that led observers to speculate that her translation of the scandalous novel Clara d'Albe was actually autobiographical. (Of course, as Eliza pointed out, if it was a translation, how could it be autobiographical?)

At some point in late 1806 or 1807, Eliza met a French artist and architect living in Baltimore named Maximilian Godefroy. Godefroy's early history is cloaked in some mystery (he gave conflicting accounts), but it appears that he escaped from France after getting into trouble with Napoleon and eventually secured a job in Baltimore teaching drawing at St. Mary's College, a boys' school run by French priests. Godefroy apparently cut quite a dashing figure: he had pretensions to nobility (on some occasions he's referred to as "Count St. Maur" or "Count La Mard"), and he attracted favorable attention after designing a Gothic chapel for the Sulpician friars of St. Mary's in 1806--a structure that has been called the first Gothic-style building on American shores. In the summer of 1807, the Baltimore Library exhibited his massive drawing, "The Battle of Pultowa," which had a romantic backstory: supposedly Godefroy fashioned it while imprisoned in the Chateau d'If, using only bits of paper that came to hand--120 in all--along with the "stump of a pen" and ink made from the soot of his stove.

How Godefroy and Eliza first met isn't clear--although he does record being treated by her doctor father in October 1806--but by July 1807 he had become a contributor to the Observer. That magazine, edited by Eliza, published in three installments a work by Godefroy entitled “Military considerations on the mode of defence best adapted, for the United States, under its present circumstances.” (With a background as both a soldier and an architect, Godefroy apparently felt he had some expertise in military fortifications.) In October this work appeared in pamphlet form, with the translator identified as Eliza Anderson.

So far, nothing scandalous here. But at some point the relationship between Godefroy and Eliza became romantic. They were married in December of 1808--after Eliza had, the previous June, gone to Trenton, New Jersey, to obtain a divorce.

That's right: Eliza was already married. (Why she went to Trenton to get the divorce is a mystery to me.) In 1799, when she was 19 years old, she'd married a Baltimore merchant named Henry Anderson. They had a child the following year, but shortly thereafter Anderson disappeared: he's no longer listed in the Baltimore city directory of 1801. For the previous six years, then, Eliza had been an abandoned wife. But of course that, under the mores of the era, didn't give her license to fool around with another man.

So, in October 1807--when both Clara d'Albe and the translation of Godefroy's pamphlet appeared--there may have been talk of some hanky-panky between Eliza and Godefroy, and that may have fueled the odd rumor that Clara d'Albe was somehow based on Eliza's own experience. Eliza was surely right to protest that she was merely the translator, but isn't it possible that a certain similarity between Clara's plight and her own may have drawn her to the novel and helped her to overcome any scruples she might have had about translating a work that was so racy? After all, both Clara and Eliza had found true love, and all that was standing in their way were some pesky marriage vows.

Whether there was actually gossip about Eliza and Godefroy in 1807 I don't know, but there was certainly talk by June of 1808, when Eliza was seeking her divorce in Trenton. "As for what the Town says of me and much I hear they say," she wrote to her friend Betsy Bonaparte, "I care not. Absurd & ridiculous monsters in whose hands no fame can go unsullied--if Godefroy had wished or proposed anything dishonourable to me, would it be by honourably proposing to my Father to make me his wife & share the good or bad fortune that befalls him that he'd prove it? Why should I be at the trouble of getting a divorce & overcoming the difficulties that attended getting the means to do it--if I had already sacrificed honor? Truly I might have continued as I was--their malice is too glaringly absurd, for it to cost one a single sigh."

And yet, she's not quite as cavalier about the gossip as she makes out; the next sentence is, "Tell me if you have heard anything of their infernal reports--God help me, a spanish Island or any other Island, with some one to knock out the brains of any who insult me, will be blessed Elysium."

It certainly sounds like Eliza maintained her "honor" in 1807. But someone--perhaps one of the many Baltimoreans Eliza had managed to antagonize--was apparently spreading rumors to the contrary.

A "Lady" Translator

Let's say you're the editor of a magazine in Baltimore in 1807. Now, to complicate things a bit, let's say you're a woman--which is to say you've taken on a position that perhaps no other woman in the United States has assumed before (editing a magazine, that is), and you've noticed you've already come in for some abuse on that score. And let's say you've recently been criticized for--among other things--running a serialized translation of a racy French novel that caused such an uproar you've had to discontinue it.

What would a good career move be at this point? How about publishing, in book form, a translation of an even racier French novel--one that, according to a modern scholar, "contains what may be the first depiction of female orgasm in polite fiction"?

You do have to wonder what Eliza Anderson was thinking when she decided to translate Claire d'Albe--the story of a young woman who has an adulterous affair with her husband's adopted 19-year-old son, not exactly the kind of tale designed to curry favor with Baltimore's strait-laced elite. True, it was ostensibly published anonymously--the title page identifies the translator only as "A Lady of Baltimore"--but, just as everyone knew who "Beatrice Ironside" was, everyone was apparently well aware of the Lady's true identity.

Judging from the generally favorable review of the translation that appeared in Eliza's own magazine, the Observer, in Eliza's mind the scandalous nature of the plot was outweighed by the book's other attributes: its "simple, flowing, and elegant" language, and the ultimate moral correctness of its sentiments--since the two adulterous lovers eventually come to a bad end. (The Observer review did express the opinion, common during this era, that reading novels was a waste of time, but sighed that "since it was in vain to aim at changing general taste," it was better to read something like Clara d'Albe, as the translation was referred to, instead of the other "miserable trash" that was being consumed with "untiring avidity.")

Plus, Eliza did have the modesty to omit several of the more rapturous sentences that appear in the original French version of the orgasm scene, and to soften some of its language (for instance, Eliza rendered "She has stained her husband's bed!" as the somewhat less graphic, "She has sullied the honor of her husband!").

But clearly, that kind of tinkering wasn't going to be enough to appease the scandalized citizens of Baltimore. Shortly after the translation appeared in September, it was apparently criticized in a magazine called Spectacles--a magazine with which the Observer was already at war. And, according to Eliza, the Baltimore Federal Gazette had "inveigh[ed] against [the translation], as being vile and contaminating."

The Federal Gazette--Baltimore's leading newspaper--did run an ad for Clara d'Albe. But on October 12 the editor ran a notice headed "Mistress E.A."--as close as he would come to publicly identifying Eliza Anderson. The editor avowed that he would never be "forced into a newspaper controversy with any person," but that when the "assailant is a WOMAN, he can wage no possible war except that of defense."

The "attack" he's defending himself against is apparently Eliza's reference to the Federal Gazette's criticism of the novel, quoted above. The editor says that all he did was to refuse to publish an essay "intended to sell" the book, "which we thought unfit for female perusal... This, and only this, is what has armed against us the fierce FURY who edits the `Observer.'" In other words, he's saying that he never even criticized the novel in print--but he then proceeds to do just that. It's an "infamous tale," and that scene in the garden (the orgasm scene) is one that no "`lady,' of any tolerable delicacy, can read without being filled with disgust." He then describes the scene as best he can, given his own delicate sensibilities:

"A once lovely woman, reduced to a mere skeleton, is offering up orisons at the tomb of her father; a barbarian rushes upon her--seizes the trembling dying Clara and ................ Shame! shame! ................. let the `lady' of delicate taste and refined feeling, who has offered it to the females of Baltimore, tell the rest. We cannot defile these columns by publishing a chapter, for censuring which we have incurred the high displeasure of the phenomenon in Hanover-street." (Eliza lived at the corner of Hanover and German.)

All of this was transpiring in the pages of the Federal Gazette at the same time as the Webster debacle was unfolding there (see previous blog post). Webster, while professing not to know who had written the letter refuting his accusations against Eliza, tipped his hand: he referred to the letter-writer sarcastically as "the delicate and immaculate Translator of Clara d'Albe."

It's quite possible that if a man had translated Clara d'Albe, he too would have come in for some outraged criticism. But the language used by both the editor of the Gazette and by Webster indicates that the outrage was intensified because the translator was female. It's telling that the editor refers to Eliza as a "lady," in quotation marks. Ladies are supposed to be delicate and refined; they're not supposed to be translating graphic sex scenes (or what passed for graphic in 1807) that would clearly only disgust other ladies--the real ladies, that is.

There was something else going on here as well, although it's difficult to parse it out at this remove. But it appears that some people--whoever was writing about Clara d'Albe in Spectacles, for example--were saying that Eliza was actually writing about events in her own life. (Alas, only one issue of Spectacles has survived, and it's not the one that discusses Clara d'Albe.) Indignant, Eliza countered that "every page stamps it as a translation," and directed readers to "Mr. Hill's Book-store," where they could find the original, and thus judge "the degree of reliance to be placed on the veracity of the Spectacles."

But in a way, Spectacles was on to something. Eliza certainly wasn't having an adulterous affair with her husband's adopted son, but, subconsciously, she may have found herself identifying with poor tormented Clara. In her own way, Eliza was also transgressing boundaries ordained by society--and, as we'll see, not just by assuming what had been a traditionally male journalistic role.

A Spat With Mr. Webster

As I mentioned in my last post, Eliza's mockery of poor Mr. Webster--the singer whose grimaces had given him the appearance of someone "labouring under the operation of a strong Emetic"--was to come back to haunt her.

Actually, it was some renewed mockery that started the trouble. In October--some months after his performance at Mr. Nenninger's concert--Mr. Webster had the temerity to perform again. In a review of this second performance in the Observer, Eliza proved herself no more impressed than she'd been in June. "When he sings," she wrote, "his face and figure remind one of the melancholy spectacle of a creature in the agonies of convulsion." His voice was actually not bad, she allowed; "but ... when with his hideous grimaces he treats us to the wretched caricature of an ape ... it is impossible ... to listen to him without disgust."

This ridicule proved too much for Webster to bear with equanimity. Three days later, what was apparently a paid notice ran in the Federal Gazette and Baltimore Daily Advertiser, signed W.H. Webster. Headed "To the Public," the notice accused "Beatrice Ironside" (Eliza's pen name) of attempting to extort money from him in exchange for a favorable review. Webster claimed that he'd received a letter, signed by "Beatrice," warning him that "in the course of the theatrical season many attempts will be made to injure you, by means of newspaper criticisms." The letter suggested that "a weekly publication"--unnamed, but its address given as the same as that of the Observer's printer--might be helpful in this connection by defending Webster against any such attacks. The alleged letter ended, according to Webster, with the words "`The subscription is five dollars a year; the paper is circulated all over the continent,' &c &c."

I say "alleged" because, although Webster purported to quote from the letter, he had, to his great regret, "mislaid" it. He explained this oversight by saying that it "was impossible to foresee that an accomplished lady ... could have behaved thus," but he offered to swear out an affidavit for anyone who doubted his word. (Webster's notice also sheds light on what an open secret Beatrice Ironside's identity was: Webster says that when he first heard about the review, "I inquired who wrote it? and was answered Mrs. A___." Actually, not even Beatrice's name appeared on the review, which was unsigned. But apparently everyone--everyone but Webster--knew exactly who had written it.)

Two days later the Gazette ran another notice, this one headed "Mr. Webster," and unsigned. Referring to "Beatrice"in the third person, this notice vigorously denied that she had ever "solicited, personally or by letter [anyone] to become a subscriber." The author expressed mock surprise that so "singular an application" as the alleged letter addressed to Webster "should not have been thought worth preserving." This is all the more remarkable, she says, considering that "Mistress Beatrice" had already trashed Webster's singing style in that review back in June--a review which she now took occasion to quote from liberally. She concluded, "That the known and acknowledged writer of these remarks should offer to become the champion of the gentleman who was their object, is so original a circumstance that it is really a matter of surprize Mr. Webster should have been so careless in preserving its proof."

This notice ran for two more days, and on the third day was accompanied by a response from Webster. He had seen a "contradiction of his assertion" about the editor of the Observer in the paper, he said; "but as it is anonymous, I shall certainly not make the slightest reply to it." Webster's response was, to say the least, disingenuous; the following sentence indicates that he knew very well who had written it. (I'll explain in another post what that remark was.)

Eliza, not to be outdone, ran her own notice for a fourth day--this time signed "BEATRICE IRONSIDE." Webster, as far as I can tell, was not heard from again--at least not in print.

What to make of this unedifying dispute? Certainly Eliza was unkind in her criticism of Webster's singing style, but it's the prerogative of critics to be unkind. And apparently she wasn't alone in her distaste for Webster: in his notice in the newspaper, he remarks that "Beatrice is not sorry I did not subscribe; for no doubt she has made more by her scurrilous stuff than the five dollars she applied for--as all my enemies (with whom she seems to be so well acquainted) if not already, will soon become subscribers to the `Observer.'" Webster has a point: no doubt this public contretemps, like others occasioned by Eliza's sometimes vicious satire, was good for business.

And, while it's possible that Eliza really did solicit a subscription from Webster, Webster here makes a pretty good argument against that possibility: why should she care so much about one subscription when she could probably do better by continuing to lambaste Webster? Not to mention Eliza's own suggestion that, given her previous criticism of him, it seems unlikely that she would have offered to refute attacks on Webster by others. At the very least, such a defense would have looked a little suspicious.

But one thing that's interesting to note here are the little digs at Eliza's unladylike behavior--which I'll allude to more in my next post. Ultimately Eliza came to believe that much of the animus against her was motivated by those who found the idea of a woman editor outrageous. As this episode illustrates, that's certainly not the whole story: the mockery and scorn she expressed in print would probably have also led to conflicts had they been offered up by a male editor. But the fact that she was a woman does appear to have intensified the reaction against her. And, as we shall see, her scandalous extracurricular activities definitely didn't help.

Mr. Neninnger's Concert

In her arts criticism for the magazine she edited in Baltimore in 1807--the Observer--Eliza Anderson frequently sounded two themes: the superior taste and appreciation for the arts exhibited in Europe, and the inferiority of homegrown, often amateur, artists. Neither of these themes enhanced her popularity with her fellow Baltimoreans.

In a review of a concert published in the Observer in early May 1807, Anderson praises a violinist from Germany--a Mr. Neninnger--but laments that his skill “will be buried like that of so many other Europeans, who vegetate here already, to our shame and our detriment, whilst every where else, in ordinary times, it would have been not only welcomed but purchased at the highest price, by governments, and nations, who would have been jealous of doing honour to their age, by these elegant and agreeable ameliorations."

Baltimore, Anderson complained, had "neither large theatres; nor church choirs; nor subscription concerts; nor military music; nor national academies, where exiled talent, might be kept alive by emulation, might receive those honors which are the vital principles of genius, and find resource against indigence and want!” Poor Neninnger would no doubt be reduced to "the hateful, the killing task, which is death to all genius, of teaching brats without ear or attention: E, F, G, A, B, C, D!” The attitude of Baltimoreans on this subject was nothing more than "Vandalism," rendering the city "the very Siberia of the arts."

But there was a glimmer of hope on the bleak horizon: Mr. Neninnger was to give a concert on May 26, assisted by "the distinguished musicians of our city." On June 6 we learn, from Anderson, that the concert has been postponed--owing, she says, to "opposition and delay" and some "little intrigues which retarded it." But these setbacks have had the happy effect of stirring up interest in the concert: there have been "some articles in the papers, which have piqued the curiosity of some, and the self love of others." A "great number of tickets" had been sold.

This very fact was then used by another journalist to refute Anderson's "Siberia" claim: if that many tickets had been sold, could Baltimore really be a cultural wasteland? Yes indeed, Anderson answered--with, if anything, increased vehemence. She seems to be arguing that one concert does not a cultural connoisseur make. But then she embarks on a flight of antidemocratic rhetoric that seems to have only a vague connection to the matter at hand, denouncing those who would accord equal merit to "artists" and "mechanics" (the latter presumably being more prevalent in Baltimore than the former). In a passage quoted in part in Gordon Wood's Empire of Liberty, Anderson writes, “We regret ... to announce to these levellers, who would place in the same rank, the engineer with the labourer who carries the mortar, and the poet with the manufacturer of the paper on which he writes the productions of his genius, that in Parnassus, this equality, which can only reign in taverns on electioneering days, but at no other time, does not exist–the Muses are rather saucy, and do not admit workmen to their levees.”

At last the date of the much anticipated concert arrives--and needless to say, Anderson reviews it in the pages of the Observer. Mr. Neninnger, the German violinist, did not disappoint, and Anderson praised both the professional musicians who performed and the "ablest amateurs of our city." But, not surprisingly, she found much to criticize as well. The orchestra's attempt at military marches only demonstrated "how truly we are pacific. A kettle on one side, a pair of tongs on another; these were the substitutes they were obliged to use, to serve as kettle drums, cymbals, and the triangle!"

But Anderson's most biting criticism was reserved for the unfortunate "Mr. Webster," an amateur singer. While Anderson praised his voice, she was less taken with his demeanor: "...[I]t is really to be desired that he would not distort his features with the horrible grimaces he makes whilst singing ... and that in his trills he would not assume the appearance of gargling his throat with his notes ... in viewing the contortions of his body, and the contraction of his muscles ... our imagination has always presented us the agreeable idea, of a man labouring under the operation of a strong emetic."

Anderson then turns to the subject of painting--discussing the relative merits of the artists Guy and Groombridge, which I mentioned in a previous post. Again she bemoans the lack of appreciation for the arts in Baltimore.

Shortly after this article appeared, another writer took up the same theme in the Baltimore Federal Gazette. While essentially echoing Anderson's point about Baltimore's cultural failings--and even extending that point to the entire country--the author also took pains to distance himself (or possibly herself) from some of Anderson's more vehement statements: “Do not misunderstand me, sir," the author writes to the newspaper's editor. "I am not about to join in the ungracious attempt to stigmatise my dear Columbia, as hostile to the arts. I will not call her sons Vandals, nor denounce this terrtory [sic] as a cold Sibera [sic], where the best plants sicken and die. No, I value the intelligence of [her] citizens at a higher rate, and I esteem her climate and her soil, as of a kinder nature.”

Despite the fact that the letter-writer essentially agreed with her, Anderson devoted four pages of the next issue of the Observer to ridiculing and attacking him (and let's assume, since it was probably true, that the author was a "him"). She particularly objected to the letter-writer signing himself "An American," which she took as a dig at her own patriotism. Does he mean, she asked rhetorically, “that all those, who do not take Philadelphia for London, New-York for Paris, Washington for Rome, and Baltimore for Athens, are unpatriotic citizens, and stigmatisers of Columbia?" (At the end of this diatribe Anderson says, perhaps a bit disingenuously, that she didn't mean to "say any thing unpleasant to the author" of the letter.)

The following week--July 4, no less--Anderson gleefully takes up the gauntlet once again. This time one "C," whom she describes as a "Grub-street critic," has launched against her what she describes as a "virulent attack." Alas, the attack itself has not survived, but apparently "C" took issue with Anderson's criticism of the orchestra at Mr. Neninnger's concert. Taking her sarcasm literally, "C" has pointed out that in fact the kettle drums were not kettles, but actual drums, and so on. An exasperated Anderson explains that she had been speaking metaphorically: the kettle drum was cracked, and the cymbals and triangle didn't emit the desired silvery sound. She defends her right to employ ridicule, which, she says, "alone ... corrects mankind, because self-love speaks much more forcibly to the mind that either right or reason."

Ah but, she then says with her usual dramatic flourish, if she must recant she will--and then launches into a mock celebration of American culture quite similar to the one she had embarked on a week before, adding, "Shall I praise the yellow fever too; for this is also a production of the Country..."

As always, it's hard to tell where the mockery--and the desire to sell copies of the Observer--leaves off and where the genuine outrage begins. But what is clear is that Anderson's critiques touched a nerve. The United States was still an infant country and very much aware that it was looked down upon by Europeans.

Now, in this era of American cultural supremacy, it can be difficult to understand what a sensitive issue this was in the early 19th century. Yes, even nowadays every once in a while some highbrow in France or England may make a disparaging remark about American culture, but given the dominance of American pop music, movies, and even "high culture," nobody really takes it too seriously. (And the French, with their love of Mickey Mouse and Jerry Lewis, don't really have a leg to stand on in critiquing American culture.) But in the late 18th and early 19th century, there was enough truth to the criticism that these would have been fighting words. America, and perhaps especially Baltimore, was a rough, raw, new society that was more concerned with getting and spending than with cultivating or appreciating the arts.

From what I've seen in contemporary (and some secondary) sources, this led to something of a schizoid reaction. There were those, like Eliza Anderson, who responded with scorn for all things (or many things) American and veneration for all (or most) things European. Baltimore's wealthy families yearned to marry their daughters off to European aristocrats--and some of them succeeded. Baltimoreans traveling in Europe were besieged with requests from people back home for fine fabrics and china (complete with European-style family crests) that were considered superior to what could be obtained on this side of the Atlantic. Anderson's letters, and those of many of her friends and contemporaries (particularly Betsy Bonaparte) are scathing in their ridicule of what passed for sophistication and entertainment in early Baltimore. Despite the fact that we'd only recently fought a revolution that rejected aristocracy, anyone with a "title"--no matter how idiotic or impoverished--commanded instant respect from this crowd.

But there were others who responded with a fierce pride in what they saw as American genuineness and lack of affectation. For these observers, Europe was corrupt and decadent, and America's very rawness was a virtue. And while Anderson may have had her supporters in the first crowd, it was this second group that was riled by her criticism--although, it seems, not always quite as riled as Anderson portrayed them.

But Anderson's criticism of poor Mr. Webster--the grimacing singer at Mr. Neninnger's concert--was soon to lead to an even more vitriolic, and personal, dispute.

The Siberia of the Arts

As I mentioned in my last post, one reason Eliza Anderson undertook the editorship of a weekly publication in Baltimore was to raise the level of culture in her hometown, which she appears to have considered a backwater of tackiness and bad taste. (I'm not even going to speculate on what she would think of John Waters!)

So here we have one of those paradoxes that history often presents us with: On the one hand, Anderson is a feminist pioneer, probably the first woman in the United States to edit a magazine. But on the other hand, she's a reactionary defender of "high culture," ridiculing the nouveau riche merchants who don't know their Corinthian columns from their Ionic. As I've discovered in the course of researching other historical figures, actions that we moderns consider "progressive" don't always go hand-in-hand with opinions we ourselves would embrace. The past is complicated, and the people who lived there have to be seen in the context of their times--not through the prism of our 21st-century assumptions.

Anderson's efforts to raise Baltimore's cultural tone, heavily laced with her acid brand of sarcasm, frequently got her in trouble. She started out optimistically enough, writing in the February 7, 1807, issue of The Observer that she planned to "awaken taste ... convinced that our sensible readers will welcome instruction though in the garb of severity." Uh huh.

A couple of weeks later, she's ridiculing a Baltimore builder who admired the new Gothic chapel built by St. Mary's College (and designed by Anderson's future husband) and said that he planned to build one just like it, "but that he would not have pointed windows." (For those who never took art history, pointed windows are a hallmark of the Gothic style.)This solecism was still bothering her in November, when she brought it up again. But, she laments in another column, such things are only to be expected in a place like Baltimore, where "you see columns placed in niches like statues" and "fine houses with steps like a hay loft."

The sins of the tasteless nouveau riche were perhaps most evident in architecture, but Anderson carried her culture crusade into other branches of the arts as well. In June she weighed in on the relative merits of two artists who were having a sort of joint exhibition in Baltimore. While she bemoaned the fact that both artists had been reduced to the indignity of selling their paintings by lottery (one of her frequent themes was the lack of support for starving artists in Baltimore), she made it clear that she thought William Groombridge, who had been formally trained, was far superior to Francis Guy, a self-taught working man whose background was as a tailor and dyer. Anderson lamented that Guy “from want of encouragement reduced to the necessity of making coats and pantaloons ... has not had it in his power to cultivate his talent, nor has he made a single striking step in the art.” Whereas Groombridge, she thought, was a true artist. In fact, the judgment of history has been quite the opposite: Groombridge has been forgotten, while Guy has been praised for his vigorous American primitivism--his paintings of Brooklyn were the subject of a special exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum a few years ago.

But Anderson was, as I have hinted, something of an elitist. Indeed, Anderson's scoffing at Guy and those of his ilk has earned her the dubious honor of a mention in Gordon Wood's magisterial new history of the early Republic, Empire of Liberty. "Anderson," writes Wood, "could not get over the American tendency to believe that mere artisans--tailors and carpenters--could pretend to a taste in painting." Quoting something Anderson wrote in the leading Baltimore newspaper of the time, Wood ridicules her short-sightedness: "Apollo is somewhat aristocratic," Wood has her claiming, "and does not permit of perfect equality in his court ... The Muses are rather saucy, and do not admit of workmen to their levees." Guy, she wrote, should return to his "soul-inspiring avocation of making pantaloons." And just to top things off, Anderson referred to Baltimore as "the Siberia of the arts." (Wood mentions that Anderson was "a female editor," but doesn't seem to find anything remarkable about that fact.)

As we shall see, that "Siberia" remark raised the hackles of some Baltimoreans (or should I say,as Anderson might, "Baltimorons"?)--as did Anderson's scathing criticism of some local musical performances.

Torn in Pieces by Merciless Hounds

Should any reader of this blog want to read the story of Eliza Anderson and "The Observer" in a less staccato--and more scholarly--format, I'd like to announce that an article I wrote about her will be published in the Summer 2010 issue of Maryland Historical Magazine, a publication of the Maryland Historical Society. Alas, while back issues are online, current issues are available online only to subscribers. But I imagine interested non-subscribers could procure a hard copy version. And if you wait long enough, even you non-subscribers should be able to see it online.

So, where were we? Ah yes, Eliza has recently come out of the closet as a female editor, albeit under the pseudonym "Beatrice Ironside." Towards the beginning of her year-long tenure as editor of "The Observer," Anderson treats the issue of her gender lightly, and she seems to expect her readers to do so as well. In her February 28, 1807 column, which she uses as an opportunity to introduce some of her regular contributors--all pseudonymous, of course, and some probably entirely fictional--she describes one of the functions to be filled by a "Reverend Mr. Supple" in the following terms: “That a little Latin and Greek, now and then giving dignity to our lucubrations, may not alarm the bucks and bloods, who abhor learned women, we will inform them, that all such scraps are supplied by our able coadjutor, the Rev. Mr. Supple.” In fact, a little Latin did find its way into "Beatrice Ironside's Budget" on occasion--so it's possible that Anderson was simply being satirical here, as was her wont. Still, the tone is jocular. And who knows, perhaps the Reverend Mr. Supple was actually none other than Anderson herself.

But by April 4, we begin to hear an edge in Anderson's tone: "In a community like this," she writes, as Beatrice, "where the nobler sex are almost entirely engrossed, by parchments, pulses, or price currents, the attempt of a female to promote the cause of taste, literature and morals, by undertaking the arduous employment of editor to a weekly paper, would it should seem, have been cherished with respect, and forwarded with assistance and encouragement... Such were the expectations of Beatrice, such the flattering prospect with which she entered on her new avocation..."

But NO... "Alas! luckless dame, not long were the illusions of thy fancy to deceive thee ... not long e'er the futility of thy hopes was demonstrated, and vexation usurped their empire in thy spirit."

Given the flowery nature of the prose here--even more flowery than usual for "Beatrice"--we can probably safely assume that this is still meant to be somewhat comical. But I detect more than a grain of sincere resentment here. After all, she's been working her tail off, for--as she sees it--the benefit of the citizenry. Whether or not she actually expected to be "cherished with respect," she apparently expected better than what she's getting.

And what is that, exactly? Well, given the passage of time--and the disappearance of contemporary rival publications that may or may not have contained vicious attacks on Anderson--it's hard to tell. Apparently Benjamin Bickerstaff--her erstwhile star columnist, who went off in a huff shortly after the inception of the publication when Eliza, tired of waiting for his copy, ran a different column under his byline--has launched a campaign against her. To hear her tell it, she is being "torn in pieces by ... merciless hounds," who have been egged on, or perhaps led, by Bickerstaff. Now, she says, he has not only given up writing for "The Observer," he has pronounced its doom.

Interestingly, given that Anderson herself is a woman, Bickerstaff--at least according to Anderson--had a good deal of female support. As observant readers will recall, the column that set off Bickerstaff's departure--which was ostensibly written by one "Tabitha Simple," but which was almost certainly penned by Anderson herself--included some remarks critical of Baltimore's female population, singling out certain ones, although not by name. Bickerstaff, in his response, leapt to the defense of these women, who he thought he could identify. Now Anderson describes him sardonically as "the gallant, the benevolent, the magnanimous Benjamin, the oracle of half the little Misses of the city."

But it's clear even from reading Anderson's April 4 column that her gender isn't the only issue inspiring the attacks against her. It's also her penchant for satire, evident even in her description of Baltimore's merchant princes ("the nobler sex") as being "almost entirely engrossed" in grubby monetary pursuits--leaving her, a female, to try to save Baltimore's cultural soul. There's more than a little snobbery evident in Anderson's attitude towards her fellow residents of Baltimore--then a fast-growing mercantile city that, compared to older urban centers such as New York and Philadelphia, was lacking in both landed gentry and the resident artist class that might have been supported by them. As we'll see, in some ways Anderson was fighting against the tide, seemingly nostalgic for an almost feudal time, when the idle rich had what she considered taste and breeding, as well as a sense of their cultural obligations. Or, to put it more sympathetically, she decried the wretched excesses of the nouveau riche and championed the cause of "true," and usually impoverished, artists.

In her column Anderson recognizes that her acid tongue, and not just her gender, is part of the basis for the opposition she sees arrayed against her. But she remains defiant. Sure,she says, she could have published nothing but boring "dissertations on morality"--and gone out of business. She makes it clear that she'd rather publish a lively paper that employs ridicule to combat what she sees as folly, even if she ends up being "torn in pieces" (at least figuratively) as a result. She seems to have believed, as some journalists may today, that it's better to offend people and attract readers than to be careful and polite--and ignored.

O Brave New Editors

Is there any headier experience than running your own publication when you're still in your twenties? Perhaps it isn't everyone's cup of tea, but for those of us bitten by the journalism bug, it may well be the best time of our lives. And having been on both ends of the journalism transaction--writer and editor--I know that it's way more fun to be in the driver's seat than to be the hitch-hiker by the side of the road watching the cars fly past.

When I was in college, I wasn't exactly running a publication, but I did have responsibility for filling the features page three times a week--and that was plenty of responsibility, as far as I was concerned. I got to think up story ideas, assign them to others or (more often than I planned) write them myself, come up with clever headlines and graphics, design the layout ... in short, wield journalistic power. Of course, there were frequent crises: writers that were MIA as deadlines approached, stories that came in with serious problems, photos that got lost somewhere in the darkroom (yes, in those days we had a darkroom) ... whatever. But even the crises were exhilarating. And the cameraderie born of sharing all this joy and angst with my colleagues was--while temporary and situational--genuine and memorable.

My son (who is the most faithful, if not the only, reader of this blog) has just come off what I presume is a similar experience editing his own college publication--where, as editor-in-chief, he had way more responsibility than I did, and was far more innovative and thoughtful in his approach. He may well go far in journalism, which, despite the fact that the industry seems to be imploding, is his chosen field of endeavor, at least for now. But I wonder if he'll ever have as much fun again. (Sam: I know it wasn't ALL fun, but believe, me, it will seem more and more like nonstop fun as the years go by.)

So I think I (and perhaps my son) can relate to the enthusiasm with which Eliza Anderson, at the age of 26, must have approached her new post as editor of a fledgling magazine in 1807. We don't know exactly how her rise to this position came about, but she probably started out by submitting articles, under pseudonyms of course, to a publication called the Companion. The editors of the Companion--all men, and all apparently busy with their studies or occupations and hard pressed to find the time to edit this magazine they'd launched--may well have recognized her talent (perhaps without recognizing her true gender) and begun publishing her submissions regularly. At some point they appear to have taken advantage of her enthusiasm and availability and started transferring some editorial responsibilities to her, because she appears to have functioned as a sort of associate or deputy editor in the final months of the Companion's run.

Then, at last, she elbows her way out of the shadows--or, perhaps, the men who have been out in front of her all trickle away, distracted by other pursuits--and emerges as editor-in-chief of a new successor publication, one that conforms to her own ideas of what a magazine should be (that is: tart, satirical, and critical of absurdity, pretension and folly). A dream come true! And she takes a new pseudonym, one that is forthrightly female: Beatrice Ironside.

A few weeks after taking the helm of this new magazine, the Observer, she introduces herself under the heading, "Beatrice Ironside's Budget: Speak of Me As I Am." Acknowledging that "much curiosity [has] been excited to know, what manner of woman our female editor may be," she proceeds to describe herself. She seems to be trying to reassure her readers that she is not a creature of extremes, but rather will function as an understanding and moderating presence. She is, she says, "old enough to have set aside some of the levities of youth, and young enough to remember, that she has had her share of them," and she proclaims herself "neither a misanthrope nor an optimist." Nevertheless, her optimism--indeed, her exuberance--fairly leaps off the page.

What she doesn't dwell on, at least not explicitly, is the fact that she's female--perhaps the first female in the country to edit a publication of this sort. But, like the proverbial 800-pound gorilla, it's a fact that can't be entirely ignored. She apparently feels the need to describe her appearance, something a male editor might have chosen to omit ("neither ugly enough to frighten a fiery courser from his repast, nor handsome enough for the Parson of the Parish to turn aside from his discourse whilst he admires her beauty"). And she assures her readers that her particular experience renders her more qualified for this editorial position than most members of her sex: "Accident having thrown her much more in the busy throng, than generally falls to the lot of woman, she has thereby acquired a knowledge of human nature which will assist her much in prosecuting this her work."

But what she seems most intent on explaining is that her prime subject will be "the vices and follies that fall beneath her notice," which she intends to "lash with the utmost force of satire she can command." With the memory of the recent "Tabitha Simple" debacle still sharp in her mind--a contretemps that led to the departure of her star columnist--she protests that she won't be targeting any particular individuals, but she acknowledges that she may "touch a picture with such lively strokes, that folly perceives its likeness, and is enraged at the dexterity of the artist."

True dat, as they say these days (and having just penned a satirical novel myself, I'm well aware of the possibility of outrage). But Eliza--or "Beatrice"--claims that she couldn't care less how enraged people get: "She happens to have been so luckily constructed, that she can turn an iron-side to the proud man's contumely (or woman's either)."

As it turned out, Beatrice wasn't quite as iron-sided as she thought. But she was right about one thing: "Mistress Beatrice, if publicly attacked, will not fail to defend herself, and Porcupine-like, she will always have a quill [i.e., a pen] ready to dart at those who may assail her."

Beatrice Ironside

The January 31, 1807 issue of the Observer--the one that carried Benjamin Bickerstaff's resignation and the riposte of the editor, Eliza Anderson--was also the first one to introduce the name "Beatrice Ironside." Like Benjamin Bickerstaff, this was a pseudonym--in this case, a pseudonym for Anderson herself. But in the January 31 issue, it appeared only as a name under the masthead, which for the first time carried the words "by Beatrice Ironside."

It wasn't until the following week that the pseudonym appeared in the body of the magazine, under an editorial note addressed to "Readers and Correspondents" (who were, in many cases, one and the same). In a way, this is Anderson coming out of the closet, so to speak: it's both a description of the magazine and an invitation to prospective contributors, something that you might expect to find in a magazine's first issue or prospectus. The fact that this editorial didn't appear until after Bickerstaff went off in a huff leads me to suspect that, although Anderson was referred to as editor while he was still there, he was actually exerting quite a bit of editorial control. In any event, the rift between the two was decidedly bitter, judging from some editorial jousting later in the year.

In the note, "Ironside" catalogued the subjects the Observer would touch on--and a pretty exhaustive catalogue it is: the fine arts, history, poetry, fiction, even politics (although "Ironside" says that she herself "has never so much attended to the subject of politics as to entitle her to an opinion," and makes it clear that the publication will be nonpartisan). In this eclecticism, the Observer was similar to other "literary miscellanies" of the day.

And like its contemporary periodicals, the Observer relied on submissions from unpaid contributors, many of which apparently came in over the transom. Aside from Bickerstaff, who had now departed, Anderson appears to have been the only writer on staff, as it were. In her note to readers and contributors, Anderson thanked some of those who had sent in articles and poems and encouraged them to write more. (This included a writer she names as "Judith O'Donnelly," but then refers to as "he"--an indication, perhaps, that she knew the pseudonym was being used by a man.) Other contributors, however, were actively discouraged, including one who had sent "two or three pages that must be the production of some moon-struck brain ... We beg this gentleman henceforth to address us only in his lucid intervals."

One problem was that contributors were sending their submissions with postage due--so that Anderson had to pay for the privilege of reading these offerings, some of which "immediately found their way from our fingers to the fire." This was, as she put it, very expensive fuel, and she announced that henceforth all submissions must arrive with their postage paid.

It wasn't until a couple of weeks later, though, that Anderson, in the guise of Beatrice Ironside, would undertake the task of satisfying public curiosity about, as she put it, "what manner of woman our female editor may be"--and explaining the derivation of her pseudonym.

An Openly Female Editor

It has been suggested by an astute reader of this blog that Eliza Anderson, confronted with Benjamin Bickerstaff's revelation in the pages of the Observer that its editor (Eliza herself) was a "she," could simply have edited out the indiscreet pronoun.

Indeed, she could have -- and one might have expected her to, given the effort to conceal her gender in the first few issues. But in fact, Anderson not only failed to edit out the pronoun, she actually used it herself in the very same issue in which Bickerstaff's swansong appeared, in a notice headed "To Readers and Correspondents." In keeping with the convention of the time, this unsigned editorial referred to the editor in the third person,and it's replete with instances of "her" and "she." Defending her decision to publish the "Tabitha Simple" letter that had appeared in the previous issue, for example, Anderson wrote that "the Editor, conscious of the innocence of her intentions, and persuaded as she still is, that the letter ... contained nothing that in the eye of impartiality could be deemed reprehensible, ... she ventured without hesitation to commit it to the hands of the printer."

What prompted Anderson to drop the mask at this point? I haven't found any explanation, but it's possible that everyone (or everyone who mattered) already knew who the editor of the Observer was anyway. Baltimore, despite being the third largest city in the country in 1807, was still in some ways a small town. The group of literati that was likely to be reading the Observer (some of whom were publishing their own magazines) was probably fairly ingrown. Certainly by October the editor's identity was an open secret -- there's an article in the local paper identifying her as "Mrs. E.A." Whether that was true in January, when the Tabitha Simple debacle occurred, isn't clear.

Another possibility is that Anderson didn't think revealing her gender would be such a big deal. While it doesn't seem to have been at first, within a few months things would change rather dramatically.

In any event, in Anderson's first foray as, shall we say, an openly female editor, she revealed many of the characteristics that would mark--for better or worse--her editorial tenure. Although she may well have been upset that Bickerstaff had been moved to announce his resignation from the Observer, she clearly wasn't about to grovel before him; the most she would admit was that publishing the letter, under his byline, without his prior approval "may possibly require apology." She defended herself with vigor and relish, a happy warrior--and defended "Tabitha" as well, who, it was now obvious, was none other than Anderson herself (she explained that she was taking up the cause because "Tabitha is prevented, by imperious circumstances, from appearing at present in her own defence").

But what really marked Anderson's editorial was her gleeful use of satire in order to skewer what she saw as folly and affectation. In an ostensible effort to mollify the young woman who had assumed she was the model for the writhing young lady who had been compared to an eel in the letter, Anderson only twisted the knife further. That young woman hadn't been her target, Anderson asserted: she had actually been thinking of another female who was in fact far superior, one to whom the mistaken young woman was no more than "as a twinkling star to a resplendent sun." Moreover,the woman she had actually been describing was now in "the cold and silent grave"--not an entirely plausible claim, since the letter published the week before had mentioned seeing her just "the other evening."

Obviously, Anderson wasn't too concerned about hurting people's feelings. This was a trait that would come back to haunt her in the months to come.

"The Lucubrations of Benjamin Bickerstaff"

It was a pretty extraordinary thing for a woman to found and edit a magazine in 1807. Hence, I suppose, the subterfuge masking the true sex of the editor of the Observer in its very early days. Benjamin Latrobe, who clearly knew he was writing for the magazine edited by "Mrs. Anderson," nevertheless addressed the editor as "my dear Sir." And a columnist known to us by the pseudonym "Benjamin Bickerstaff"--an allusion to "Isaac Bickerstaff," a pseudonym used by the writer Richard Steele in the 18th-century publication The Tatler--referred to his "friend" the editor as "he."

But it was a dispute with this very Bickerstaff that soon led to the surprisingly casual revelation that the editor was not a "he" but a "she"--perhaps the first "she" to edit a magazine in the United States. In what was only his second or third column--headed "The Lucubrations of Benjamin Bickerstaff"--Bickerstaff undertook to praise the females of Baltimore. The following week, under the same heading, there appeared an article that was clearly not written by Bickerstaff. It was signed "Tabitha Simple," and it purported to be a letter that took issue with some of Bickerstaff's praise. While Simple declared herself charmed by Bickerstaff's admiration for Baltimore girls, she suggested that they were just a tad affected. To prove her point, she zeroed in on "a lovely creature" she had seen "the other evening at the assembly," who had been so intent on "displaying the perfect symmetry of her form" that she had "writhed her person about like an eel in the ruthless grip of a cook."

The following week's issue carried an indignant response from Bickerstaff--who said that the Tabitha Simple letter had been printed, under his "byline," as it were, without any advance notice to him. (The editor admitted as much, but implied that the situation was desperate because Bickerstaff was late with his copy.) Apparently a number of young women in Baltimore had concluded that Tabitha Simple's criticism was directed at them, and the gallant Bickerstaff sprang to the defense of them all. He even went so far as to argue that Tabitha Simple could not really be a woman, because "no woman could have written such a letter."

In the course of defending the female population of Baltimore against this perceived attack, Bickerstaff--perhaps inadvertently--revealed that the editor of the Observer was in fact a member of that very population. "The subject of this lucubration," he wrote, "may probably be unpleasant to the editor of this miscellany, but I am compelled to declare, that I have suffered more pain than she can possibly experience." (I added the italics.)

So pained was he, in fact, that he declared that "nothing shall hereafter, appear in the Observer, EITHER FROM THE PEN OR UNDER THE NAME OF BENJAMIN BICKERSTAFF." (The italics--and the capital letters--are in the original.)

Which suddenly left our editor not only unmasked, at least in terms of her gender, but without her star writer ... What was she to do?