Well, once more into the fray, after a rather lengthy absence. My explanation is that I've been paralyzed in a continuing limbo, hovering between two writing projects, one of which is historical and the other not. But I've decided that's no excuse not to continue posting, if I can think of something to say that's relevant to the ostensible themes of this blog -- history, fiction, and the interplay between the two.
I've thought of something that's relevant to one of them, anyway: history. Last week the New York Times ran a piece about a documentary editing project--an edition of the papers of the British philosopher Jeremy Bentham--that I found intriguing. I used to work on a documentary editing project myself--the Documentary History of the Supreme Court of the United States, 1789-1800, where I came across the letters that inspired my novel, A More Obedient Wife. Generally speaking, documentary editing is a slow, painstaking task that requires a keen eye for detail and a detective-like ability to make sense of illegible scrawls and fragmentary documents. At my project, it took us 30 years to get through the Court's first decade, and that's a mere blink of an eye compared to some projects: the Papers of Thomas Jefferson project published its first volume in 1950 and they're still working at it. And the Bentham Project itself began more than 50 years ago and is less than halfway through.
So the folks at the Bentham Project, based at University College London, had the idea of throwing open the transcription process to the general public. Some 40,000 original, handwritten Bentham documents have been put online, and anyone with an interest--or perhaps a masochistic streak--is free to take a crack at them. Given my 10 years of documentary editing experience, I thought it would only be a public service for me to give it a try. And, having viewed Bentham's clothed corpse some 35 years ago--it's kept on display at UCL in a glass case--I felt I had a personal connection to the man. Not to mention that he held unusually progressive views, for the early 19th century, on subjects like religion and women's rights.
I started with an "easy" document, figuring I'd breeze through it. I did manage to puzzle out a few words that had stumped whoever else had attempted to transcribe the document before me--the transcription project operates on a "wiki" model, with one person correcting the errors of those who have gone before, or perhaps adding to them. But, even though my last stint as a documentary editor ended only four years ago, I discovered that it's a whole new world out there in documentary-editing land--and in some respects, I suppose, a brave one.
Back in my day, we had all sorts of complex computer codes we had to enter to denote different typographical idiosyncrasies we wanted reproduced: strike-outs, superscripts, underlining and the like. We had a sheet of codes, most of which I managed to memorize after a few years. But nowadays there are convenient little icons at the top of the page--click on the question mark, for example, and your guess at whatever the hell Bentham was trying to say automatically gets the computer code for "questionable."
There's also the wonder of the "zoom" feature: click on a part of the document you want to get a closer look at, and all of a sudden it gets bigger. In my day we bent our face to the manuscript like some scribe of old, squinting and turning it in the light (okay, sometimes we used a magnifying glass).
On the other hand, it's harder to see the document as a whole and get a feel for the gist of it: it takes up only one part of the screen, with the other part reserved for your attempt at transcription. There are navigation controls that allow you to move around the document, but I've found them a little cumbersome. I'm getting better, but sometimes, for no apparent reason, the controls go careening away from me and I find myself involuntarily skittering over to the very edge of the document.
But the real question--raised in the Times article--is whether mere amateurs can make enough sense of the documents for their efforts to be valuable. (And the Times article itself seems to have opened the floodgates: it reported that there were 350 people registered to be transcription volunteers, and since then the number has zoomed to over a thousand.) I'm not exactly an amateur, and even I had trouble deciphering much of the "easy" document (although I imagine it will get easier as I get more familiar with Bentham's handwriting). Frankly, I think I'm better than the average bear at reading archaic handwriting, and I have to wonder how accurate other people's transcriptions will be. As I mentioned, in the three brief transcription sessions I've done so far, I discovered a number of errors.
Of course, members of the Bentham Project staff will go over all the volunteer transcriptions before any of them get published--and they're surely in a better position than I am to decide if the volunteers are a help or a hindrance. It may well be better to start with a flawed transcription than to start with nothing.
And why not let whoever is interested see the raw documents themselves, rather than waiting decades for a published edition? There may be people out there who discover--as I did, over 20 years ago now--that there's nothing more absorbing than puzzling over a document written 200 years ago, tracing the author's mental processes through his or her deletions and additions, becoming familiar with individual quirks of handwriting, enjoying the satisfaction of making a coherent sentence out of something that at first glance appears to be random marks on a piece of paper.
If it turns out I'm actually furthering the progress of the Bentham Papers, I'll be delighted to hear it. But honestly, I'll probably keep going back to the project website just for the sheer fun of doing it.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Friday, September 24, 2010
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.
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.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
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.
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.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
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.
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.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
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.
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.
Monday, July 5, 2010
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.
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.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
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.
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.
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