USA > Illinois > Cook County > Chicago > The Congress of Women : held in the Woman's building, World's Columbian exposition, Chicago, U.S.A., 1893 : with portraits, biographies and addresses > Part 79
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Did time permit, I might tell you of our marvelous needle-women, our societies of church and charity workers, our " King's Daughters;" our missionaries, led by that human saint, Sybil Carter; our farmers, with Miss Hannah Burgin in the van; our elo- cutionists, all honor to Mrs. Bessie Miller Oton; our kindergartens, with the pioneer Mrs. S. S. Higgins and Miss Sallie Adams in the field; our physicians, our journalists and lecturers. I should tell you how the crowd of curious auditors flocked to hear Mrs. Lula Adams Nield, the first W. C. T. U. speaker in the region; how her modest and quiet voice left no room for frivolous comment. How the white ribbons fluttered everywhere to the rally of Mrs. Frances E. Beauchamp. Your president, Mrs. Potter Palmer, whose energy and tact, whose wisdom and philanthropy, made the Woman's Building possible, is a Kentucky woman; your chairman, Mrs. James P. Eagle, who has presided here with such winning grace and marked intelligence, is a Kentucky woman. These need no comment; I could not add to their fame. But a volume would scarce hold them all. We have no wish to be manlike. We care not to lose our right of pleasing. We do not ask liberty of our individuality. Fathers and brothers are helping us, and husbands do not all hold back. Society looks kindly on, and the rich girl and the poor girl walk side by side where only dollars and cents constitute the distinction between. And when voice and pen and brain and hand shall have filled our boundaries with enlightened views, with the education of the masses, with happi- ness at the fireside and with universal respect, then only shall it be said of Kentucky women, "They have done what they could." Then only may we fold our draperies about us in a painless sleep, and smilingly say-
" My old Kentucky home, good-night."
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MEMBERS OF THE BOARD OF LADY MANAGERS.
1. Mrs. Mary A. Cochran, Texas.
4. Mrs. K. S. G. Paul, Virginia.
7. Mrs. W. Newton Linch, West Virginia.
10. Mrs. William P. Lynde, Wisconsin.
2. Mrs. Ellen M. Chandler, Vermont.
5. Mrs. Melissa D. Owings, Washington.
8. Miss Lily Irene Jackson, West Virginia.
11. Mrs. F. H. Harrison, Wyoming.
3. Mrs. John Sergeant Wise, Virginia.
6. Mrs. Alice Houghton, Washington.
9. Mrs. Flora Beall Ginty, Wisconsin.
12. Mrs. Frances E. Hale. Wyoming.
JUSTICE AND FREEDOM FOR ALL .* By PRINCESS M. SCHAHOVSKOY.
A few days ago I was asked to speak on the following quotation: "Justice and Freedom for All are Far More Desirable than Pedestals for a Few." I was unable to do it then, but some friends having read the few ideas I had put on paper I was particularly asked to read them to you this morning.
Freedom and justice for everyone indeed. Is there anything more desirable than that, if those who claim it know how to take advantage of these two privileges? Freedom is the first condition of each step of advancement, and justice the first duty of those who wish to avail themselves of that advance- ment.
And so freedom and justice become the condi- tions of our improvement; but improvement, as all development, goes step by step. These steps of human development are the hard and arduous con- quest of a few who give the example, and thus become the leaders and helpers of those who are more weak and have no strength to raise by them- selves. The highest steps of this ladder of progress we poor mortals of the crowd call pedestals, and for- get that they are but footsteps for a farther way up.
Now, if freedom and justice are the only condi- PRINCESS M. SCHAHOVSKOY. tions of advancement, pedestals are the only way to its gradual accomplishment. Yes, pedestals for a few are abnormal, indeed; not because they should not exist, but because as every privilege they should become the aim of everybody. So let us not regret that they exist. Let us never put a man on a pedestal, but whenever he himself has risen higher than us, then let us strain every effort to ourselves rise to his level.
The true way of hero worship is not to stay in passive contemplation and burn the incense of adulation where envy, alas, often mixes its nauseous fumes, but to lift ourselves in a joyful movement of admiration and thankfulness to the side of him who showed us one of the ways of perfection.
For my part there is no pedestal that I consider so high that its height could pre- vent me from looking up to it, no man so perfect that his perfection could intimidate my imitating him, and no man so low that he should give up all hope of rising him- self to reach a pedestal.
Princess M. Schahovskoy, maid of honor to Her Imperial Majesty, the Empress of Russia, was the Ruesian representa- tive at the Congress of Representative Women which convened in Chicago, Ill., in 1893, Russian Commissioner for Woman's Work, exhibited in the Woman's Building at the Columbian Exposition, and Judge of Awards in the Fine Arts Department of same Exposition. Princess Schahovskoy is a sculptor of ability, and is devoted to art and literature. In social circles she surrounds herself with many admirers by her genial, affable and charming deportment.
*The full title under which the address was delivered was " Justice and Freedom for All are Far More Desirable than Pedestals for a Few."
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WOMAN IN MUSIC. By MRS. GASTON BOYD).
It is interesting in tracing the development of woman along the line of music and the change of sentiment with regard to her capabilities, to consider for a few moments some of the thoughts contained in a work written upon this subject in the year 1880. This writer says: "The subject naturally divides into two heads; first, the influence of women in encouraging the great com- posers to labor and inspiring them in the production of their finest works; second, the relation of woman to the performance of vocal and instrumental music." The writer states that the latter branch does not re- quire special attention, hardly more than culogistic reference in the face of well-known queens of song. But of the former branch he says: "More than one immortal work of music may be traced to the stead- fast love and thoughtful care of woman in the quiet duties of home life." This is emphatically truc in the same sense as in a certain response once given by Mrs. Ormiston Chant. After one of her characteristic addresses upon the rightfulness of opening to woman every avenue of employment or advancement she cared to enter, a man of surly aspect and illiterate speech arose and made objection to the arguments MRS. GASTON BOYD). and statements made by Mrs. Chant. He said woman was not so intelligent and capable as man; if she were, why had she never produced a Shakespeare? To which Mrs. Chant responded: "She has; if she didn't, who did?" It is in this sense only that the writer to whom refer- ence is made seems to think it possible that woman can bear any relation to music as a composer. He says: "The attachments of love, the bonds of friendship, the endcar- ments of home, have played an important part in shaping the careers of the great composers and in giving color, form and direction to their music." No one would question the truth of this, but the application falls far short when it attaches the bonds and endearments only to the woman and the noble career to the man.
In reading his work, were it not for the introduction of technical terms, one might easily conceive he was reading the old and half-forgotten theories why woman could never succeed as a doctor, as a lawyer, as a banker, as a voter, or in any of the many avenues of life where woman has demonstrated her ability to succeed.
Listen to his reasons why woman can never succeed as a composer: " She lives in emotion and acts from emotion. When the emotions lose their force with age, her
Mrs. Gaston Boyd was born in London, England. Her father was a descendant of William the Conqueror and her mother of the House of Rutlands. She was educated while young by eminent private teachers. Upon the death of her parents she came to America, was graduated from the Boston Conservatory of Music, from Mt. Carroll Seminary, and after- ward studied with Madam Hall, Lyman Wheeler and Charles R. Adams. In London her studies were continued with Madam Abbott and with Randigger. She has traveled extensively in this country and abroad. She married Gaston Boyd, M. D., of Newton, Kan., in 1387, resigning her position as head of the Department of Music in Bethany College, Topeka, Kan., upon that event. She was appointed member of the World's Advising Council of Music, and president of the Kansas World's Fair Music Board. She isa professor of music, director of music in the public schools, director of the Newton Musical Union and director of St. Mathews Church choir. Mrs. Boyd is a member of the Episcopal Church. Her postoffice address is Newton, Kan.
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musical powers weaken. Man controls his emotions and can give an outward expres- sion of them. In woman they are the dominating element. There is another phase of the feminine character which may bear upon the solution of this problem, and that is the inability of woman to endure the discouragements of the composer and to battle with the prejudice and indifference, and sometimes with the malicious opposition of the world that obstructs his progress. If her triumph could be instant; if work after work were not to be assailed, scoffed at and rejected; if she were not liable to personal abuse, to the indifference of her own sex on the one hand and masculine injustice on the other, there would be more hope of her success in composition."
One quality heretofore accorded to the feminine nature is that of endurance. If we go back to the history of the early Christian Church we surely find no indication of the want of endurance on the part of woman. One has but to look out over the world to-day to realize that it is the woman rather than the man who is distinguished in the exercise of this qualification. Indeed, the progressive spirit of woman often meets with the rebuff that it is man's province to achieve, woman's to endure.
If we wish an instance of one who through scoffs, discouragements, indifference of her own sex on the one hand and masculine injustice on the other, where can we find a more shining example of the steadfast and courageous pursuit of the object to be attained than in the life and labors of Susan B. Anthony? It can hardly be said of her that she lives in emotion and acts from emotion.
At what age the emotions are supposed to lose their force is not stated; but he is a manly man, indeed, who, of the years of Miss Anthony, evinces as great interest and activity in the vital questions of the day; in the future of the young people of our land; in the present good of the humblest of her sisters. It may be urged that Miss Anthony is an exception. So are the great composers exceptions who are said to require, pre-eminently, these elements of character. But in so far as these character- istics are necessary to the ability of musical composition in its highest form, woman is more richly endowed than her brother, man.
Still another reason why woman can never succeed as a composer is that woman reaches results mainly by intuition. "Her susceptibility to impressions and her finely tempered organization enable her to feel and perceive where man has to reach results by the slow process of reason." You who have heard Rev. Anna Shaw illustrate in her inimitable way the difference of reaching a result by reason or by intuition will enjoy this illusion.
Acknowledging the list of female composers found in the appendix of his work, this writer asserts: "But of all the works written by these numerous composers, hardly one is known to the lyric stage today," and that the indisputable reason there- for is, that having had equal advantages with men, they have failed as composers. Inasmuch as this is found in a revised edition of the work published last year, the entire statement is open to question. The defense of our sisters may safely be left to their own achievements. An argument against their ability is as interesting read- ing at this date as was the elaborate proof published years ago that an ocean steam- ship was an impossibility ; which publication was brought from England to these shores in the impossible steamship.
No; it is to the assertion relative to the equal conditions that your attention is called. It is that, having had equal advantages with men, they have failed. Let us find, if we can by our female intuition, the masculine reasoning through which he establishes such a conclusion. He says: "It is a curious fact that nearly all the great music of the world has been produced in humble life and has been developed amid the environments of poverty and in the stern struggle for existence." "The enduring music has been the child of poverty, the outcome of sorrow, the apotheosis of suffering." "In this sphere of life, where music seems to have had its origin, the lot of woman is bounded by homely but unremitting cares. Her existence is mainly devoted to the same tedious routine of labor from the rising to the setting sun" (he might well have added several more hours; the birth and rearing of children, sickness,
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nursing, care of family often make her hours of labor from sun to sun again), " which has few intervals of relaxation, certainly no leisure for musical effort. Its demands are so exacting that she has neither time nor disposition for theoretical application which musical composition requires." In this birthplace of the higher forms of musi- cal composition the writer affirms that woman is so hampered by labor and excessive family care, that no time and no spirit is possible for effort were she ever so capable in this direction. It is she who must prepare the scant food; who must clothe the children with a scanty provision of cloth; who not only shares the food she needs for her subsistence, but gives from her own veins the nourishment for his child. Our female intuition would lead us to the conclusion that this masculine reasoning is quite adverse to the stated prevision. Hle acknowledges that Sebastian Bach was the son of a hireling musician; Beethoven's father a dissipated singer; that Cherubini came from the lowest and poorest ranks of life; that Gluck was a forrester's son; llaydn's father, a wheelright; Händel, the son of a barber; Rossini's father, a miserable, strolling horn-player, who led a wild, Bohemian life; Schubert was the son of a poor schoolmaster; Schumann, a bookseller's son; Verdi, the son of a peasant; Wagner's father, a petty municipal officer of little account as a man.
Now, these dissipated singers, these barbers, bakers and basket makers; these hireling musicians, by a process of reasoning known only to the masculine mind, have transmitted to their sons the stanch faithfulness to a high purpose in life, the unswerving patience to endure poverty, discouragement, scoffs and bitter disappoint- ments necessary to the composer
Female intuition sees with lightning glance the life of the wife tied to these loose- principled, dissipated, shiftless fathers of our great composers. It sees the crushed hopes, the privations, the toil, the endurance; the birth of the holy mother-love while yet the child be not in her arms; the heavenly love awakening in her soul as the infant lies upon her bosom. All the poetry, all the passion, all the suffering of her poor heart given day by day to the child she has borne; perchance, the greatest hap- piness she has known, the pitiful pride of her heart in the notes of the strolling singer or the dissipated horn-blower, the father. If the lives and hearts of the mothers of our great composers were laid bare it might not be difficult to trace the primary source of their genius and poetic temperament.
In reading the lives of our great composers, one is struck with the determination with which the boys were urged or compelled to earnest study, to incessant practice, to the development in every possible way of the talent evinced; but we do not read of the same parental anxiety and effort for the girls of the family. Nor can one believe that with the same pre-natal conditions, with similar environment, the musical genius was always wanting in the daughter. But custom, tradition, public sentiment, all required the subservience of the girl to a simple domestic life, and the discourage- ment of any efforts toward a place for herself in the world. As these old traditions lose their power, as custom recedes before the onward march of achievement, as pub- lic sentiment is revolutionized by the more numerous womanly woman who discovers she has brain as well as bread-making ability, it may be thought worth while by par- ents to make equal sacrifice and bestow as great effort to keep her well on the road toward the highest point of possible development. Until this is done woman will not have had cqual advantages with man, nor can her ability as a composer of music be judged from the same standpoint.
It is not necessary in this paper to give a list of the women who have achieved success as composers of music, nor to relate what works have been written by them. It is of more importance to direct our thoughts toward the future and discern what may be done toward the highest development of the creative power.
It has been said that woman would possibly have flooded the world with harmony, as she has with song, if music were only an object of the perceptions or a matter of instinct; if it simply addressed itself to the senses; if it were but an art composed of ravishing melody; of passionate outbursts; of the attributes of joy, grief, exaltation
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and vague, dreamy sensations without any determinate ideas; but music is all this and more, for these are only effects. It is a science which, in its highest form, is " merci- lessly logical and unrelentingly mathematical." One must toil unceasingly and patiently continue the most rigid application to achieve freedom in the correct expression of poetical thought. Theoretical enigmas, mathematical problems, must be mastered, and the same intellectual activities must be brought to bear as in the acquisition of any other exact science. The unbeliever in woman's ability says: " For these and many other reasons growing out of the peculiar organization of woman, the sphere in which she moves, the training she receives and the duties she has to fulfill, it does not seem that woman will ever originate music in its fullest and grandest har- monic forms." But we who believe in her, say, if her sphere revolves in the atmos- phere of fashion, dress, display, society; if her musical training be to fit her for social distinction or professional notoriety; if her duties be such as will limit her freedom or opportunities for the highest development of her powers, then we may look in vain for the materialization of her innate capabilities. That the physical force, the mind, the soul, necessary for this consummation is given to woman, as well as to man, we can not doubt. When mothers come to regard a musical education for their daughters as something more serious than a drawing-room accomplishment, something highcr than a stage attraction, then we may look for that environment, that attachment of love, that bond of friendship, the endearments of home which will play an important part in shaping the career of woman in Music.
THE TEMPTED WOMAN.
By MRS. ISABEL WING LAKE.
When a detached corps of " Wellington's " army sent a message to him, asking for reinforcements, the reply came back, "None to spare!" Later the general rode down to cheer them by his presence, and the shout arose, " There's the commander himself; better than a whole battalion!" I have been laboring for the past six years among the " tempted women " of Chicago, but of late, for a few months at least, I have been presenting this great matter (great in point of numbers, great in density of sin, great in the need of this suffering class), to the churches, and asking for reinforcements-Christian women as workers in this deserted field. But again and again have I been met by the response, "None to spare, none to spare!" until I have had to look up and confess, "Oh, my Father, Thou art better than a whole battalion, and I will leave with Thee this band of Christian women, to have planted in their hearts a hunger so deep and strong to see this awful social cancer wiped out of our land, that ere long they will join the ranks!" Why is it, oh, my sisters, that this branch of work in the vineyard is so spurned, so ignored by the Church of God?
As I look upon this grand assembly of represent- MRS. ISABEL WING LAKE. ative women I wonder how many of them have ever spent an hour-one single hour-of their lives in digging out from the débris of super- stition, rebellion, lying, theft, swearing, drinking, and often murder, these misguided, imprisoned sisters of ours; prisoners often to the chain of circumstances that they can not break without our help, and they will sink lower each day if we do not throw out the life-line. Jean Ingelow says, " What if she did strive to mend and none of you believed her strife? What if this sinner wept and none of you comforted her?" I feel there is no sin in the category of crimes that carries with it such a trail of woes. I do not wonder that the Bible says, "Whoredom and wine take away the heart;" and need we question when we find it a difficult matter to redeem an aban- doned woman when the very heart is caten out? I have asked myself when in the presence of one of these poor besotted creatures if there were left anything but the animal. I did not know where to touch her and, indeed, I never can, with any per- manent results, until that woman has a new heart to commence life with, in which there can be no seed of the old appetite left; and God must do it, I can not. I do not know any other way. I have followed cunningly devised plans of wiser heads; I have run after the methods of institutions of reform; I have joined myself to the philan-
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Mrs. Isabel Wing Lake is a native of Monroe, Mich. She was born in the year 1851. Her parents were Judge Warner Wing and Eliza Anderson Wing. She was educated at Monroe Female Seminary, and graduated in a collegiate course after- ward. She also attended one year a German school. She has traveled throughout America. She married Charles C. Lake, of Chicago, in 1877. Her special work has been in the interest of tempted women. Her principal literary works are varied newspaper contributions. The aim of Mrs. Lake's life is to make an open door for erring women, so that the victim of impnrity and of drink may know that there is womanly tenderness and help awaiting her-the comforts of home and the prayerful counsels of true friends, who are interested in the fullness of their souls in her eternal salvation. In religions faith Mrs. Lake is a Baptist. Her postoffice address is No. 3441 ('alumet Avenue, Chicago, Ill.
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thropic leaders, but to no avail, only to find myself afloat, with these poor, drowning sufferers clutching for life to my garments; and I could not pull them to shore. But today I am glad, so glad to tell you we have found a way, the only one I have ever seen, to really rescue from a life of shame these girls, and that is to love them. Yes, we may love their sin to death. That great man, Talfourd, delivering his final verdict to the jury, in these dying words said: "What the masses want is not kindness, but sympathy." In my efforts at one time to point a frenzied woman up to better things, she said to me: " Mrs. Lake, if you can, go from shore to shore and tell the people the way to save us is to love us." I believe this to be the magic key to success in the work.
The life in Chicago does not differ materially from that in New York, St. Louis, Denver, San Francisco, etc. In Leadville I found it carried on more openly than elsewhere. In Washington, with "principalities and powers," it is rampant. But I have felt so earnestly that if the Church of God would everywhere put her hand upon it as a part of her " home missionary " work, its downfall would be sure. They say to me, "they never stand;" "so few are rescued." This very argument is accusative. Drop the question, oh Church of the living Christ, because it is not solved, because it is a most difficult one to handle? No, no! If this post is held by the arch-enemy of our souls, may it not be for the very reason of our inactivity in the matter? Are we guiltless then of the blood of our sister in the gutter? Is it none of our business that she lies groveling there? Let the church bombard these forts and take them all for God, and at any cost, each church sending one woman, at least, into this work to report the awful condition of things to the Christian women of our country, willingly ignorant of the entrapping snare, and they will not longer attire themselves in flotsam and jetsam, meeting once a month to regulate work for mission workers hundreds of miles away; but would themselves, with ungloved hands, be active mis- sionaries; not deserting foreign fields-oh no, do not misunderstand me-but do this first, and then know better how to feel for our far-away co-laborers.
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