"You Must Remember This"

If you aren't already listening, I want to pop in quick and recommend the podcast "You Must Remember This" hosted by Karina Longworth.  It's a podcast about Hollywood, mostly old and golden age, but some a bit newer.  It's one of my favorite podcasts and a new season just started last week.  There's a lot to catch up on and enjoy if you're not already listening, though!

Part of why I mention this now is that today's episode is about Olive Thomas, the subject of my first posts on this blog (Part 1, Part 2).  The episode is found here.  Enjoy!

Cléo de Mérode

Well, I’m getting away from Icelandic topics now.  I may get back to some, we’ll see, but I keep finding subjects that interest me and I want to learn more about and share with someone, so we’re moving on.  I follow a lot of historical pages or just interesting pages on facebook, and a lot of times there are brief articles about things that sound interesting, so I save them to remember for later, possibly for a post of my own.  Today’s topic was found in that way.  I don’t remember exactly where I saw something about Cléo de Mérode (maybe 5-minute History?), but she sounded interesting and has a unique look, so here we are.

Cléo de Mérode, called Lulu by her parents, was born Cléopatra Diane de Mérode on September 27, 1875, probably in Paris, but maybe in Biarritz or Bordeaux.  Her father, Carl (or Karl), was an Austrian landscape painter, and “styled himself Freiherr von Merode (Baron Merode) and claimed descent from the old and noble Belgian family of de Merode” and “Her mother was a former Viennese actress” (1).

When Cléo was eight, she was sent away to study dance.  She made her professional debut at age eleven, and by age sixteen she was famous - but not necessarily for her dance.  Cléo became famous for her hairstyle.  In the late 1880s and early 1890s, women wore their hair piled on top of their heads, maybe with the front portion parted, maybe with bangs, but all up mostly away from their face.  Cléo wore her hair low in back, and parted right down the middle, hair covering her ears (this led to a rumor at one point that she didn’t even have ears).  This different hairstyle made her famous and was adopted by admirers.

1880s hairstyle

1890s hairstyle

Cléo had her image on postcards, playing cards, you name it.  She was featured in “Behind the Scenes at the Opera” at the Musée Grévin, even though she was only a member of the coryphee! (2)  (I had to look up what the coryphee is, as I don’t know dance.  A member of the coryphee is “a member of a ballet company who dances usually as part of a small group and who ranks below the soloists” [3].)

Cléo, by Vazquez, and the sculpture, La Danseuse

Alexandre Falguière used Cléo’s likeness in his sculpture La Danseuse (The Dancer) (now at the Musée d’Orsay).  He claimed, or at least there were rumors, that the sculpture was modeled from her body, but “facing a public scandal, she claim[ed] she only lent her features to the sculpture’s face” (4).  In addition to this sculpture, Cléo had her portrait done by Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Charles Puyo, Alfredo Muller, and Giovanni Boldini.  She was photographed by Felix Nadar and other “illustrious photographers of the day” (5).

In 1896, King Léopold II of Belgium went to the ballet in Paris and saw Cléo perform.  He became completely enchanted with her, leading to gossip that she was his mistress.  The king already had two children with a rumored prostitute, so this association with the king damaged Cléo’s reputation.  Despite this, or maybe because of it in a way, Cléo was still able to become an international star.

In 1897 Cléo travelled to the United States, appearing for a month at Koster and Blat’s in New York.  Her appearance was heavily anticipated, but her performance was disappointing.  “The press was unkind in reviewing her performances, praising her beauty but saying that she could not dance or act” (6).  Despite the letdown, Cléo still made over forty times her regular monthly Parisian salary.

Cléo continued her tour, continuing to various countries around the globe.  She danced for King Chulalenghorn of Siam, doing a Siamese style dance with Parisian highlights.  She became popular in Austria and Germany, so much so that a character in the German movie Frauen der Leidenschaft was based on her.  In Vienna, Austria, she caught the attention of Gustav Klimt (this relationship is fictionalized for the 2006 movie, Klimt).  Back in Paris, Cléo took a risk and performed at the Folies Bergère, earning her a whole new following.  In 1902, she went to England for the first time, performing various national dances at the Alhambra.  In 1904 she toured Sweden, Norway, and Denmark.

Cléo kept dancing until her early fifties.  She retired to Biarritz, where she gave dance lessons until she was in her eighties.  Through this time, as she was growing older, she sculpted small figurines of her own, and sold them.  In 1955, she published her autobiography, Le Ballet de ma vie (The Dance of my Life).

Also in 1955, Cléo took Simone de Beauvoir to court and won.  Cléo sued her for “wrongly describing Cleo in public as a prostitute who had taken an aristocratic-sounding stage name as self-promotion.  Cleo’s defence was that she was a professional dancer and member of the old, noble, and distinguished de Merode family” (7).  While Cléo did win, she only won one franc in damages because “the judge found that Cleo had permitted the rumors during the course of her career for their publicity value” (8).  The judge did also order that Cléo’s name would be struck from all future editions of de Beauvoir’s The Third Sex.

Cléo never married and never had any children.  There were rumors of her engagement to various famous and/or rich men throughout her life, but none were true.  She did have two romances in her life, but both ended tragically; one when her lover died from typhoid, and the other left her for another woman.

Cléo de Mérode died in 1966.  She is buried in Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, with her mother.  (She lived with her mother until 1899, when her mother died.)  There is a likeness of Cléo in mourning over the joint tomb.

1, 2, 6, 8 - Cleo de Merode (1875-1966)

3 - coryphée

4 - Cléo de Mérode (1875-1966)

5 - Cléo de Mérode

7 - Cleo de Merode La Belle Epoque’s Beauty

Aud the Deep-Minded

            Today I start a new job – by the time you’re reading this I’ll be half way through my day!  The new job is regular hours, so it shouldn’t affect my ability to do this blog too much.  I won’t be able to do research at work anymore, but that’s about it, and with regular hours I’ll be able to budget my time to keep this up regularly.  I’m really excited to start this new job and I think that will help create excitement throughout the rest of my activities. J

            Today’s subject is another in our Icelandic mini-series (possibly the last entry, I’m not sure yet).  We have a woman this week, but there isn’t a whole lot of real information about her, so this will be relatively short.  Also, not really any images…  I found one picture related, but that’s it.  She is mentioned in a number of Sagas though, so you can always read about her more in those.

            Auður djúpúðga Ketilsdóttir, also known as Aud the Deep Minded, Unn, Aud Ketilsdatter, or Unnur Ketilsdottir, was a ninth century settler of Iceland.  Her marks are still visible in Iceland, which will be mentioned later.  Other than ninth century, we’re not exactly sure when she lived.  The only concrete date I found was that she settled in Iceland around 892 (1); we don’t know exactly how old she was then, but she had adult grandchildren by then, so she had to be fairly old.  Before this, though, she had quite a life.

            Aud was the second daughter of Ketill Flatnose, a Norwegian Viking military commander.  Ketill fled “Norway for Scotland to escape the tyranny of King Harald Fairhair” (2).  Aud married Olaf (or Oleif) the White, a son of King Ingjald, the self-proclaimed King of Dublin.  Aud and Olaf were the parents of Thorstein the Red.  Olaf was likely killed in battle; at any rate, Aud and Thorstein went to the Hebrides.  Thorstein conquered most of Northern Scotland and became a Viking chieftain.  Other chieftains plotted against Thorstein, though, and betrayed him and killed him in battle.

            When Aud heard about Thorstein’s death, she secretly commissioned a Knarr to be built – a ship generally used for Atlantic crossings.  When the ship was completed, Aud sailed to Orkney and then on to Iceland.  She commanded twenty to thirty men on the ship, and was “respected, capable, independent and strong-willed” (3).  In addition to Aud and the men, the ship also helps prisoners.  When they arrived in Iceland, Aud freed these men; these freed-men had a status between slave and free-born and had limited rights and abilities.  Aud gave these men land to farm, though.

            Aud mostly claimed areas in Western Iceland for her and those with her, especially around Búðardalur. Many places in this area still have the names that relate to Aud.  Breiðafjörður, Breakfast Headland, is where Aud stopped to eat breakfast.  Kambsnes, Comb Headland, is where she once lost a comb.  Krosshólaborg is a large, prominent hill where Aud erected crosses, and where a modern cross is today. (4)  Krosshólaborg is important in Aud’s story.  Aud was a baptized Christian and is credited with bringing Christianity to Iceland.

            Aud was one of the first great Viking matriarchs.  When all her male relatives died, she didn’t let this stop her; she did what she wanted to do and was successful at it.  Because of her wise actions she got the moniker “Deep minded”.  Her descendants gave us her stories through the sagas, making her an important and relevant woman.  Aud is featured in the Landnámabók, Njáls Saga, Laxdæla Saga, Eyrbyggja Saga, Eiríks Saga Rauða, and Grettis Saga.

1, 2, 4 - Dalir - The Valleys and Aud the Deep-Minded

3 - Aud the Deep-Minded

Violet Oakley

            Back in 2010 my family took a trip to Philadelphia.  On the way we stopped in Harrisburg and went to the Capitol building (we’d go to any capitol building we could when on vacation).  One of the first things you notice about the capitol is the gorgeous green dome.  When you enter the building it’s just as gorgeous.  A big part of what makes Pennsylvania’s capitol special is the murals throughout.  The murals were done by Violet Oakley, the first American woman to receive a public mural commission.

            Violet Oakley was born on June 10, 1874 in Bergen Heights, New Jersey (her birthplace is often listed as Jersey City; Bergen Heights was part of Jersey City, so neither is wrong).  Both of Violet’s grandfathers were members of the National Academy of Design, so when Violet wanted to be an artist, she had a relatively easy path.  In 1892 she started at the Art Students League of New York, and the following year went to study in England and France.  In France she studied at the Académie Montparnasse.

            In 1896 Violet returned to the US to study.  She began at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, but less than a year later she left and transferred to the Drexel Institute School of Illustration after the urging of her sister, Hester, who was already attending Drexel.  At Drexel, Violet studied under Howard Pyle.  At this time she also made friends with Elizabeth Shippen Green and Jessie Willcox Smith, other students of Pyle’s; Pyle nicknamed them the Red Rose Girls because they lived together at the Red Rose Inn (1).

            Violet had success as an illustrator.  She had pieces in The Century Magazine, Collier’s Weekly, St. Nicholas Magazine, and Women’s Home Companion.  At the time, about 88% of subscribers to magazines were women, and so there was a push to show the world from a woman’s perspective, and so women were hired as illustrators. (2).

Despite the success at illustration, and teaching her illustration, Pyle actually encouraged Violet to pursue large scale pieces and helped Violet get commissions for murals and stained glass pieces.  Violet still worked on small pieces when she could.

            Violet attributed her style to Pyle and to the Pre-Raphaelites.  Her art also showed a “commitment to Victorian aesthetics during the advent of Modernism” (3).  Violet had also become a Quaker in her adult life (she was raised Episcopalian), and wanted to showcase the Quaker ideals of pacifism, equality of races and sexes, and economic and social justice (4).

            In 1902, architect Joseph M. Huston chose Violet to create murals for the Governor’s Reception Room in the state capitol in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, purely on the basis of her talent (5).  Before this point, her only mural had been at the All Angels Episcopal Church in New York City.  Violet admired William Penn’s utopian vision for Pennsylvania, and wanted to highlight this.  She travelled to Europe to study about Penn’s life.  The murals in the Reception Room took Violet over four years, and highlight her talents as well as her interest in history.  Violet would do fourteen murals total for the Reception Room, and 43 murals in total in the Capitol building.

            In 1903, while she was working on these murals, Violet joined Christian Science.  While she had been in Florence, Violet had her asthma cured through prayer and so joined Christian Science.  She was a member of the Second Church of Christ, Scientist in Philadelphia from its founding in 1912 until her death in 1961.  In 1939, Violet even illustrated a poem by Mary Baker Eddy (the founder of Christian Science) in the style of illuminated manuscripts.

            In 1911, Violet was working with Edwin Austin Abbey on the Senate Chamber and Supreme Court Rooms at the Capitol, when Abbey died.  Due to her talent and work with Abbey, Violet was chosen to finish Abbey’s work.  This work took Violet nineteen years, over which time she completed the murals, six illuminated manuscripts, and a book about the murals.

            After her work at the Pennsylvania Capitol, Violet did a mural at the League of Nations Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland; the Henry Memorial Library at the Chestnut Hill Academy in Philadelphia; and the First Presbyterian Church in Germantown in Philadelphia (6).

            Throughout the rest of her life lived on and off with the Red Rose Girls and Henrietta Cozens.  Their home in Mt. Airy, PA was called Cogs from their initials (Cozens, Oakley, Green, and Smith).  The home was later called Cogslea, and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Violet Oakley Studio in 1977.  Her home and studio in Yonkers, NY, where she lived on and off from 1912 to 1915, are also in the National Register as Plashbourne Estate.

            Violet lived at Cogslea with her longtime companion Edith Emerson after the other Red Rose Girls moved out.  Edith was the director and president of the Woodmere Art Museum in Philadelphia.  They lived together for the rest of their lives.  Violet Oakley died on February 25, 1961.  She is buried in the Oakley family plot in Green-Wood Cemetery.

            While Violet’s work had fallen out of favor after World War II, there was renewed interest starting in the 1970s.  In 1996, Violet Oakley was inducted into the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame - the last of the Red Rose Girls to be inducted.  In June 2014, Violet’s grave was featured on the first gay themed tour of Green-Wood Cemetery (7).

1, 2, 3, 4, 7 - Violet Oakley

5 - Women of History: Violet Oakley

6 - Violet Oakley Historical Marker

Edmonia Lewis

            This is another person I found on Pinterest.  Edmonia Lewis’s caption reads “Mary Edmonia Lewis (ca. July 4, 1845 - ca. 1911) was the first African American and Native American woman to gain fame and recognition as a sculptor in the international fine arts world.  She was of African American, Haitian, and Ojibwe descent” (1).  If that doesn’t sound interesting, I don’t know what does.  When I started reading about her, she’s even more interesting, but with some said parts to her story as well.

            It’s not entirely clear where or when Mary Edmonia Lewis was born.  She claimed July 4, 1844 for her birthdate.  She could have been born any time between 1840 and 1845 though.  She was probably born around Greenbush, New York (now in either Rensselaer or East Greenbush).  It’s also possible she was born in Albany, New York or Newark, New Jersey.  In one interview she said she was born in Greenhigh, Ohio.  July 4, 1844 in Greenbush, New York seems to be the agreed upon date and place.

            Edmonia was the daughter of an African-American gentleman’s servant and a Mississauga Ojibwe/African-American weaver and craftswoman.  Both of her parents died when she was young.  Her mother’s two sisters took in Edmonia and her brother Samuel (who was about twelve years older than Edmonia).  At this point Edmonia was known as Wildfire, and Samuel went by Sunshine.  Edmonia lived with her aunts for about four years in the area near Niagara Falls.  She helped sell Ojibwe baskets and other souvenirs to the tourists that came to Niagara Falls.

            In 1852, Samuel went to California to look for gold.  He must have been fairly successful because he was able to send money back to Edmonia for a number of years.  Samuel helped pay for Edmonia’s education at the New York Central College in McGrawville.  This school was a Baptist, abolitionist school.  Edmonia started at NYCC in 1856 but left after just three years “when she was ‘declared to be wild’” (2).

            In 1859 Edmonia started at Oberlin College with help from her brother and some abolitionists.  Oberlin was one of the first schools to admit women and minority students.  At Oberlin, Edmonia began studying art, excelling at drawing.  It was around this time that Wildfire chose to be called Mary Edmonia Lewis; a few years later she would drop Mary and just be Edmonia Lewis.

            At Oberlin, Edmonia boarded with the Reverend John Keep and his wife.  Keep was an abolitionist and an advocate for coeducation.  Keep was also a member of Oberlin’s Board of Trustees.  At the Keep residence also lived two white students, Christine Ennes and Maria Miles.

            In the winter of 1862, Edmonia, Christine, and Maria were going out for a sleigh ride and had some spiced wine.  Edmonia didn’t have as much as the other girls and the other girls got very sick.  It was discovered that they had been poisoned with Spanish Fly.  They were very sick for a while, but recovered.  It was believed that Edmonia had poisoned them, but since they recovered, no charges were filed.  People in town were very upset by this though, and Edmonia was dragged off to a field and beaten.  Due to public pressure, she was charged with poisoning Christine and Maria.

            Oberlin defended Edmonia.  Her lawyer, John Mercer Langston, was shot by one of the sick girls’ fathers.  In court, Langston argued that “the contents of the girls’ stomachs had never been analyzed, and thus the charges against Lewis could not be proved” (3).  Witnesses testified against Edmonia, and she didn’t take the stand.  She was either acquitted or the case was dismissed, and so she was free to go.  (Langston “would go on to become the first African-American elected to public office in the United States and a founding dean of Howard Law School” (4).)

            The following year Edmonia was accused of stealing art supplies from Oberlin, but was acquitted of this charge as well.  The women’s principal would not allow Edmonia to register for classes for her last term, though, and so she never graduated.

            After leaving Oberlin, Edmonia debated returning to the Niagara Falls area and her mother’s tribe, but instead went to Boston.  The Keeps’ wrote to friends in Boston, introducing her to William Lloyd Garrison.  Garrison introduced Edmonia to area sculptors and writers.  She tried at least three people before she found a teacher willing to take her on in Edward A Brackett.  Brackett specialized in marble busts and had abolitionists for clients.  He lent Edmonia fragments of his pieces for her to copy and be critiqued.  It’s not clear what happened, but Brackett and Edmonia split and it was unamicable.

            In 1864, after a solo exhibition, Edmonia opened her own studio.  Her pieces at this time were mostly of abolitionists.  Her 1863 and 1864 subjects included John Brown and Robert Gould Shaw.  Shaw’s family purchased her bust of him, and the success of that allowed her to make plaster copies and sell them for $115 each.  She also made medallion portraits of Brown and Garrison.

            Between 1864 and 1871, Edmonia was written about by a number of prominent Boston and New York abolitionists.  While she wasn’t opposed to the coverage she was getting, Edmonia didn’t want false praise.  “She knew that some did not really appreciate her art, but saw her as an opportunity to express and show their support for human rights” (5).

            Due to the success of her bust of Shaw, and the medallions of abolitionists, Edmonia was able to save up enough to travel to Rome in 1866.  In Rome, the sculptor Hiram Powers gave her some room in his studio.  She also was supported by Charlotte Cushman, a Boston actress, and Maria Weston Chapman, an anti-slavery advocate.

            In Rome, Edmonia first began sculpting in marble.  She also started pieces about Emancipation, the first of which was Freedwoman and her Child.  She used the neoclassical forms and mediums to create pieces related to blacks and Native Americans.  Edmonia was profiled in London in Atheneum and Art-Journal.  In 1868, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow visited her in Rome and she sculpted his bust; his family praised the piece.  She had previously created pieces based on Longfellow’s poem, Song of Hiawatha, and it’s possible he saw these pieces when he visited her.

            Edmonia was rare in Rome at the time because she did all of her own work.  Most sculptors would create the model and then hire Italian workers to carve the marble.  Edmonia did all the carving herself, possibly “to forestall expected suggestions that a black woman could not possibly have created works of such skill and accomplishment” (6).  Because of this though, “fewer examples and duplicates of Lewis’s work survive than other sculptors of the period” (7).

In 1870 Edmonia had an exhibition in Chicago, and in 1871 in Rome.  In 1873, Edmonia received two $50,000 commissions.  Her studio became a tourist spot in Rome, being featured in guide books as a destination.  A big boost to her profile was having a piece in the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.  For this Edmonia created a 3,015 lb., full length sculpture of The Death of Cleopatra.  People weren’t sure about the subject matter dealing with death, but thousands still came to view it.

After Philadelphia, Cleopatra was exhibited in Chicago in 1878.  It was eventually purchased by a gambler and was used to mark the grave of a racehorse named Cleopatra.  After this it was put in storage and damaged by some Boy Scouts who painted the sculpture.  Eventually the piece was rediscovered by the Forest Park Historical Society and was donated to the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 1994.  Cleopatra was cleaned and restored to near-original condition.

As neoclassical art decreased in popularity, so did Edmonia.  She had become a Catholic in 1868 and continued to do work for Catholic patrons, but her profile was on the decline.  She travelled to the US for exhibits of her works.  In 1883 she created an altarpiece for a church in Baltimore.  Two of her pieces, Hiawatha and Phyllis Wheatley, were exhibited at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

In 1901, Edmonia moved to London, but after that little is known of her life.  She never married and never had children.  It was speculated that she died in 1911 in Rome, or in Marin County, California (she had travelled to San Francisco at some point).  But recent digging has discovered that she died on September 17, 1907 in Hammersmith Borough Infirmary in London from chronic kidney problems. 

Edmonia’s pieces had faded from memory, but many have been recently rediscovered.  As mentioned, Cleopatra is now at the Smithsonian.  Other pieces are at Howard University’s Gallery of Art.  In the early 2000s, a play about Edmonia, Wildfire: Black Hands, White Marble, was written by Linda Beatrice Brown.

1- Pinterest caption

2, 5 - Edmonia Lewis

3, 6 - Edmonia Lewis

4, 7 - The Life and Death of Edmonia Lewis

Zitkala-Ša

            Sorry for the delay in this.  I was sick, again, last weekend and spent most of the weekend asleep.  By Monday I was a bit better, but since I’d lost a few days, I didn’t have this ready then.   I like winter, but I’m over it this year.  I haven’t been sick this much in a while.

            I found today’s topic somewhere on Pinterest.  I have a board for historical women, and Zitkala-Ša is on it.  The pin came from a “this day in history” thing and it’s for her birthday (February 22).  The caption just says “On this date in 1876, Zitkala Sa was born on the Yankton Indian Reservation in South Dakota. She would go on to write several books, including American Indian Stories, co-write the first Native American opera, and found the National Council of American Indians” (1).  Not a whole lot of information, but just enough to get me interested and wanting to know more.

            Zitkala-Ša was born Gertrude Simmons on February 22, 1876 on the Pine Ridge Reservation, Yankton Sioux Agency, or Yankton Indian Reservation - depending on the source - in South Dakota.  She was the third child of Ellen Simmons, also called Taté Iyòhiwin (Every Wind or Reaches for the Wind), a Yankton Nakota Sioux.  Zitkala-Ša’s father was a European-American by the name of Felker, but he abandoned the family when Zitkala-Ša was young.

            Zitkala-Ša lived on the reservation until she was eight in “freedom and happiness” (2).  In 1884, missionaries arrived at the reservation and Zitkala-Ša was taken to White’s Manual Labor Institute in Wabash, Indiana.  White’s was a Quaker school set up to educate the poor and unfortunate so they could do better in life. 

            While Zitkala-Ša was only at White’s for three years, it was hugely important in her life.  In The School Days of an Indian Girl, published in 1921, Zitkala-Ša wrote of the “deep misery of having her heritage stripped away, when she was forced to pray as a Quaker and cut her traditionally long hair, and the contrasting joy of learning to read and write, and to play the violin” (3).

            In 1887, when Zitkala-Ša returned to the reservation, she didn’t feel like she belonged anymore, and so, in 1891, she returned to White’s, wanting more education.  White’s taught girls enough to become house-keepers, but Zitkala-Ša wanted more than that.  She learned piano and violin, and became the music teacher when the previous teacher resigned.  It was around this time that Gertrude Simmons adopted the name Zitkala-Ša (Red Bird) as a way of “asserting both her independence from and her ties to Sioux culture” (4).  Zitkala-Ša is a Lakota name, though she grew up speaking Nakota.  One source posits that choosing a Lakota name “might indicate a profound dislocation from her family origins, as well as a conscious choice” (5).

            In 1895, Zitkala-Ša received her diploma and her mother wanted her to come back home, but Zitkala-Ša went on to Earlham College in Indiana on a scholarship.  At Earlham, though, Zitkala-Ša felt isolated from her white fellow students.  The students only paid attention to her after she gave a speech, “Side by Side”, and won the Indiana State Oratorical Contest in 1896.  Zitkala-Ša did well at Earlham, but unfortunately had to leave just over a month before graduation due to illness.

            Around this same time Zitkala-Ša began compiling Native American legends.  She would translate them into Latin and then English, in the hopes of getting children to read them.  Compiling legends would become one of the focuses of Zitkala-Ša’s life.

            For her violin playing, Zitkala-Ša received a scholarship to the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, where she attended from 1897 to 1899.  In 1899, she took a position at Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania.  Zitkala-Ša taught music to the children, and “conducted debates on the treatment of Native Americans” (6).

            While employed by Carlisle, Zitkala-Ša played at the 1900 Paris Exposition with the school’s Indian Band.  At this time she also began writing about Native American life, getting published in Harper’s Monthly, Atlantic Monthly, and others.  These articles upset the higher-ups at Carlisle and so she was sent out West, ostensibly to recruit students, but more likely to remove her from the publishing centers in the United States.

            When Zitkala-Ša arrived back out West, she found her mother’s home in an awful state and her brother’s family living in poverty.  Additionally, there were white settlers on the lands that the Yankton Dakota had been given in 1877 through the Dawes Act (7).

            Zitkala-Ša returned to Carlisle after a while, but upon her return her conflicts with the founder of the school intensified.  She didn’t like that the school focused on assimilating Native students into white culture, and only trained its students for low-level jobs; the school assumed its students would return to where they had come from and that they wouldn’t need more than a basic education.  Carlisle also didn’t like her stories, calling them “worse than pagan” and “trash” (8).

            Due to her continued conflicts with Carlisle, Zitkala-Ša was dismissed from her position in 1901.  She had had an article published in Harper’s Monthly that year that told of a boy at the school who felt a loss of identity after his education.  After being dismissed, Zitkala-Ša returned home to Yankton, worried for her family.  Also at this time, the Native American stories and legends she had been compiling were collected and published in Old Indian Legends, commissioned by a Boston company.  Old Indian Legends was published to high acclaim; in 1919 she received a letter of praise for the book from Helen Keller.

            Upon returning to Yankton, Zitkala-Ša took a position as a clerk at the Bureau of Indian Affairs at Standing Rock Indian Reservation.  In 1902, Zitkala-Ša met Captain Raymond Talefase Bonnin; they married later that year.  Bonnin was raised Yankton Dakota as well, but was only one quarter to one half Dakota.  Shortly after marrying, Bonnin was transferred to Utah; they moved to the Uintah-Ouray Reservation where they lived for fourteen years, and where their only child, Raymond Ohiya Bonnin, was born.

            While in Utah, Zitkala-Ša met William F. Hanson, a professor at Brigham Young University.  Hanson was also a composer, and the two began a musical collaboration in 1910.  Based on a sacred Sioux ritual that the U.S. government had prohibited from being done on the Utah reservations, The Sun Dance Opera premiered in Vernal, Utah in 1913.  Zitkala-Ša wrote the libretto and the songs for the opera, the first opera co-written by a Native American.  In performances, Ute performers danced and played some parts, but all of the lead singing was done by white people.  The opera received much praise upon its premiere.  It was performed periodically by rural troupes over the years before premiering in New York in 1938.  The advertisements in New York only mentioned Hanson.

            While in Utah, Zitkala-Ša joined the Society of American Indians, which was formed in 1911.  She served as its secretary until 1916, and edited its journal, American Indian Magazine, from 1918 to 1919.  SAI members had to have Indian blood.  They were assimilationist, but also promoted Native American self-determination.  A main goal was to get full American citizenship for Native Americans.  (Towards the end of the twentieth century, SAI was criticized “as misguided in their strong advocacy of citizenship and employment rights for Native Americans.  Such critics believe that Native Americans have lost cultural identity as they have become more part of mainstream American society.” [9])

            Zitkala-Ša criticized the Bureau of Indian Affairs for prohibiting Native American children’s use of their native languages and cultural practices.  In the 1920s, Zitkala-Ša helped promote a pan-Indian movement to help get citizenship rights.  In 1924 the Indian Citizenship Act was passed, but it did not secure citizenship for all Native Americans.

            In 1926, Zitkala-Ša and her husband founded the National Council of American Indians.  This group, too, worked to unite all Native Americans in a hopes to get full citizenship rights through suffrage.  Zitkala-Ša served as NCAI’s president, speaker, and major fundraiser from its founding until her death.  When the group was revived in 1944, Zitkala-Ša’s work was dismissed.

            Zitkala-Ša died on January 26, 1938 in Washington, D.C.  She is buried in Arlington National Cemetery due to her husband’s service in World War One.  She is buried as Gertrude Simmons Bonnin.  There is a crater on Venus named Bonnin in her honor (all craters on Venus are named for women or have women’s names).

            It’s agreed that Zitkala-Ša had two major periods of work.  The first is from 1900 to 1904.  This period includes the Native American legends and her autobiographical pieces, showing the conflicts between her cultural traditions and assimilation into white culture.  Many of these pieces were published in Harper’s Monthly and Atlantic Monthly.  The second period is from 1916 to 1924.  These are her political works.  Zitkala-Ša and her family had moved to Washington, D.C., and Zitkala-Ša became increasingly political on behalf of Native Americans and women.

            Some of Zitkala-Ša’s most influential works are from this second period.  American Indian Stories was published in 1921.  She was also co-author of 1923’s Oklahoma’s Poor Rich Indians: An Orgy of Graft and Exploitation of the Five Civilized Tribes, Legalized Robbery.  Her co-authors were Charles H. Fabens, from the American Indian Defense Association, and Matthew K. Sniffen of the Indian Rights Association.  Oklahoma’s Poor Rich Indians exposed “the corrupt land allocation policies in place at the time in Oklahoma” (10).  This work “resulted in her appointment as an advisor to the U.S. government’s Meriam Commission of 1928, the findings of which eventually led to several important reforms” (11) and influenced Congress to pass the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934.

            Zitkala-Ša’s writings were “the first major literary pieces written by a Native American in English that deal with Native American culture and the process of assimilation from an Indian’s point of view” (12).  She’s so interesting.  I’m going to have to read some of her writings now, many of which are available online.      

1 - Pinterest caption

2, 3, 6, 7, 9 - Zitkala-Sa

4, 5, 8 - Zitkala-sa, Sioux Indian

10, 12 - Zitkala-Sa (Gertrude Simmons Bonnin)

11 - Zitkala-Sa, Encyclopædia Brittanica

Happy birthday, Alice Paul!

I lost track of time this week and don't have a post ready for today.  I will have one tomorrow, but in the meantime...

Happy birthday, Alice Paul!

The First Miss America

            I apologize for the complete silence here over the last couple weeks.  Just over two weeks ago I got sick and had been sleeping pretty much non-stop, causing me to miss the post on the 23^rd.  Last week, I was still sick and was also recovering from Thanksgiving, so last week I missed as well.  I should’ve said something, but… Too late now.  Sorry.

            I’ve been thinking of doing this person for a while now.  She came up when I was looking at Pinterest for neat old photos of people that might work.  I’d started research before I got sick, but hadn’t finished.  I’ve been finishing this week and came across a quote of hers that she “never cared to be Miss America.  It wasn’t my idea.  I am so bored by it all.  I really want to forget the whole thing” (1).  At that point I was running out of time for a post for today.  I stuck with her, but I admit it feels a little weird since I picked Margaret Gorman precisely because she was the first Miss America, and here I’m finding out she later didn’t like it…  So there’s information here about her, but also about the first year or so that “Miss America” existed.  Hopefully Margaret wouldn’t hate that so much.

            Margaret Gorman was born August 18, 1905.  She was the second child in her family; she had an older brother, and a younger brother and sister.  Her father, Michael J. Gorman, was the executive clerk to the Secretary of Agriculture (I’m not sure which one though).  Margaret’s family lived in Georgetown, in Washington, D.C., near Montrose Park.  She would continue to live in D.C. for her whole life.

            When Margaret was between her sophomore and junior years in high school at Western High School (now the Duke Ellington School of Arts), her photo was entered into a popularity contest run by the Washington Herald.  Margaret had blue eyes and blonde ringlets; her looks were compared to those of the actress Mary Pickford.  Margaret was chosen as one of the finalists for the Washington Herald’s contest, and, with the other finalists, was toured around the city before a winner was chosen.

            Margaret was chosen as Miss Washington, D.C., for 1921, “due to her athletic ability, past accomplishments, and outgoing personality” (2).  When she was notified that she’d won, and would be competing in a contest in Atlantic City, she was at a park playing marbles in the dirt.

            In 1920 Atlantic City had been trying to figure out how to keep tourists in the city after Labor Day, which was the traditional end to the summer holidays.  What the city came up with was the Atlantic City Pageant.  Miss Atlantic City, Ethel Charles, acted as the hostess for the pageant, a tradition that would continue for years.  Margaret was invited to the Second Annual Atlantic City Pageant as Miss Washington, D.C., to compete over the September 7^th and 8^th weekend.

            The Pageant was kicked off by a parade and the actual competition part of the weekend started “by the arrival of King Neptune on a barge that landed at the Atlantic City Yacht Club” (3).

Margaret was going to be competing in the “Inner-City Beauty” contest, competing against seven other finalists from cities in the northeastern United States.  The contestants for Miss Inner-City Beauty were “judged in stylish afternoon attire by the judges”, as well as by the public “who shared in fifty percent of the final score” (4).  The public crowded the contestants, asked them questions and tried to get to know them.  While this was definitely a beauty contest, personality did play a part when talking with the public.

One of the other titles up for grabs was “The Most Beautiful Bathing Girl in America”, so of course the contestants were in bathing attire.  Some of the contestants “violated a local modesty ordinance by appearing barelegged on the beach” (5).  Margaret, though, “wore dark, knee-high stockings and a chiffon bathing costume with a tiered skirt that came almost to her knees” (6).

For the announcement of a winner, the contestants were “escorted and presented on the stage of the Keith Theatre on the Garden Pier” (7).  There were multiple prizes being awarded in the Inner-City Beauty contest.  Miss Washington, D.C., Margaret, won the amateur prize, the Watkins Trophy; Miss South Jersey, Kathryn M. Gearon, came in second, winning one hundred dollars in gold.  There was also a professional prize awarded to the silent film actress, Virginia Lee, who was Miss New York.

Miss Washington, D.C., also won The Most Beautiful Bathing Girl in America.  With two titles under her belt, Margaret went on to win the grand prize for the Atlantic City Pageant, The Golden Mermaid Trophy.  She also was given a key to the city that she shared with King Neptune.

Upon winning, one of Margaret’s friends from school back in D.C. sent her a telegram, telling her “Congratulations.  Don’t get stuck up” (8).  Samuel Gompers, the president of the American Federation of Labor, also commented on her win, telling The New York Times “She represents the type of womanhood America needs – strong, red-blooded, able to shoulder the responsibilities of homemaking and motherhood.  It is in her type that the hope of the country rests” (9).

Since she had won the grand prize, Margaret was expected to defend her title the next year.  However, the Washington Herald had already named its new Miss Washington, D.C., for 1922, so Margaret could no longer use that title.  The titles she had won in Atlantic City (Miss Inner-City Beauty, Amateur and Most Beautiful Bathing Girl in America) were long, clunky titles.  The Atlantic City committee wanted something easier to call Margaret, and decided on Miss America.

This first Miss America title is funny.  Because of all the confusion over who had what title, and what those titles all were, causing confusion about what to call Margaret, Margaret was crowned 1921’s Miss America at the end of her year, in 1922.  This made her not only the first Miss America, but the only Miss America to receive her crown at the end of her reign.

Margaret did compete in 1922, defending this new, but yearlong, title.  She was still popular with the crowds, who still compromised half the vote.  However, Margaret didn’t successfully defend her title, losing her crown to Miss Ohio, Mary Campbell.  Mary Campbell went on to successfully defend her title in 1923, making her the only two time winner of Miss America.

As well as being the first, Margaret set other Miss America records.  She was just 5’1” and 108lbs, making her the smallest Miss America winner.  (In 1949, Jacque Mercer, Miss Arizona, became the lightest Miss America at just 106lbs, but was two and a half inches taller than Margaret.)  Margaret is also the slimmest Miss America with measurements of just 30-25-32 (of course this is helped by the fact that Margaret was just sixteen when she won).

            Over most of its run, the Miss America contest has been heavily criticized as a beauty pageant and for having women on parade.  This is something that started almost right at its creation.  Throughout the 1920s the contest was protested and so the early organizers “presented the contestants as natural and unsophisticated, stressing their youth and wholesomeness.  Publicity stressed that they did not wear make-up nor bob their hair” (10).

            Margaret competed for a few more years in the 1920s in Atlantic City, but never won anything again.  In 1925 she married Victor Cahill, who worked in real estate.  They lived in D.C. together until Victor’s death in 1957.  Margaret became something of a socialite over the years, and enjoyed travelling throughout her life.

            As the years went on, Margaret tried to distance herself from Miss America and from having been a beauty queen.  As the quote at the beginning says, Margaret “never cared to be Miss America.  It wasn’t my idea.  I am so bored by it all.  I really want to forget the whole thing” (11).  She also said “My husband hated it … I did too” (12).  In 1960, Margaret was persuaded to attend that year’s competition, but “later called the organizers cheap for not reimbursing her for $1,500 in expenses” (13).

            Despite all that, Margaret did keep her outfit from her winning year: a sea green chiffon and sequined costume.

            Margaret Gorman Cahill died on October 1, 1995 at age 90.

            I admit, I don’t know how to feel about Miss America.  Part of me loves it because it’s a competition and you can see all the gorgeous clothes they get to wear and some of the talents the women have are neat.  But part of me hates it because it is just a beauty contest, ultimately, and it presents such a narrow idea of what beauty is.  I think the inception of the contest is interesting though, that it was a popularity and beauty contest, first won by a high schooler.  That it was seen as this all-American, “red-blooded” thing, like Samuel Gompers said.

I also find it really interesting because of when it was created.  The 20s are one of my favorite periods to read about and study.  The rise of the beauty industry, the new ideals of femininity, the higher waistlines, the rush forward into modernity after the Great War.  It seems appropriate that Miss America was born out of this decade.

1, 2, 11 - Margaret Gorman

3, 9, 10 - People & Events: The First MissAmerica Beauty Pageant, 1921

4, 7 - 1921:Margaret Gorman

5, 6, 12, 13 - Robert McG. Thomas Jr., “Margaret G. Cahill, 90, Is Dead; Was FirstMiss America, in 1921,” The New YorkTimes, October 5, 1995.

8 - Margaret Gorman: First Miss America and Washingtonian

Sigrid Undset

            Apologies for the lack of post last week.  I was behind to begin with, I got halfway through typing up my notes but I was feeling horrible, and wound up spending all day in bed instead of doing anything at all productive. L  But here we are this week with the post I should’ve written for last week.  Hopefully that won’t happen again.

            This week we have a Nobel Prize winner in literature for a book I’ve been wanting to read for a while (I finally picked it up last weekend!), Sigrid Undset.  Sigrid was born at her mother’s childhood home in Kalundborg, Denmark on May 20, 1882.  She was the oldest of three daughters of Charlotte Undset (née Anna Maria Charlotte Gyth) and Ingvald Martin Undset, a Norwegian architect.  When Sigrid was two, her family moved to Kristiana, Norway (what is now Oslo; the name changed in 1925).

            When Sigrid was eleven, her father died after a prolonged illness.  This put the family in financial trouble, and Sigrid had to give up her hopes of going to university.  Instead, Sigrid enrolled in a one year secretarial course, and at age sixteen went to work for an engineering company in Kristiana; she would work there for ten years.

            Throughout this time, Sigrid was writing fiction.  When she was sixteen she had started a novel set in Denmark in the Middle Ages.  This was completed by age twenty-two, but it was turned down by the publishers she approached.  Two years later, Sigrid had a new manuscript; it was only eighty pages and was set in contemporary Kristiana, focusing on a middle-class woman.  This too was turned down at first, but was then published.  The work, Fru Maria Oulie, created a stir upon its publication; the opening line reads “I have been unfaithful to my husband” and scandalized its readers with its frank discussion of adultery.

            The publication of Fru Maria Oulie made Sigrid Undset a “promising young author in Norway” (1).  In 1907 she joined the Norwegian Authors’ Union; in the 1930s she would head their Literary Council and was one of their chairmen as well.

            From the time Fru Maria Oulie was published in 1907 until 1919, Sigrid wrote about life in contemporary Kristiana, “about the city and its inhabitants,” “working people, of trivial family destinies, of the relationship between parents and children” (2).  She focused a lot on women and who and how they loved.  In 1911 Jenny was published, and in 1914 Varren (Spring) was published.  All of her works sold well immediately, and after her third book was published, she was able to quit her office job to write full time.

            Sigrid was given a writer’s scholarship and travelled throughout Europe.  She went to Denmark, Germany, and Italy, where she spent nine months in Rome.  Her parents had loved Rome and she spent her time travelling to all the same places she knew her parents had visited.  In Rome there was a group of Scandinavian writers and artists and Sigrid made friends with them.

            In Rome in 1909, Sigrid met the Norwegian painter Anders Castus Svarstad.  He was nine years older, and was married with three children, but they fell in love.  They waited three years for Anders’s divorce to finalize, and then married in 1912.  They travelled to London for six months and then came back to Rome where their first child was born in January 1913.  The child was a boy, named for his father.  By 1919, Sigrid had had another child, a mentally handicapped daughter, and had taken in Anders’s other three children, including a mentally handicapped son.

            Throughout this time, Sigrid continued writing, working on more novels and some short stories.  She also entered public debates, critical of women’s issues, and the moral and ethical issues she saw that had led to the First World War.

            In late 1919, Sigrid moved to Lillehammer, Norway with her two children, and pregnant with her third.  The plan was for Sigrid to rest in Lillehammer while hers and Anders’ home was being built in Kristiana.  However, the marriage broke up and the couple divorced before their home was completed.  Sigrid stayed in Lillehammer and her third child was born there in August of that year.

            Within two years, though, the home that was being built was completed.  Bjerkebæk was a large home with traditional Norwegian architecture.  It had a “large fenced garden with views of the town and the villages around” (3).

While the home was being completed, Sigrid worked on a Norwegian retelling of the King Arthur myth.  She also “studied Old Norse manuscripts and Medieval chronicles and visited and examined Medieval monasteries, both at home and abroad”, becoming “an authority on the period … and a very different person from the 22-year-old who had written her first novel about the Middle Ages” (4).  Her works are “precise, realistic, and never romanticized” (5), showing true human emotions, just set in a different time period.  By using the Middle Ages, she was able to give herself the necessary distance, but also allowed for her admiration of Medieval Christendom.

The work this research led to is Krisin Lavransdatter, a trilogy published between 1920 and 1922.  The trilogy shows “life in Scandinavia in the Middle Ages, portrayed through the experiences of a woman from birth until death” (6).  In addition to the attention to detail about the historical period she was writing about, Sigrid employed modernist techniques such as stream of consciousness in Kristin Lavransdatter; these were cut out of the first English translations of the work though.

Around this same period, Sigrid became a Catholic.  Her parents had been atheists and her upbringing was secular, though living in a Lutheran country she had been baptized and had attended Lutheran church growing up.  With the outbreak of the First World War and the break-up of her marriage, Sigrid had had a crisis of faith, and Catholicism was the answer for her.  In 1924, at age 42, Sigrid was received into the Catholic Church and also became a lay Dominican.

Sigrid’s conversion was scandalous at the time in Norway.  As mentioned, Norway was a Lutheran country; almost no one practiced Catholicism.  There was also a lot of anti-Catholic rhetoric in the country at the time.  As an author, Sigrid was also part of the intelligentsia at the time.  They too didn’t accept her though, being mostly socialist and communist themselves.  Sigrid was open about her Catholicism though, defending the Catholic Church in public debates.

Her next work after Kristin Lavransdatter was Olav Audunssøn (translated in English as The Master of Hestviken).  Olav, a four volume novel, was written during her conversion and published right after; it takes place during a time period when Norway was a Catholic country.  After Olav, Sigrid went back to writing contemporary books, set in Oslo and “with a strong Catholic element” (7).  In 1928 Sigrid won the Nobel Prize for Literature “principally for her powerful descriptions of Northern life during the Middle Ages” (8).

Following this, Sigrid was translating the Icelandic Sagas into Modern Norwegian and writing literary essays on English literature, mainly on the Brontës and D. H. Lawrence.  In 1934 she published Eleven Years Old, an autobiographical piece about her childhood in Kristiana.  In the 1930s she was also starting a new historical piece, this time to be set in eighteenth century Scandinavia, but only one volume was published before World War Two broke out.  After the war Sigrid was too broken herself to finish writing it.

With World War Two came a lot of changes in Sigrid’s part of the world.  Stalin invaded Finland; Sigrid donated her Nobel Prize to the Finnish war effort.  In 1940 Germany invaded Norway.  Throughout the 1930s Sigrid had been critical of Hitler, and so fled Norway upon the German invasion.  She and her son first went to Sweden and then to the United States; they lived in Brooklyn and she pleaded for help for her country and for the Jews.  In 1940, also, her oldest son, Anders, was killed in battle (her daughter had died before the war broke out).

After World War Two ended, Sigrid returned to Norway, but never wrote again.  Sigrid Undset died in Lillehammer on June 10, 1949 at age 67.  She is buried in Mesnali, east of Lillehammer.  The son and daughter that predeceased her are buried there as well; there are three black crosses marking their graves.

Sigrid Undset has been honored in many ways.  In addition to the Nobel Prize in 1928, there is a crater on Venus named Undset for her.  She was on the 500 kronur note and a 1982 2 kronur postage stamp in Norway.  In 1998, Sweden put her on a stamp as well.  Her home of Bjerkebæk is now a part of the Maihaugen museum.

            The book I finally got of Sigrid Undset’s is Kristin Lavransdatter, but now I’m interested in her other works.  I think her books about contemporary Norway would be really interesting, reading about how Norway was in the early twentieth century, especially Fru Maria Oulie and its controversial opening line.  I’m also now interested in her more Catholic novels, though I’d wait and read those after I’d read her earlier works.  (While I love Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, I wish I had read it after I’d read his earlier works.  He went through a similar conversion to Catholicism and it becomes more and more prevalent in his works.)  I hope I’ve inspired you all to go find some Sigrid Undset books as well!

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 – Sigrid Undset

8 – Nobel Laureates in Literature