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.

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.