Tag Archives: Eliza Anderson

The Siberia of the Arts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Torn in Pieces by Merciless Hounds

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

O Brave New Editors

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Beatrice Ironside

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

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

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

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

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

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

An Openly Female Editor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The Lucubrations of Benjamin Bickerstaff"

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

Above all, the friend of truth

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So how did Baltimore react to this news of a female editor in 1806, at a time when such a thing was generally unheard of?

Initially, at least–as far as can be determined–there wasn’t much of a reaction at all. But in the same editorial quoted in the previous post, the new female editor (later female editors would embrace the term “editress,” but this one didn’t) announced that there would soon be “alterations” in the “plan” of the Companion–alterations that were to include more assistance for the overworked editor. And, as it turned out, these alterations also entailed scrapping the Companion altogether and founding a new publication, to be called the Observer. The last issue of the Companion appeared at the end of October, and a prospectus for the Observer appeared towards the end of November. Although the first few issues of the Observer are either obscure or misleading about the editor’s sex (the editor is sometimes referred to as “he”), it was soon revealed to be female–and,not surprisingly, to be the same female who had previously been editing the Companion.

Why start a new magazine? Apparently because the new editor wanted to inject more satire into the magazine than the philanthropist who had backed the Companion was willing to tolerate (at least, that’s the explanation that appears later on). This new magazine was to be not only more satirical but, at times, downright acerbic, skewering various denizens of Baltimore who were thought to be wanting in culture or refinement. The change in tone was reflected in both the name change (from the Companion to the Observer)and the change in motto (from “A safe companion and an easy friend” to “The friend of Socrates, the friend of Plato, but above all, the friend of truth”).

But here’s the real question, at least for our purposes: who was this new female editor? Given the early 19th-century penchant for anonymity and pseudonyms, her real name appears nowhere in either publication (the pseudonym she eventually settled on was “Beatrice Ironside”). As anyone who has read previous postings of this blog might know, I have identified her as 26-year-old Eliza Anderson–the daughter of a Baltimore doctor, the abandoned wife of a ne’er-do-well merchant, and the mother of a now six-year-old girl–and the friend of a local celebrity, Betsy Patterson Bonaparte.

How do I know Eliza was the editor? The first clue comes from an early contributor to the Observer: Benjamin Henry Latrobe, the first professional architect in the United States, who oversaw the design and construction of the U.S. Capitol. (There was a terrific documentary about his life on PBS not long ago.) On October 28, 1806–just after the last issue of the Companion had appeared, and shortly before the Prospectus for the Observer would appear–Latrobe wrote a note on the flyleaf of a journal he kept: “’No. 1. Ideas on the encouragement of the Fine Arts in America’ written at the instance of some friends in Baltimore for the paper edited by Mrs. Anderson.” The essay that follows in Latrobe’s journal corresponds exactly to an article that appeared in the Prospectus, signed “B.” (A second installment appeared in the Observer’s first issue.)

Conceivably there could have been some other “Mrs. Anderson” editing a magazine in Baltimore in 1806, but this seems unlikely. Especially when you add to Latrobe’s note the evidence that was to come a year later in the form of impassioned denunciations of “Mrs. E.A., the fierce fury who edits the Observer,” in Baltimore’s newspaper.

But we’re getting ahead of our story…

A Safe Companion and an Easy Friend

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So, what of this early 19th-century magazine, the Companion? This much we know: It was founded in Baltimore towards the end of 1804 and continued to publish until October 1806–a fairly long run for a “literary miscellany” of the time (the Companion‘s full title was The Companion and Weekly Miscellany). Apparently these journals would often spring up and then vanish a few weeks or months later.

In 1811 another Baltimore publication attested to the genre’s generally short lifespan: “In the City of Baltimore so many abortive attempts have been made to establish a Literary Miscellany, that Experiment and Disappointment have become synonymous terms.” The author even mentioned the Companion by name, despite its relative success: “The weekly visits of the Companion were scarcely greeted by a civil salutation,” the author lamented. (This was part of a series of puns on the names of various defunct publications: “the rays of Moonshine were speedily extinguished: no one could see through the Spectacles,” etc.)

Just as 18th- and 19th-century newspapers bear little resemblance to what we now call a newspaper (their front pages were usually entirely taken up with ads, they freely mingled opinion and reportage, and their “news” was often weeks old), these magazines were rather different from their modern counterparts. For one thing, the “profession” of journalism hadn’t really been invented yet. The editors and contributors were all unpaid amateurs, often pressed for time–which may explain the brief life of many of the publications. Many of the writers in a given city actually knew one another–which enabled them to see past the pseudonyms, a convention originally adopted because a gentleman wasn’t supposed to be engaging in this sort of activity. A typical issue might include a column or two, often written in a humorous vein, an essay on a historical or philosophical topic, a poem, a review of a concert or an art exhibit, and perhaps a smattering of stale news from Europe. And the pages of these magazines reveal a number of lively ongoing dialogues: one issue might well contain a vigorous response to an article published in the same magazine the week before, or to something that had appeared in another local publication.

In some ways, though, these magazines seem strikingly modern. Think about it: a community of individuals, many of them more or less protected by pseudonyms, often engaging in heated written argument in a public venue–sometimes, indeed, “flaming” each other. Remind you of anything? Yes, the internet. And the give-and-take nature of these publications, with many readers doubling as contributors (or leaving “comments”), is reminiscent of an early version of a blog (not to mention the fact that the writers weren’t actually getting paid–just like most bloggers). Of course, people weren’t only using these magazines to argue with each other. Like the internet, the publications also fostered a sense of community among their readers. (My neighborhood listserv is an amazing example of this. Neighbors who may never have actually spoken to each other are constantly trading household tips, finding each others’ lost pets, and arranging to shovel sidewalks for the elderly.)

It’s hard to say who the first editors of the Companion were. The pseudonyms they used–Edward Easy, Nathan Scruple, etc.–generally obscured even more than their real names: they came with entire fictional personae. “Edward Easy,” for example, was supposed to be an elderly Quaker gentleman from Pennsylvania, with a backstory too complicated to go into here. But it’s clear from later issues of the Companion (whose motto was “A safe companion and an easy friend”) that those who were involved were all fairly young. In one issue, after the magazine had gone through several editors and suffered some publication difficulties, the editor of the moment pleads with readers to attribute any mistakes to the editors’ “youth and inexperience.”

My best guess is that the founders were a group of young men who were students at, or possibly recent graduates of, St. Mary’s College, an institution founded by French Catholic priests in Baltimore in 1791. (It still exists as a seminary–and in the 20th century produced the famously anti-war Berrigan brothers–but in its early days it provided a secular education as well.) Similar “circles” of young men in other cities sometimes produced publications as an outgrowth of their discussions of books, philosophy, and current events.

There may have been a few women involved as contributors–some of the articles carry female pseudonyms like “Flavia” and “Biddy Fidget.” But when an editor is referred to, the pronoun is always “he.”

Until the issue of October 4, 1806, that is. That issue carries an editorial ringing the familiar theme of apology for a dearth of lively material. Note, however, the pronouns used:

 

… But when it is considered that the entire arrangement of the Companion depends on one alone, and whether the editor is grave or gay, whether visions of hope and pleasure play before her imagination, or she is sunk into despondence and beset with a whole legion of blue devils, the printer, like her evil genius, still pursues her at the stated period, and the selections must be made, and the proofs corrected, and of consequence, “The Safe Companion and Easy Friend,” must sometimes as well as safe and easy be sad and soporific …

Yes: not “him” and “he,” but “her” and “she.” Thus it was announced, without any particular fanfare, that the new (or perhaps not so new) editor of the Companion was a woman–quite possibly the first woman to edit a magazine in the United States.

How would Baltimore react to this anomaly?

"From a Learned Wife, Ye Gods Deliver Me"

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As I sit here anticipating a winter storm–the second in a week–that may knock out power, I feel a particular kinship with the people of the early 19th century who I’m writing about here. Imagine a world with no electricity, no internet, no central heating, no cable TV … Sounds a lot like the world they inhabited. At least we’ll still have indoor plumbing. And even if I’m reduced to writing with a pen, I won’t have to use a quill (I tried that once and don’t recommend it).

But now, to Eliza. What became of her after she accompanied Betsy Bonaparte on her voyage across the Atlantic? The first year or so after her arrival back in Baltimore, in November 1805, isn’t well documented. In 1802 her father mentioned in a letter that she had taken up teaching school–presumably teaching girls, since boys were generally instructed by men–but we have no information on where she might have done that, or how long the job lasted.

But by October, or perhaps earlier, of 1806, she had taken up a new line of work, albeit an unpaid one: she had become the editor of a magazine.

Now, let us pause for a moment to consider how extraordinary it was for a woman–and a woman of only 26 years of age–to do such a thing in 1806. Although during the Revolution and its immediate aftermath there had been some talk of women’s rights in the United States–including Abigail Adams’s oft-quoted plea to her husband to “remember the ladies”–it didn’t lead to much in the way of actual rights. Women today complain of glass ceilings, lack of pay parity, and having to shoulder most of the housework when they get home from their jobs–as well they should. But when you compare that to the legal disabilities women labored under 200 years ago, and then-prevailing attitudes about their capacities and their rightful place, it becomes clear that women have indeed, as the cigarette ads used to say, come a long way. And not just because they’re now allowed to smoke.

Married women couldn’t make contracts or own property in their own names–which made it impossible for them to operate a business. Single women were spared this disability–and in New Jersey, up until 1807, they were even allowed to vote–but few professions were open to them. And, since marriage was considered to be the be-all and end-all of a woman’s life, an unmarried–or, worse, divorced–woman didn’t fit particularly well into the society of the time. Young women were supposed to get married; after that, they were supposed to devote themselves to their husbands and children (assuming they didn’t die in childbirth, as many did).

True, Mary Wollstonecraft had written A Vindication of The Rights of Woman in 1792, but even its modest claims–such as that women should be educated, in part because that would make them better companions for their husbands–were considered pretty far out there. And after Wollstonecraft’s well-meaning widower published a memoir in 1798 that exposed the details of her unconventional life, including the fact that she’d had a child out of wedlock, no one wanted to have anything to do with her ideas.

For a sample of contemporary opinion on women, we need look no further than the very magazine where Eliza Anderson became editor–it was called the Companion–just a few months before she assumed that post. In May 1806, the magazine published an article by an author using the pseudonym “Tibullus.” (Virtually all early 19th-century contributors to magazines used pseudonyms, a convention that served its purposes at the time, but that now makes life exceedingly frustrating for the historian.)

This Tibullus opined,”There exists not an instance on record of one noble discovery being added to human science, through the exertions of a female.” He added that this was a good thing: “Vanity holds so predominant a sway in the breast of woman, and is so prone to distend itself at every increase of knowledge, that science becomes with her a most pernicious acquisition.” Occasionally a women might be able to engage in a few “sprightly flourishes of the mind.” But, he added, “when she attempts the critic and philosopher, nature is outraged; man revolts at a monster so unnatural in the creation, and exclaims with the Roman poet–O sit mihi non doctissima consors.” This last bit is helpfully translated as, “From a learned wife, ye Gods deliver me.”

Now of course, not everyone in 1806 agreed with Tibullus. The following week another correspondent–signing himself “A.B.C.Darian”–weighed in on the issue. But his response also sheds light on what women were actually up against. Maybe it’s true, he says, that women are “just smatterers in learning,” but that’s because of “proud man, who in the plenitude of his power, selfishly restricts them to the arts of dalliance and the charms of pleasing.” It’s not that women are incapable of learning, it’s that they’re prevented from getting any. “What parent,” A.B.C.Darian asks rhetorically, “thinks of giving to a daughter the education of a son?” A little French, maybe some Italian, and instruction in “music, dancing, embroidery or needle work” … such was the extent of most women’s education (and of course we’re talking about the wealthy ones–the poorer ones were lucky to learn how to read and write). Buck up, he says to women, “ye fairest flowers of creation.” Don’t believe those who deny that a woman has a brain, those who “can grant her no other attainment but what conduces to her lustre as a mistress or a slave.”

So how, in these circumstances, did a woman manage to become editor of a magazine–a magazine not devoted just to fashion and food and other “feminine” concerns, but a magazine that included articles on politics and history and criticized the local arts scene? I’m not sure I can actually answer that question, but stay tuned for a description of what happened next.

Tiny Animals That Cause Disease?

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So much for Eliza’s brother Thomas. What of her father, Dr. John Crawford? Alas, poor Crawford. Like his daughter, he suffered for being ahead of his time.

Crawford’s learning went beyond his medical expertise. According to the eulogist at his funeral, he was well read, conversant in French and German, and well acquainted with Latin and Greek. But medicine was his profession and his primary concern, and he did his best to use his knowledge to serve the cause of public health.

In 1800, after having been in Baltimore for four years, he submitted a report on local health conditions to the City Council. That summer, he introduced the new practice of vaccination to the city–no small accomplishment, since vaccination was far safer than the previous method of immunizing people against the dread disease of smallpox, called variolation or inoculation. When you’re inoculated, you’re actually given a case of smallpox–and you keep your fingers crossed that it’s a mild one. (For some reason, when smallpox is deliberately introduced into your system by a doctor, it’s usually–but not always–a mild case.) But when you’re vaccinated, instead of smallpox you’re given cowpox–a disease that causes few or no symptoms in humans but has the effect of immunizing them against smallpox. (The word vaccination actually comes from the Latin for “cow.”)

Edward Jenner had first experimented with vaccination in England in 1796. He wrote up his findings in 1798, but it took a little while for the idea to reach these shores. According to a pamphlet about Crawford published in 1940, Crawford actually introduced vaccination to Baltimore at the same time Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse introduced it in Cambridge, MA. But because Waterhouse devoted a great deal of energy to publicizing his success (and, some say, to profiting off of it), and Crawford did not, Waterhouse has gotten all the credit.

The following year Crawford helped to organize a “General Dispensary” in Baltimore. This appears to have been an institution devoted to the medical needs of the poor, with a particular emphasis on the yellow fever that plagued Baltimore–and other American cities, including Philadelphia–on a regular basis. Crawford was involved in other good works as well: he was a member of the Hibernian Benevolent Society, a director of the Baltimore library, and, in 1802, a founder of the local penitentiary. (This qualifies as a a “good work” because a penitentiary–where prisoners were supposed to become “penitent” and reform–was an improvement over a jail, where they were just warehoused until they were released.)He was also an elder of a Presbyterian church and, for many years, he held the position of “Right Worshipful Grand Master” of the local Masonic order. And he was apparently generous in his personal life. Years after his death, his son-in-law recalled the hospitality he provided to “all who were unhappy.”

But Crawford’s opinions got him in trouble. First there was some theological difficulty. In an 1806 letter to his friend Benjamin Rush–the foremost American physician of the day, who, unfortunately for the population at the time, was an enthusiastic proponent of massive bleeding as a cure for yellow fever–Crawford lamented that his opinions about the doctrine of revelation had cost him a lot of his business. Apparently Crawford believed that revelation–the process of God’s revealing himself–was coeval with creation. Personally, I don’t have a position on this question, but even if I did I can’t imagine that I would care what my doctor thought about it. Things were different in the early 19th century, though. “The premature disclosure of my opinions,” Crawford told Rush, “has afforded a means to the envious and malignant to prejudice those I had every reason for valuing myself on, so as to deprive me of all the valuable practice in this City.”

And that wasn’t Crawford’s only controversial opinion. The following year Rush recorded in his diary that Crawford “had lost all his business by propagating an unpopular opinion in medicine, namely, that all diseases were occasioned by animalculae. He said he was sixty-two years of age and not worth a cent, but in debt.”

Basically, Crawford was saying that tiny animals–“animalculae”–somehow entered the human body and caused disease. Sounds pretty weird, huh? But in fact, Crawford was anticipating germ theory by many decades. While Crawford wasn’t the first person to propose a theory like this, he was considered something of a crackpot for doing so. (Are there theories around these days that sound nuts to us but that will, in 50 or 100 years, be proved eminently sensible?)

So that was pretty much it for Crawford. Nobody wanted to go to a doctor who espoused not only the idea that revelation was coeval with creation, but–get this!–that disease was caused by germs. Who cared that he’d saved untold lives by introducing vaccination to the city? He died in 1813, heavily in debt. His estate consisted primarily of his collection of 400 books–the finest in the city, it was said. The books were sold to the fledgling University of Maryland, where they became the nucleus of its medical library, one of the oldest in the country. The sale brought $500, but that wasn’t nearly enough to cover the claims against him.

In his will, he left his daughter Eliza any money left over from his estate after his debts had been paid–an empty bequest, as it turned out. But of course, long before he died,he had given her something else: an education, and a sense of her own worth, despite the fact that she was female. And as we’ll soon see, she put those things to pretty good use.