Tennesee Williams and Me

Madeleine Sherwood in Sweet Bird of Youth

Yesterday, I watched Sweet Bird of Youth on Turner Classics, part of their Tennessee Williams festival.

It reminded me of 1982, when I worked as a copywriter at a radio station in Montreal. I guess Tennessee died in 1982, because one of the other copywriters came into the room and announced, “One of us has died.”

I turned to my friend, Nora, and smiled. One of us indeed. We wrote ads for Greeks restaurants, “Step into the Sunshine at la Casa Grecque,”

I just checked. He died in 83, so my memory serves.

You see, I was a big fan of the playwright. I had studied theatre at McGill, not for the acting bit, which  I simply hated, but for the plays. Tennessee was a favorite. Edward Albee and Pinter, too.

Now, I don’t recall reading Sweet Bird of Youth, although I likely did. I missed the movie, though for sure. In 1962, when the movie came out, Montreal children couldn’t  go to the movies. (My play Milk and Water explains.)

And besides, I was just 8. Anyway, this movie is still damn relevant, I think.

Now, Madeleine Sherwood is in the movie Sweet Bird of Youth, playing a distinctly different character than she played in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. A mistress to a powerful man. She played the same role, Miss Lucy, on stage.

Madeleine Sherwood, as it happens, is the granddaughter of Paul Villard, who figures in my story Diary of a Confirmed Spinster, the follow up to Threshold GIrl.

My ebook story is based on family letters from the 1910 era and in that era Edith Nicholson was working at French Methodiste Institute. Paul Villard, a medical doctor and doctor of divinity, was the Principal of the Missionary School on Greene Avenue.

He figures largely in the story, as he helps Edith through a number of crises and then she suddenly turns on him and quits. (I have somewhere a letter of recommendation he wrote, rather abrupt and hastily written.) Edith seems to have been friends with Yvonne Villard, his daughter. Yvonne visits Tighsolas in the summer of 1911.

I have spent a great deal of time trying to figure why. (I wondered at one time if it was because of the Church Union controversy going on. Edith was a Presbyterian.) But no, I realize that it had to do with Villard appointing another woman head of the teachers.

So I am writing that part right now. I have read Dr. Villard’s books on the school and its mission, so know all about it.

I see on the net that Nicole Kidman was set to start in a revival on stage, last year, but nothing more has come of it. Nichol does have a similar acting style to Geraldine Page, I think.

Ecole Methodiste teachers. I am pretty sure the man on the right is Paul Villard. One of the girls other than Edith, might be Yvonne Villard.

Who’s Who in 1910, Woman-Wise in Canada (and US)

Emma LaJeunesse, opera singer, known as Madame Albani. She was French Canadian and world renown.

I found a copy of a 1910 Canadian Who’s Who online and on one of the first pages I saw Madame Albani, the opera star, otherwise known as Emma La Jeunesse so I decided to scan the book to see how many women were included.

I first went to see if Julia Grace Parker Drummond was listed there, and she was! Her husband wasn’t, as he had just died. She had a long entry. “One of the founders and first President of the Canadian Women’s Club of Montreal (Montreal Council of Women.) And then her many leadership positions are listed. Lady Drummond is featured in my story Threshold Girl  www.tighsolas.ca/page10.pdf.pdf
and she will be featured even more in the follow up, “Edith’s Story” tentatively called the 1912 Diary of a Confirmed Spinster, www.tighsolas.ca/page11.pdf.pdf

I then went to look for Carrie Derick, not expecting her to be there : but she was. In 1910, she is listed as Assistant Professor of Botany, McGill. Her many academic accomplishments are listed (Gold Medalist, first female faculty member, McGill 1891), and leaves out her McGill Normal School teaching work. (Now, THAT says something about how low in people’s esteem teaching was held. In fact there are no educators listed in this Who’s Who, despite the fact there were quite a few women in that field.)

Then I went through the entire book, start to finish to see how many other illustrious female figures are listed. NOT MANY.

In fact, it seems any journalistic credentials got a young woman into the Who’s Who. A few articles published, a few poems. Nellie McClung is listed, but only as a minor writer. Lucy Maude Montgomery, who published Anne of Green Gables in 1908, isn’t there.

For an actress to be listed, she has had to won international acclaim, or at least US acclaim. And that pretty well goes for the other females listed. Hence Madame Albani.

And there are not many society women listed, which surprises me. A Society Woman only got listed if she had something to do with good works on her local council of women.

Now, taking a rough guess, there is one woman listed for about every three pages of men listed, with about 10 listings to a page. So 1 in 30 on the 1910 Canadian Who’s Who is a woman. And often it’s a woman of little accomplishment like Mrs. Valance Patriarche, Newspaper articles, magazine stories and a few poems.

Mary Riter Hamilton, the impressionist painters, isn’t there, and only one other woman painter. Mary Ella Dingham. Education Paris, France and Italy. Exhibitor in many European and North American exhibitions. President of the Women’s Art Association of Canada. And, of course, Emily Carr isn’t there either.

One nurse, one professor of Philosophy at Wellesley College near Boston. Miss Eliza Richie, daughter of a Supreme Court Judge in Nova Scotia. One doctor I think and no lawyer, although there was one famous woman lawyer being written about in the era magazines, Mabel French. I’ve a post about her on this blog.

And a missionary, working with her (more famous) husband.

Also a couple of musicians who have performed internationally. Miss Evelyn Street, Second Violinist, American String Quartet of Boston.

And just like today, there are Canadian-born women who have made a mark entirely in the US. Miss Annie Diggs of London, Ontario, worker for temperance, chairman of D.C. People’s Party and a Suffragette in Kansas. Writer of short stories and a lecturer in sociology.

Why is this interesting in the context of my story? Because in 1910, it was widely believed that A YOUNG WOMAN COULD DO ANYTHING when it came to the professions (although most sensible women wanted to be mothers and wives). That all doors were open to women. That no more barriers existed to a woman’s career ambitions.

Magazine articles featured stories about women making, say, 10,ooo a year, when the ‘average’ salary for a man was 1,000 a year.

Actresses were often featured in magazines, but in real life they were both put on pedestals and villifed as one step above a prostitute.

The two women scientists I see here, Carrie Derick and another I can’t recall the name of, were both botanists. I suspect botany was considered a soft science, because of its association with flowers and art.

In Threshold Girl I bring this up…as Flora Nicholson likes to draw so does well in botany.

But Carrie Derick’s botany background gave her credibility in a very iffy area, eugenics. And that situation will be tackled in the continuation of Edith’s Story.

I think I will have Edith peruse this Who’s Who.

Motions Pictures, Movies, Films, Cinema, Interactive….and on and on

My husband noticed a while back that the plaque on the old Ouimetoscope building had disappeared. A few days later he noticed that a historic placard of sorts, commemorating the Ouimetoscope was placed in the neighbourhood. Yesterday, he noticed that the Ouimetoscope building is being converted into condos, keeping the historic name.

Hmm. Good, I guess. If you can’t turn it back into a theatre.

I’ve written a lot about Montreal in the Nickelodeon era.. and Threshold Girl is available at www.tighsolas.ca/page10.pdf.pdf

Threshold Girl tells the story of Flora Nicholson in 1911 as she attends Macdonald Teaching College. And it has public domain pictures from the Delineator Magazines of the era.

I’ve decided to do the follow up about her sister Edith and call it The Diary of a Confirmed Spinster.  It’s here in drafty form.. www.tighsolas.ca/page11.pdf.pdf

It’s kind of a storyboard thing…Recently, I saw (read) an NFB digital story about a town closing down in Canada, called Welcome to… ah.. Pinpoint  and thought it lovely. It’s award winning.

http://pinepoint.nfb.ca/#/pinepoint

So I decided to describe Edith’s Story, which is a mix of fiction and fact, more visually. I’m not using any film, but this story is about the film era and I am going to work hard to capture that flavour.

 It’s a work in progress.

THE LUXURY OF DREAMING BIG 23rd installment

Marion Nicholson, circa 1910

The next few days shot by, as the rather insensitive opening line on Flora’s letter home three days later, proved: Newton Center, August 6, 1908

Dear Mother,

I suppose you will be thinking it is your time to get a letter. We are having such a fine time I can hardly waste time writing letters.

Henry May and I are going out to dinner tonight to Mrs. Burnett’s. We would have gone out auto riding this afternoon if it hadn’t rained. Tomorrow we are going over to Mrs. Coites’ to play bridge and in the evening Henry is going to take us to the theatre.
Friday, Miss Starkey and Miss Stevens are going to take us to Jetties Beach on Nantuckett Island. They are nurses in the Newton Hospital. Miss Starkey took care of Aunt Christie when she was the worst. She is very nice and pleasant and above all a Canadian. ..Flora underlined the words ‘ a Canadian’ for emphasis.

Lovingly, Flora,

PS.Tuesday, Henry, May and I went out to Framingham to call on Mrs. Coy.

Flora didn’t go into detail about her Tuesday trip, in the Stanley Steamer, to Wellesley and then on to Framingham, on a whim, where the happy trio dropped in on family friend Mrs. Coy unannounced and found her in kimono, her hair dishevelled. She had been doing the washing, all day, she said, appearing both pleased to see Flora and her cousins as well as deeply embarrassed.

“I’m not fortunate like your mother,” she said, apologetically. I have no daughters to help me do the housework. “But on your house calls, Dr. Watters, you have likely seen women in worse disarray than this.”

Henry blushed a bit and said nothing.

“We were visiting Wellesley and since you are just down the road we decided to come say Hello,” said May,”but we cannot stay.”

With that Mrs. Coy was let off the hook, and didn’t have to receive them, yet she seemed torn. She was a lonely woman, with two sons, one living at home.

“Mr. Coy is at work and Chester is in Maine. Had I known you were coming I would had Ross come down. How is your grandmother, Flora. What is she, 83? Does she still like to travel?

“Yes, I think so. She is fine. She rattles away in the old tongue all the time now.”

And then a few more words and they were off, with Mrs. Coy waving from the window, a small, sad figure, no doubt wishing she were young and free again.

On their way back, motoring smoothly through the sprawling Wellesley Campus, Flora spied a lone figure on the archery field setting her arrow in the bow, drawing and taking aim.

Flora shaded her eyes from the 4 o’clock sun with her hand. (She had long given up on wearing her hat in the open car.) The woman archer struck such a dignified figure, Flora’s heart leapt. Henry noticed his cousin’s intense interest and slowed the motorcar. The tall young woman on the grassy knoll let go the arrow which fell somewhere out of view and then reached over her left shoulder into her quiver for another and repeated her strike. She wore no hat, either, the hair of her updo had come down on one side and her grey-blue skirt billowed in the breeze like the gown of a twentieth-century goddess.

The woman didn’t notice she had an audience. For some reason, Flora was reminded of Marion.

In a minute or two, without speaking, Henry pushed forward the throttle and the Steamer barrelled on, much more quickly now, past a few other women scholars strolling in the late afternoon sun, for it was summer and the campus was quiet.

May, in the front seat now, started flipping through the Wellesleyan Magazine, which they had picked up on their visit. “Newspaper Work” She read:
The world of journalism, in which the average layman indiscriminately places the cub reporter as well as the seasoned war correspondent, seems to possess an especial glamour for college girls, and every year there is a little group of graduates from the women’s colleges who try to enter the field.

The term ” newspaper work ” usually suggests the reporting and editing of a paper; although there are two other very important departments. Blah blah. There are the Managing Editors whose work is to keep the paper closely in line with the policy laid down by the owners, and the interests of the business office, City Editors, right down to the Desk Editors, who read the copy turned in by reporters all day long.

The news is divided between two fields: local and foreign. The City Editor has charge of all local news; that is, within a radius of about twenty miles. He keeps a big book, called the “Assignment” book, and in it are recorded weeks and months ahead, coming events of public and general interest.

His salary, on the five papers investigated, ranges from $1,820 to $4,000 per year, with an average of $2412.

“I think I would like to be a city editor,” exclaimed Mae.

She lip read for the next few paragraphs and then said “Ah, listen to this, Flora…
But there are handicaps which are thought to offer serious objections for women. All the editors and newspaper women interviewed feel strongly that the high nervous strain under which the editors must work, especially in the last hour before the paper goes to press, would wear a woman out in a short time.

It is a maelstrom of hurry and anxiety, Woman’s ability to control such situations is, of course, a matter of opinion, but newspaper people themselves doubt it, and point to the fact that there are no women holding such positions in Boston.

“So a teacher I will be, it seems,” said Mae. “I’m suddenly sick to my stomach. Must be the oysters at lunch.

“It is likely motion sickness. They are finding that it is difficult for some people to read while driving in an auto,” said Henry, wiping the dust from the face of one of the gauges with a gloved index finger.

“That must be it,” said Flora, from above Henry. ‘Maelstrom of hurry and anxiety’, surely her Mother, Margaret, was an expert, she thought. Flora was not happy to be brought so abruptly back to reality, her reality, that her family was near penniless, and that, with her marks, it was going to be struggle for her to get into the very female world of teaching, let alone the very male world of newspapers. At least Mae, with her excellent grades (she was the same age as Flora and one year ahead of her) had the luxury of dreaming big.