Volume XXXXI · 1989-1990
The Wednesday Club: A Centennial History
--NANCY WHARTON BOLGER
 
 

Compared to the countless centuries of the silence of women, compared to the century preceding ours . . .ours has been a favorable one.

Tillie Olsen, Silences

Perhaps some of the eighty-four Rochester women who over the last century have considered membership in The Wednesday Club among their privileges may on occasion have been silent—but surely only when silence was appropriate.

In an era when women were learning from Susan B. Anthony and others the necessity of "speaking out," The Wednesday Club (which began as The Wednesday Morning Club) and The History Class (originally The American History Class) were part of a study club movement which swept America in the last decades of the nineteenth century. The movement helped millions of women find their own individual voices—and the civic contributions made by many members of both clubs attest to the success of this experiment in self-education.

When Bronson Alcott, the nineteenth-century educational reformer, was asked where "the national university" should be, he replied, ". . . it is where two or more are uniting for mutual help and inspiration. . .Why, it is in the parlors of appreciative women."

The Wednesday Morning Club was born on May 13, 1890, in the white and gold Victorian parlor of Mrs. Dr. Enoch Vine Stoddard at 68 S. Washington St., in the heart of Rochester's "ruffled shirt" district. Carrie (Caroline) Stoddard, wife of a prominent physician and philanthropist, was "an appreciative woman" eager to form a small literary group.

Since then, over the course of 989 meetings, members have shared, through researched papers and informal commentary, their views and opinions, their pleasures and predilections, shaped as those are (or were) by circumstances of upbringing, education, and, for many, a rich involvement with their community.

As a consequence, an examination of the hundred-year annals of The Wednesday Club (as it is now called) reveals an only slightly self-conscious series of images of a group of well-educated women who have chosen to spend time with each other on a regular basis for the purpose of examining both interior and exterior worlds—and, ultimately, relating the culture and concerns of the latter to their own circumstances.

Some of these women lived relatively private lives. Others operated in the community spotlight. Wednesday Club members have included deans, attorneys, art historians, teachers, scientists, a museum director, a curator, journalists, poets, professors, a film producer and advertising executive, social workers, reformers, socialites, and housewives.

Many have helped change the social and economic fabric of the Rochester community in ways that have had far-reaching effects.

The Beginning

Writing with wit and sympathy in a paper prepared for the club's fiftieth anniversary in 1940, Rose Alling¹recalled the founding of The Wednesday Club and its early years. Curiously, it was the excess of success experienced by the Ethical Club,² which attracted crowds of 500 and more for readings and discussion, that led to the founding of the new organization. Rose Alling explains: "Such crowds of women responded to the call that the idea of a club of a more intimate nature was obviously swamped, and it was Mrs. Stoddard who conceived [the idea of] the small limited group. . . ."³ 

Three women—Rose Alling; Hester Hopkins Adams ("wife of the thrillingly unorthodox Plymouth Church Pastor"⁴and mother of writer Samuel Hopkins Adams); and Sara Fisher (descendant of the pioneer family which founded the community of Fishers on land purchased from the Senecas)—were invited to join Carrie Stoddard to discuss the need for a small study club.

"Mrs. Stoddard," Rose Alling recalled, "had that strange yearning to do the same things that men did." At first she suggested that they ask to be admitted to the Fortnightly Club ⁵ of which Enoch Stoddard and Joseph Adams were members. "But we. . . recoiled" at the presumptuous suggestion.⁶

And so, in the old black half-calf ledger from Scrantom & Wetmore Co. Stationers, which forms the first item in the collection of The Wednesday Club papers in the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections in Rush Rhees Library, the following notation is inscribed in the hand of Sara Fisher, "our faithful little secretary for so many years who never wanted to start anything":⁷

Wednesday morning, May 13th, 1890, the following ladies met at the residence of Mrs. E. V. Stoddard for the purpose of establishing a literary club.

Mrs. Myron Adams, Mrs. Joseph Alling, Mrs. Charles E. Fitch, Miss Sara Fisher, Mrs. George C. Hollister, Mrs. William E. Hoyt, Mrs. Emil Kuichling, Mrs. Max Landsberg, Mrs. E. V. Stoddard.

Early additions to the group included Mary Ellen Hooker Bloss, Mary T. Gannett, Edwine Danforth, Charlotte Bragdon, Dr. Lucy Clausen, Florence Kendrick Cooper, Clara Haushalter, Emily Barnes Hollister, Caroline Mason, Helen Ranlet Miner, Helen Montgomery, Annette Munro, Elizabeth Sibley, Margaret Harper Sibley, Lydia Coonley Ward, Mary Franchot Warner, and Emily Sibley Watson.

The following rules were adopted for the new club: (1) that the office of Secretary be permanent; (2) that the Secretary each year prepare a roster of members for reading and entertainment; (3) that each member be taxed twenty-five cents to defray expenses of the Secretary; (4) that the club meet every three weeks on Wednesday morning at 11 o'clock, with a simple luncheon to be served at 1 o'clock after the reading and discussion of the paper.

Carrie Stoddard's rules of order for the fledgling group were few, but she was adamant about their importance. Reading of papers, she insisted, should begin exactly at 11:15, with commentary on the paper to follow. Election of any new member in those first days was by secret ballot, marked "Yes." Any blank ballot was considered a "black ball."⁸

Membership in the early days was limited to sixteen, a number compatible for a hospitable luncheon gathering in a private home. If the relatively small number suggests an inhospitable exclusivity, that charge is addressed by Theodora Penny Martin in The Sound of Our Own Voices: Women's Study Clubs 1860-1910: "The rigorous, determined insistence on small size [a rule adhered to by many early women's clubs] suggests some subliminal factors at work as well. Women were not used to an audience or to playing an active role in a nonfamilial group."  A small group offered a safe, uncritical environment in which women could learn to speak openly and honestly.

"In a dislocated and fragmented world," Martin points out, alluding to those post-Civil War years, "clubs were small centers of stability and status, and club meetings were 'rituals of cohesion.'" However, in the very process of preservation, she points out, "club women would find a new identity- and themselves changed."⁹

The Founders

There is little room here to pay proper homage to all the women in that first Wednesday Morning Club, women who stepped out in their long rustling skirts and, in the spirit of "Susan B.," set about to improve themselves—and frequently their community.

They were not, as one might think, "all alike." Rose Alling describes them succinctly: "We differ radically on all the major issues of the day. Yet we unite in the greatest of them all, a passionate hope for a good world."¹⁰

Outside the club, they worked together to help create that "good world." When the Rochester Women's Educational and Industrial Union (W.E.I.U.) was organized in 1893, seven of its board members as well as its first president (Edwine Danforth) were members of The Wednesday Morning Club. (Dorothy Cumpston, reminiscing about the club in 1970, wrote: 'As I look at the record, I get the impression that. . . the Women's Union was the action arm of the Wednesday Club.. . . I too was a member of that board for twenty years."¹¹  So were other club members.)

Within the club, however, a strict compliance to the goal of self-improvement seems to have been respected, with few official sanctions given to cause or party. Two exceptions stand out. Minutes for the twenty-fourth meeting note that "Mrs. Landsberg said she wished some action might be taken by the Club in regard to having women appointed as city physicians. It was moved that Mrs. O'Connor [wife of the editor of the Post-Express ] draft a petition to the aldermen to that effect to be circulated by members of the Club for signatures." Again, at a 1909 meeting: "Motion was made that a paper be prepared and signed by members of the Club and presented to Mr. George Aldrich¹² asking that Mrs. Montgomery be retained on the school board. Carried."

Throughout the years, Wednesday Club papers frequently have targeted issues of civic concern, from Sarah Kuichling's "Social Settlement or Industrial Training Schools" in 1907 (to which, the Secretary notes, "Mrs. Landsberg, a member of Hull House, contributed greatly") to Marion Hawks' 1988 defense of public art as a stimulating, civilizing influence.

While all members, no doubt, have supported the concept of civic improvement, not all (especially in the early days) have been comfortable with the idea of women as change-makers operating in the public arena. Rose Alling includes herself in the camp of the traditionalists when she comments on Carrie Stoddard's "strange yearning to do the same things that men did. . . . You all know that fallacious old argument," Alling writes. "It has been the puzzle of my life to analyze why women didn't want to do just the things men didn't or couldn't do."¹³ (While her comment remains coin of the realm for many in the late twentieth century, it does little to reveal Rose Alling's own capacity for courage and plain speaking. Invited to speak before the Ethical Club, apparently about 1890, she read a paper "advocating telling of truth about babies to our children. The subject was so scandalous that many women refused to speak to me."¹⁴

Rose Alling, like countless club women across the country, had found her voice; yet she seems reluctant to admit it.  Feelings of ambivalence, we know, were (and still are) common among women confronting the puzzle of living life within the family circle and as an active community participant, whether as a volunteer or a professional. The problem of breaking away from an idealized image of women was perhaps most acutely sensed during the early days of the club movement. The strong social disapproval that often accompanied "speaking out" was very real. When Mrs. Rush Rhees was invited to a meeting of the all-male Browning Club for a paper on Matthew Arnold, she broke the rule of silence for women guests by relating a few anecdotes about Arnold, who had been a family guest when her father was president of Smith College. As she left the meeting, she was chastised by her hostess for starting "a dangerous precedent."¹⁵

A sense of the potential for public disapproval was, perhaps, the reason that invitations to join the Federation of Women's Literary Organizations of Western New York (in 1896) and the General Federation of Women's Clubs (in 1897) were declined. This reluctance to join in a greater community of "self-improving women" may be explained by a comment made by a member of a club in another city, at about the same time:  "[When the call came] suggesting that women might meet in the open and hold discussions, [it started] a fluttering in the dovecotes. . . . Might we not be chronicled in the daily papers as standing for progressive ideas we did not approve?"¹⁶

On the specific question of women's suffrage, no clear consensus of Wednesday Morning Club members' convictions can be determined. No doubt they were mixed. Several members—including Edwine Danforth, Helen Montgomery, and Mary Gannett—were friends of Susan B. Anthony and worked with her to found the W.E.I.U.  Wednesday Morning Club members' pride in Anthony's work is evident in a notation in the minutes for the January meeting, 1892:

"Motion made and seconded that the Secretary should write to the secretaries of all the Women's Clubs asking them to meet with her to consider the feasibility of tendering a reception to Miss Anthony on her birthday to show the appreciation in which she is held in the city of Rochester."

(The next meeting was given over to plans for the reception, and discussion on the paper, "A Few Points Relating to Woman's Legal Rights in Different States," had to be curtailed.)

Anti-suffrage sentiments also were heard. After a 1914 meeting when Mary Gannett spoke in favor of women's rights, Sara Fisher comments in the minutes: "Suffrage again. It was a sane well-equipped discussion, but no one's view was altered. Each member expressed herself freely- mostly against—though all were tolerant with courtesy of the opinion of her neighbor."

The Meetings

Dorothy Cumpston, writing on the occasion of the club's eightieth anniversary notes: "One fact which was impressed upon me during my early membership was that, in the Wednesday Morning Club, it was absolutely outré to make a motion on anything. Agreement should decide issues. That has always been the practice during my years of membership.¹⁷

While that practice has continued in recent years, there is frequent mention in early minutes of motions being made and passed. There may have been security in parliamentary ritual. "As they met in each others' parlors, surrounded by familiar symbols of family life in which they each played a strong and unquestioned role, [club women] found in Robert's Rules of Order a vehicle through whose guise they could extend the leadership traits they had unconsciously developed in the home."¹⁸ On the other hand, The Wednesday Club has never had a constitution, official by-laws, or a motto—all frequently adopted by other early women's groups.

Occasionally, changes in format have been suggested. Minutes for April 21, 1897, note: "It was suggested by Mrs. Hoyt for the ensuing year that a course of study take the place of the papers;" at the next meeting, that motion "was considered and enthusiastically voted against." In 1901, Edwine Danforth proposed that book reviews be prepared as a basis for discussion, and in 1908 Rose Alling suggested that a country be selected for year-long study. While both formats were popular among women's clubs elsewhere, each was rejected.

Sharing comments on ideas expressed in the monthly paper has always played an important role in meetings. During the course of these exchanges between reader and commentator, the topic is illuminated by information and anecdotes called up from the knowledge and life experiences of members; often that experience has been rich and wide-ranging. Feminist historians insist that women have been "trained in silence." If this is so, the club tradition calling for impromptu and pertinent commentary has resulted in a process that resembles a practicum in public speaking.

As freedom to express themselves became more familiar to early study club members, they "often had to be regulated into discussion."¹⁹ Within The Wednesday Club the pattern of regulation has changed over the years. At the tenth meeting, "Mrs. Alling moved that the discussion be spontaneous, each one speaking as she feels so inclined without waiting to be called on by the presiding officer." In 1895 it was agreed that "numbered papers indicating the order in which members are to speak will be distributed by lot at the opening of the meeting. After each has spoken, the chairman may at her discretion allow any member to speak briefly in reference to any point touched by the regular speaker, but not on any others . . . The responsibility of holding the discussion within reasonable bounds rests with the chairman."

The implication of the latter decision is that lively responses could be counted upon, a condition which continues. In recent years the pattern has changed once again, with the Secretary choosing one member to begin commentary; response proceeds around the room in a circular fashion. Each commentator now begins with a formal word of thanks to the reader, and additional discussion of the topic frequently continues informally at the luncheon table.

Meeting dates, even during the early years, were firmly fixed by the Secretary in advance of the year, with a printed card sent to each member announcing dates, readers, and hostesses. (Only one or two meetings have ever been cancelled.) Almost always meetings have taken place in members' homes. Elaborate lunches have been discouraged ²⁰ but that dictum has not always been followed, especially in the early years. On the twenty-fifth anniversary of the club in 1915, minutes for the May 1 meeting at Emily Hollister's home on East Avenue read in part: "Such a picture for May Day! A table choicely laid. . . A pole wound with white ribbon, strands of white ending before each plate with a bright nosegay. Clusters of gentians in abundance." (Sara Fisher, "faithful Secretary," was presented with a circle of pearls and sapphires "nestling on white satin," a club "alphabet" worked around members' names was read, and a parting song sung.)

On occasion, venues other than members' homes have been chosen for meeting places, among them the Memorial Art Gallery, the University Women's Club, Becque's Cafe (1895), the Chatterbox Club, and the Genesee Valley Club. In 1896 a "basket-picnic" was held at Emily Hollister's summer place at Charlotte on Lake Ontario; "Mr. Hollister met the members on Exchange Street and transported them. . . in Mr. Beckley's private car." In 1903 there was a boat trip on the canal to Fairport with a "basket-picnic . . . in a beautiful grove," and, in later years, a motor trip to Scottsville, and another, farther afield, to Wyoming County and the new clubhouse given to the women of Wyoming by member Lydia Coonley Ward. Midsummer "reunions" have been hosted on recent occasions by Marion Hawks, at the Hawks's summer home on Canandaigua Lake.

On occasion, guest speakers have addressed the group. Rose Alling notes in her history: "Mention should be made of the presence among us from time to time of men coming for a meeting at which they read papers. This list includes Claude Bragdon, Mr. William Hoyt, Rev. Dr. Hanna, now Archbishop, and Mr. Miner, Mr. Jack Warner, and papers from the pens of  Dr. Rhees, Mr. Alling, Dr. Gannett, and Dr. Slater were loaned for reading by one of us "²¹ An Eastman Kodak Company photographer, engaged to take a group photograph of members in 1970, was invited back to talk about the use of photography in crime detection. Other guest speakers have included the daughter of a "premier" of Holland (1905) and "a noted [woman] police officer from the Los Angeles force" (1912). In 1989, W. Stephen Thomas, director emeritus of the Rochester Museum and Science Center, was invited to talk on the history of Rochester clubs in preparation for The Wednesday Club's centennial.

The Papers

A review of papers prepared by members over the years reads, Rose Alling suggests in her history, like "a complete college course."  That "course" includes multiple subjects, from the fine arts to science, from civics to travel, from literature and philosophy to history.

Preparation in the early days seems to have been a bit casual. How else to explain to today's members—who often spend months preparing for "the paper"—the frequency with which those first readers exchanged dates? To wit: minutes for the ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth meetings (in 1891) reveal that, successively, "Mrs. Hoyt read in the place of Mrs. Hollister," "Mrs. Stoddard read in place of Mrs. Hoyt," "Miss Fisher read in place of Mrs. Gannett," and "Mrs. Hollister read in place of Mrs. Stoddard." (Perhaps these monthly fluctuations elicited Edwine Danforth's paper that year on "Elasticity"—read "in place of Mrs. Adams.") This apparently casual approach has been replaced by a secure rotation schedule which only the direst emergency can interrupt.

The early schedule may have been flexible, but many readers spent long hours preparing their papers. Rose Alling describes the anxiety that accompanied the task of preparation: "Those annual brain storms as to what one should write about! The temptation to slump into book reviews or reading somebodies [sic] letters, anythingrather than a mental inventory!" For her own debut (her "dies irae," she calls it) Alling explored "Christian Science and Kindred Phenomena," with personal research: "I stayed over a broiling Sunday in Boston to go to 'The Mother Church.' I went to one of our hospitals to a demonstration of hypnotism. I visited a Christian Science Healer, and read numerous treatises. . . .²²

The club's first paper, on October 1, 1890, was given by Mrs. O'Connor; it was, minutes report, "a beautiful paper on 'Emerson, the Poet."  After analyzing the earliest topics presented by readers, Dorothy Cumpston in her history points out that many consisted of personal analysis or reminiscing; ten titles during just a few years of the 1920s include the word "reminisce" in some form. "In other words," she points out, "these women thought and then wrote about what they thought."  This willingness to share intimate interior thoughts may have been possible, she reminds us, because "Outside of the Wednesday Club these women met frequently. Rochester was smaller—with fewer activities . . . (and) the group included many close friends."²³

Catharine Whipple, wife of the Nobel laureate physician and first dean of Rochester's medical school, was asked by Dorothy Cumpston to recall papers of significance during her club membership. "She recalls with pleasure . . . Mrs. Hoeing's consideration of Henry James; several of Mrs. Rhees' such as the one on the year spent . . . in Germany. (I thought at the time that, in its best days, the Atlantic Monthly never published a better written and more completely charming article.) There was Mrs. Clausen's vivid history of Darwin. Mrs. Clark. . . introduced us to cybernetics. And Mrs. Whipple produced a number of fascinating papers" [several on plantation life in the Old South].²⁴

Religion, or "moral philosophy," was a popular topic for early papers. "Modern Christianity," "Two Great Teachers—Jesus and Socrates," "Hindrances to Religious Life," "Three Principles of Belief," "Ethical Intent in Art," "Charity as Taught by Four Great Leaders," and "What to Do with Sunday" suggest only some of the variations on a theme.

Papers on what is called today "the Women's Movement" have been presented since the very first days. In addition to Mrs. Fitch's paper that first year on the legal rights of women, there has been "Women's Taskmasters" (1896), "The Present Duty of American Women" (1911), "Women Suffrage and the Fence" (1913), "College Women in the Far East" (1913), "The Fashion in Heroines" (1950), "The Women of Riyadh" (1988), and "The Glass Ceiling" (1989), among others.

Topics on economics have ranged from an early paper on "The Ethics of Money" to "Some Thoughts on Socialism" (1907), "Financing in War Time" (1942), "State Taxes," the European Common Market (1989), and "Money Talks" (1990).

"We write about what we know, where we've been, or what we learn. . . ," Dorothy Cumpston explained. "What we know" and "where we've been" is richly varied. Catharine Whipple described her trip to Sweden for the award of the Nobel prize to her husband. Emily Hollister reminisced about days in New York with her grandfather, political "boss" Thurlow Weed. Papers on travel have entertained the club's armchair travelers since Emily Watson's first-hand account in 1910 of "Camping in Morocco." Visual aids have ranged from the stereopticon (which illuminated "100 beautiful pictures of French architecture" (in 1905) to the VCR (called on in 1988 to show film clips exploring the question "Do Blondes Really Prefer Gentlemen?")

Two World Wars have intruded violently on members' consciousness. In 1917, Edwine Danforth read from a volume of war poems (and a collection was taken up for "the Belgian sufferers"). "After the War Problems" and "Sufferings of the Poor Russians" (1920) were followed—twenty years later—by "Books to Read in War Time;"  programs during which letters were read aloud from relatives at the front; and a talk by a member's son describing weeks on a German prison ship in the North Atlantic.

The Legacy

In preparation for The Wednesday Club's centennial, members have recorded pertinent information on their own lives and have researched the histories of those members now deceased.²⁵

The documents gathered recall the distinctions of many—achievements lauded in the contemporary press and reviewed in poignant obituaries. There was Edwine Danforth, early president of the Rochester Board of Education, first president of the Public Health Nursing Association, and first chair of the W.E.I.U. Miriam Landsberg at the time of her death was remembered as "one of Rochester's most noble woman helpers." Mary Gannett in 1890 founded the Evening Home for Boys, and worked for twenty years in the cause of political equality. Carrie Stoddard led the Children's Aid Society and pioneered women's work on hospital boards. Elizabeth Hollister endowed a children's ward at The Genesee Hospital; Emily Watson gave the community the resource we now know as The Memorial Art Gallery; Helen Montgomery reshaped the University of Rochester when she chaired a committee to raise funds to obtain the right of women to attend the all-male institution, and she led the fund drive for the first women's dormitory there (named after her friend, Susan B. Anthony).

More recently, Dorothy Cumpston helped develop the county library system, founded the Brighton Memorial Library, and served as president and "motivating spirit" of the Rochester Legal Aid Society, and other civic organizations. Alice Wood Wynd, in addition to serving as president of the Council of Social Agencies, helped found the Rochester Association for the United Nations, and was instrumental in bringing educational television to the community. Several current members, trained by the example of their elders within the club, continue the legacy of creative civic involvement.

While some members have found their voices, others have remained silent. A few of us have disappeared with little public notice. Who was  "Mrs. Cassidy"? Who was "Mary May"? The quiet work and the aspirations of some members, their acts of friendship and their private sorrows may no longer be remembered, but that they were shared with at least one "sister in self-improvement" is a certainty. (Surely, the value of a life is greater than the number of lines written on a resume or printed in an obituary.)

Wednesday Club members—as they celebrate a centennial—may smile in agreement with the club's first Secretary, Sara Fisher, who wrote in 1896: "Each meeting. . . is anticipated as a feast of reason and a flow of soul."

NOTES

1. See accompanying roster of members for dates and names of husbands (when appropriate).
2. Founded in 1889 by Mary T. Gannett.
3. Rose Alling, "The Wednesday Club," p. 5; in archives.
4. ibid., p. 3.
5. An all-male club founded in 1882 and still meeting in 1990.
6. Alling, op. cit., p. 7.
7. ibid., p. 6.
8. ibid., p. 11. (A method long abandoned. Admission to membership is now by consensus after discussion.)
9. Theodora Penny Martin, The Sound of Our Own Voices: Women's Study Clubs, 1860-1910 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1987), pp. 67 and 18.
10. Alling, op. cit., p. 29.
11. Dorothy Cumpston, "The Wednesday Club: 1890-1970," p. 7; in archives.
12. George W. Aldrich, mayor of Rochester.
13. Alling, op. cit., p. 7.
14. ibid., p. 6.
15. Cumpston, op. cit., p. 2.
16. Martin, op. cit., p. 80.
17. Cumpston, op. cit., p. 4.
18. Martin, op. cit., p. 66.
19. ibid., p. 88.
20. Cumpston, op. cit., p. 4.
21. Alling, op. cit., p. 15.
22. ibid., p. 13.
23. Cumpston, op. cit., pp. 6 and 7.
24. ibid., p. 6.
25. See archives.

 

Roster of Members of the Wednesday Club

 

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