by Unknown
He has obtained less recognition at home than abroad, though Marcel Sembat, the present Minister of Public Works, and, since the death of Jaures, the chief socialist leader, is an ardent collector of his works. On the occasion of his first exhibition at Vollard’s, the preface of the catalogue was written by no less official a person than Roger Marx, the editor of the “Gazette des Beaux Arts.” The fact that the dealer wanted to give greater prominence to the critic than to the painter caused a disturbance which had true farce-comedy features, but Matisse won—on points.
The following proves nothing. But facts which are inconclusive, logically, are often interesting. Many of the Rembrandts, for instance, now in the Altman collection—which is the most gorgeous possession of our Metropolitan Museum—were, some years ago, the property of Alphonse Kann. He got tired of “old brown varnish”—people will get tired of everything, no matter how classical—and to-day he buys only Matisses. One of his proudest possessions is the nude, “with the blue leg,” a painting which, shown in the International Exhibition of 1913, surprised New York, disgusted Chicago and horrified Boston. Still M. Kann, if he felt it necessary to defend himself from the sneers of the scornful, might point out that Matisse is safely enshrined, through his drawings in the French Museums; that, other drawings, in spite of the notorious and aggressive conservatism of the Kaiser, are in the Print Cabinet at Berlin, and that he is more sought after by German collectors than any of the other “new” Frenchmen. Two characteristic paintings of prime importance, which will be seen in the Montross exhibition are the “Woman at a Desk” and “The Gold-fish.” These are the property of a Moscow collector. As, owing to the war, it was impossible to send them to their owner, Mr. Matisse decided, after some urging, to allow them to come to America, provided they didn’t go further West than New York.
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Soon after the war broke out Matisse lost all trace of his mother, his brother and his brother’s family, who lived at his birthplace, Le Cateau, in the Nord. For months he could not work. He went to his country home, from which he was recalled to Paris to make selections for his New York exhibition. This took his mind off his family troubles. By this time he is probably in active service, for, in spite of his rheumatism, he was determined to get to the war. If he envies a soul in the world it is the painter Derain who went out in the artillery, was wounded, returned to Paris, and has now gone back to the trenches.
ARE ODD WOMEN REALLY ODD?
HYMAN STRUNSKY
FROM JUNE 1915
An odd creature has lately made its appearance on the horizon of man’s world. Scientists have craned their necks in the effort to determine its species, and psychologists have offered many conflicting explanations of its nature.
Was it man or was it woman?
Was it brute or was it human? Was it—What?
Inasmuch as it stood erect and glided with ease and in a spirit of independence, it suggested man; but it lacked man’s salient characteristics and coarser habits. Its shape and beauty—the clearness of the skin and the softness of the eyes—were decidedly womanly, but it lacked woman’s love of frills, her thirst for gossip, and her aptitude for useless occupations.
There was nothing about it to suggest the brute. It did not profane nor debauch; it did not utter coarse oaths, nor did it resort to violence. It was not human, in the sentimental meaning of the word. It did not cry nor did it whimper; it did not pout nor did it frown; it did not cuddle with weakness, or even crouch with fear.
Close observation, careful scrutiny and much wrangling, established the fact that the creature was a woman, after all, but an odd one! Gissing even wrote a book about her and called it “Odd Women.” Other authors followed him. H. G. Wells, for instance. G. B. Shaw, May Sinclair, W. L. George and a hundred lesser literary lights have all taken a shy at the “Odd” woman.
Especially does she appear odd to Madame X., the old fashioned woman, who has been slumbering under the impression that there was nothing at all odd about her own type of womanhood. Mrs. X. finds it a bit disturbing.
• • •
Woman’s historical position does not invite critical analysis. The fact is that men have not been treating her fairly. We very chivalrously called our wife our “better half,” but always regarded her as an inferior and kept her in strict subordination.
She was not a partner to the man, but an auxiliary, she was an extension to man, man, the gigantic structure; the centre of the universe. When we spoke of her “virtues,” we usually meant such of her characteristics as were pleasing and gratifying to us. Obedience, self-sacrifice, beauty, fidelity, tenderness, and affection, were qualifications highly valued,—because of their contributive share to the general happiness of husbands.
She was not master of herself. Her body belonged to her husband, her heart to her children, her mind to her home. Her sex was her sole means of subsistence. From the arms of an indulgent father she passed on to the shoulders of a supporting husband. Her function was to breed children and to amuse men. Whether poor or rich she was in a state of dependence. When poor she was a slave in a hovel; when rich she was an inmate of a glorified Doll’s House.
Marriage was her only trade, and like all other trades it was subject to the fluctuations caused by the law of supply and demand. The supply happened to overlap the demand and the market suffered a slump. Wise and knowing parents took charge of the matrimonial arrangements of their children. In these arrangements matters of convenience figured more prominently than questions of the heart. Love was too delicate a substance to attract the parent eye. Sexual selection, a biological play of emotion and passion—on which depends the make-up of posterity—was crowded out by “practical” considerations. The daughter was not to obey her instincts, but her parents. Disobedience meant—for the daughter—celibacy, and celibacy meant economic dependence.
• • •
The odd woman has odd notions about marriage, the oddest of which is that she thinks it is largely her own affair. To her, marriage is more than the privilege to indulge in dutiful submission. It is a matter of instinct in which her womanhood is involved, and unless she can have it beautifully she will not have it at all.
She is willing to give her labor and strength in exchange for a livelihood but she draws the line on the surrender of her soul. To obey parents is noble, but the will of the parent is the voice of the past and marriage is the demand of the future. The nuptial tie is not to mean the shackling of hearts, and a child is not to be the offspring of a business transaction. If celibacy threatens to lead to economic dependence then she will simply accept other trades as a means of subsistence.
She has at last found these other trades. Marriage is now not her only means of support.
She has discovered that there are other vocations besides being a wife. She has become a worker; a useful member of society; a fellow citizen in an industrial democracy. She is not the inferior but the equal of man. With him she enters the workshop, the library, the college. She writes books and edits magazines. She practices law and medicine. She paints pictures and takes photographs. She is a chemist, a geologist, a biologist, a stenographer, a decorator, a designer. She is a manufacturer. She owns farms and runs hotels. She is a lecturer and an actress. She is a teacher. She is a buyer. She is—odd!
Extremely odd—when judged by Madame X., whose frailties and weaknesses have heretofore constituted our standard of womanhood. We do not shrug our shoulders in deprecation at Madame X., who sleeps late, eats much, plays often and works seldom. We do not think it wrong of her to spend her best hours in the occult devices of the boudoir, where manicurists and masters of tonsorial art are mustering her faculties to the requirements of her social functions, and repairing, with color and cream, the ravages of Habit and Time.
• • •
Madame X. regards the odd women with amazement because they are different; because they rise early, play little, work much,
make money, and are seldom idle.
Whether the odd woman is in business, or in a profession, she is beginning to earn a high salary and to stoop to no man in economic independence. She lives in a comfortable apartment and has a small place in the country. When her parents, or friends, are in need she assists them without suffering the humiliation of wheedling the money from her husband. Her contributions to charity are not the cause of “scenes” at breakfast. She is capable, efficient, and able to stand on her own feet. She is not a passive, but an active, member of society. Life is to her—what it should be to all women—a busy and strenuous experience.
Not long ago, in New York, two “odd” women—an authoress and a painter—were discussing Madame X. The authoress was describing to the painter a routine day in Madame X.’s life: Her pleasures, her dresses, her auction parties, her dances, her gossip, at luncheons, her race-meets and her susceptible admirers.
The authoress paused in her recital:
“And is that really her life?” asked the painter. “What an odd woman she must be.”
NEW YORK WOMEN WHO EARN $50,000 A YEAR
ANNE O’HAGAN
FROM AUGUST 1915
It is more than probable that, during the months of June and July, the Commissioner of Internal Revenue for New York has become convinced that the earning capacity of New York women is a fairly good reason for giving them the suffrage—in November. Perhaps, some day, he will let the world know to how many of the checks, sent by women in payment of their income tax, was attached one of those specially printed little blanks, which the suffragists have circulated so widely, reading: “I pay this tax under protest, in obedience to a law in the making of which I had no voice.”
A few weeks ago, the editor of this magazine [Frank Crowninshield] stated, in a widely contradicted address, that he knew, personally, a dozen women in New York who were earning over $50,000 a year by their own talents or industry. He said that he also knew fifty more who were earning $10,000 a year, or over. His statement was widely ridiculed and challenged, by many newspapers, and space writers, and by a host of conservative persons (whose social ideas had ceased to develop at the end of President Hayes’s administration, or thereabouts). They sought to convince the editor that the clever—and presumably beautiful—ladies had a little deceived him.
• • •
This writer has just completed a limited investigation into the question of the earnings of successful New York women. And she is quite convinced that without any exploring of New York’s by-ways, the editor’s statement was, in reality, a mild one.
Take for example, the playwrights.
Miss Jean Webster is a modest woman and wouldn’t for worlds make anarchists and bomb-throwers of the envious rest of us by telling exactly what she earns. But she does permit herself to say that from $500.00 to $700.00 a week is what “Daddy-Long-Legs,” in the hands of a single company, nets her as the author of it. Well, there have been several companies playing “Daddy-Long-Legs” for the greater part of the past year. There are, in addition, royalties on the moving picture rights of it, royalties upon it in book form, princely prices for other work, a serial and several short stories from her pen—and other side issues to swell the youthful playwright’s income, during the past year, to a figure a little over $50,000.
Since we began with playwrights let us go on with them.
There is “Twin Beds” continuing for Margaret Mayo—Mrs. Edgar Selwyn—the beneficent work of endowment which her first farce, “Baby Mine” began for her, a few years ago. Mrs. Selwyn has had several $50,000 years, and more are in store for her.
Then—but not in the $50,000 class—there is Eleanor Gates, whose “Poor Little Rich Girl” not only gave great delight to New York’s jaded public, a winter ago, but made her a comfortably rich little girl herself. And then there is Rachel Crothers. Or consider the case of Kate Douglas Wiggin—whose “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm” laid a neat fortune in her lap when it went upon the boards, after following as a book, the filial example of “The Birds’ Christmas Carol” and the Penelope stories in laying treasures of love and admiration there. And if Mrs. Francis Hodgson Burnett, down at her place on Long Island, fails to feel the financial security of a steel magnate, with “Sara Crewe” and “Little Lord Fauntleroy” and the “Dawn of a To-morrow” defying time and change—but the thing is unthinkable.
• • •
And since we are speaking of the stage, what of the actresses? In what golden chariots may they not ride during the period of their prosperity, and ever after, if they are but wise and thrifty! That printed slip of defiance to the income tax commissioner seems tame when one considers what Miss Maude Adams or Miss Ethel Barrymore might say—or Laurette Taylor, or Ruth Chatterton, or Billie Burke, or Jane Cowl, or Frances Starr, or Margaret Illington, or Margaret Anglin, or Dorothy Donnelly or Chrystal Herne, or many, many less resplendent twinklers in the theatrical sky.
And the vaudeville favorites! There are, literally, a dozen of them who earn more than ten thousand dollars, like Gertrude Hoffmann, or Beatrice Herford, or Nora Bayes, or Nazimova, or Calve, for instance. Chief among them is Eva Tanguay whose salary is somewhere between $50,000 and $75,000 a year.
As for the film actresses, they are out of the Arabian Nights, no less! Think of the Mary Pickfords of $100,000 a year, and Marguerite Clarks at over $50,000 and the Mary Fullers, Lottie Briscoes, Pearl Whites, Anita Stewarts, Ruth Rowlands, Irene Fenwicks, Marie Doros, Pauline Fredericks, and many others at salaries which take one’s breath away.
Marie Doro, more or less of a novice on the films, has recently received an offer by a responsible firm—of $100,000 a year. She has earned within the past year, by acting and movies, as much as $4,000 in ten days.
• • •
Miss Geraldine Farrar is acting for the “movies” for two months this summer at a fabulous salary. Next winter she will receive $2,500 a performance for singing in opera or concert. This says nothing of her royalties on phonograph records. Think of Lucrezia Bori and Miss Ober, and the other opera singers. One of the impresarios, who has managed many concert and opera singers, furnishes a careful estimate of the incomes of only a few of them thus: Alma Gluck, $75,000 a year; Schumann-Heink, $85,000; Emmy Destinn, $50,000; Julia Culp, $20,000; Frances Alda, $25,000; Gadski, $30,000; Fremstad, $30,000; Caroline Hudson Alexander, $10,000. These sums only represent the earnings of ordinary concert work; what would be added to them by including the fees and royalties from records made for the talking machine companies, one’s dazed mathematical faculties fail to compute. Through the making of records, even the comparatively modest incomes of violinists, like Kathleen Parlow’s and Maude Powell’s ten-to-fifteen-thousand dollars-a-year, are greatly increased.
Alma Gluck, during the past twelve months, has probably earned more money than any woman alive. She is, today, the most popular singer in the phonograph. Her total income, from concerts and records, has considerably exceeded $120,000.
Before we leave the stage and turn to the more prosaic occupations in which women are laying up wealth, let us look at the dancers! How much do women like Mrs. Vernon Castle, or Pavlowa, make? It has been carefully computed that Mrs. Castle and her husband have earned more than $110,000 during the past twelve months. Following after Mrs. Castle are Joan Sawyer and Florence Walton, and Bessie Clayton and a half dozen others.
And then there are the women writers! There are many of these who earn $10,000 a year even without help from the dramatization of their work. Fannie Hurst is one of the authoresses among those present at any gambol on Mt. Croesus of ten-thousand-dollar women. Take Elizabeth Jordan, editor and writer. Consider Gertrude Atherton—she is a New Yorker now—and those strong, colorful novels of hers. And Edna Ferber, and Kathleen Norris, and Mrs. Riggs, and Gene Stratton Porter and a dozen others. Take even the woman publicist, who does not expect to rank financially with those writers whose function is primarily to
amuse; she, also (Miss Ida Tarbell, for instance) does not find ten thousand a year a goal at all impossible of attainment.
And the ladies who illustrate. If May Wilson Preston, one of those rare human beings who may claim to be a satirist and a humorist with the pencil, demanded, instead of the beggarly ten or fifteen thousand dollars which she now earns, a hundred thousand a year, it would not be her admiring public which would demur or call her claim too large!
• • •
Then there’s Helen Dryden, who does covers, and fashion pictures, and who designs costumes for Mr. Dillingham. And there is Rose O’Neill Wilson, the mother of all the Kewpies. Once the Kewpie pictures and dolls were the whole Kewpie family. But now, with factories turning out Kewpie dolls, Kewpie dishes, boxes, jewelry, candy, clocks, clothes, post-cards, toys—and with Mrs. Wilson receiving royalties on every one of them, it is safe to say that she has long ago passed the $50,000 mark.
And the artists and portrait painters! What about Cecilia Beaux and Mrs. Rand and Miss Emmet, and others like unto them? And the sculptors, like Mrs. Whitney and Evelyn Longman! Ten thousand dollars a year would be meagre pay for them.
But all these women—the conservative man is likely to object—have unusual talents—genius; an afflatus apart from the gift of mere industry. But we are ready for him. We beg him to look at the heads of schools, business enterprises, of cigarette factories, of decorating establishments, of dressmaking houses.
What does he say to the schools in New York like those built up by Mrs. Finch (now Mrs. Cosgrave), by Miss Clara Spence, Miss Chapin, Miss Marie Bowen, Miss Rutz-Rees, and many more? That schools like these earn multiples of $10,000 a year cannot be denied.