NAWSA GENERAL CORRESPONDENCE Talbot, MARION [postmark] 17 CHICAGO ILL. NOV 19 1943 [postal cancellation] BUY WAR SAVING BONDS AND STAMPS Miss A. S. Blackwell 1010 Massachusetts Ave. Cambridge 38 Mass. [*I give thanks that after these long years you still keep me in your thoughts and send*] [?]. [*Thanksgiving 1943 Marion Talbot*] ARS SACRA 5 H 6468 Printed in U. S. A. He is saying please have a happy Easter Day 1943 Happy memories of our school and college days. Marion Talbot MISS MARION TALBOT 5758 KENWOOD AVENUE CHICAGO 37, ILLINOIS Dear Alice "Bostonia" brings me just now the first word I have had of the belated recognition of your long years of humanitarian service. I well remember the day you first appeared at Chauncy Hall School and here followed your distinguished career with interest and affection Miss Breckenridge joins me in glad congratulation. Faithfully yours Marion Talbot July 10, 1945 Jan 25 47 Miss Marion Talbot 5758 Kenwood Avenue Chicago 37, Illinois Dear Alice It makes me very happy as the days and years pass quietly in my comfortable home and old time happy memories flood my mind to have the token of your continued thought of me If I were not pretty strictly housed, I would make an effort to see you. I hope you feel that the outlook for the world is more encouraging. How few of our contemporaries contemporaries are left! We have lived through a remarkable and tragic era. I have been very fortunate and happy Affectionately ever Marion Talbot [*winter 1949*] Editorials A Message Sent to Miss Talbot's Family Dr. Marion Talbot has been not only the central figure in the founding of the American Association of University Women, but a source of power to it for sixty-five years. Her wisdom, her vigor, her breadth of view and her wit have enriched the whole life of the Association from its beginning through its last national convention in 1947. The Board of Directors of the Association feels moved to tell her family of their admiration and affection for her and to venture to associate themselves in the family's grief at no longer having her here. -- The Board of Directors MARION TALBOT IN MEMORIAM The writer of this brief memorial to Dean Marion Talbot, a founder and life-long member of the American Association of University Women, knew her only in her later years, long after she had retired from her position at the University of Chicago. When I wondered what Miss Talbot had been like as Dean of Women, I questioned a graduate of the Class of 1922 at Chicago and elicited the following characteristic little anecdote, The graduate of whom I speak did not live in Miss Talbot's hall, and she regarded Miss Talbot with admiration, respect, and a measure of awe, as one barely human. One day, however, at a basketball game, the Dean sat down beside her, drew out a five-cent bag of peanuts, offered them to her neighbor, and proceeded to strew peanut shells on the bleachers as she followed the game with enthusiasm and excitement. Evidently Miss Talbot was human and had qualities which greatly endeared her to her students. She must have been then, as when I knew her, a simple, realistic and understanding person as well as a distinguished administrator. No one can read her account of the beginnings of the University of Chicago and of her important share in that great enterprise without realizing the humorous and effective realism with which she dealt with the many problems she was expected to solve. From the first pages of her book, More Than Lore, when she tells how a New England friend, on her departure for the wild West, pressed into her hand a little box which contained a piece of Plymouth Rock, to almost the end where she describes a somewhat acrimonious correspondence about the position of women by saying she felt " perhaps unduly confident that I was showing more moderation in my phrases than was my correspondent," her writing is full of humor and of practical common sense. Near the end of her life Miss Talbot attended the Dallas Convention in 1947 and followed its course from beginning to end. In the midst of the business meeting she sent characteristic message, murdered in her feeble voice, to the busy and harassed executives who were carrying through a difficult and exciting convention: "Tell those ladies that a little humor helps." Every member of the AAUW knows that Marion Talbot was one of the founders of the Association of Collegiate Alumnae. She served as its secretary for thirteen years and for a term as president. In 1892 she was called by President Harper on the recommendation of Alice Freeman Palmer to help in the founding of the University of Chicago, and shortly became its Dean of Women, the first woman in the United States to be formally named and appointed to that office. With what satisfaction she must have looked back through the years and realized the fruition of her pioneer endeavors which had in part made possible the present AAUW, over one hundred thousand strong, the great influential University of Chicago, and not least perhaps in ultimate usefulness, the deans of women operating on a thousand college campuses all over the United States. Miss Talbot was a great pioneer and originator whose influence on higher education was as far-reaching 79 ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITY WOMEN homemaking, household management; radio, and public speaking. No one person can attend all the classes offered at the Institute, but through living together in the residence halls on the campus and eating together in the dining-hall and playing together on the golf course or tennis courts, or singing or driving, members of the Institute share their ideas and pass on information in a vital and lively fashion. Mrs. Eleanor Green Smith, 1948 winner of the scholarship given annually by the Institute to an AAUW member, in her own words, gives you a good over-all picture of what that month offers: I consider it a great privilege to have been a registrant at the Vassar Summer Institute. The parents, professional people, and faculty all striving to make family relationships and child development a vital concern assured a versatile and lively community. The resources of the excellent faculty, enriched by visiting lecturers, were available to each of us -- and I do want to pay special tribute to the Children's School and Dormitory set-up which, among other things, gave the parents a respite from the usual twenty-four-hour schedule and an insight into how the business of child JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITY WOMEN far-reaching as that of any woman in her generation. I think that it was primarily through Miss Talbot that I touched that great group of American women whose zeal for opening all educational opportunities to women places those of us in later generations eternally in their debt. She was in the early group of women graduates of Boston University, and when the appointment at Chicago came through, she rejoiced in it, especially because it looked then as if women were to be given proper recognition at the new institution. It was a grievous disappointment to her that the fair promise did not entirely materialize. But all through her life at Chicago, and indeed through all her days, she was a valiant fighter for women in the academic world. With her duties as Dean of Women at Chicago, Miss Talbot combined the teaching of "sanitary science." As a lifelong participant in academic discussions about liberal as against vocational education, and as a concerned observer of modern ideas about the functional education of women, I was especially interested in the masterful way in which Miss Talbot developed this field of study -- home economics as we would now call it-- into a course primarily planned "as a means of liberal culture." In this, as in other matters, she took the long view and planned to educate young women for life and leadership and for intellectual satisfaction as well as for practical preparation to earn a living. It was characteristic of Miss Talbot's unflagging interest in women's education that after her retirement from the University of Chicago at the age of sixty-nine, she spent two years as acting president of the American Woman's College in Istanbul, Turkey. My personal knowledge of Dean Talbot, whom I came to love dearly, dates, as I have said, from 1937 when she and I shared an "academic spree" in attending together the celebration of Mount Holyoke's Centenary. Her appreciation of the beauty of the spring landscape in its appleblossom dress, her enjoyment of the gracious hospitality of the occasion, her generous praise and admiration for President Woolley, and her rejoicing at the recognition of women evidenced by the dignity and importance of the celebration, all linger in my mind. Marion Talbot died October 20, at the age of ninety. No one can mourn her passing. She was old and frail and lonely, especially after the death of her devoted friend and associate, Sophonisba Breckinridge. Her death marks the end of the era of our pioneers, and we acknowledge again the great debt of our educated women to the last of our American Association of University Women founders, Marion Talbot. Margaret S. Morris President, AAUW, 1937-1941 80 From the History of the American Association of University Women The founding of the Association In the 1870's Boston, Massachusetts, was a center of culture and intellectual vigor, and to its schools and colleges the whole of the United States looked with admiration, and with the hope of finding leadership there. Yet there was not as yet either in Boston or its neighbor Cambridge, any school where a young woman could be prepared for college as the Boston Latin School or the Roxbury Latin School or the Cambridge High School prepared her brothers. Among private schools the Chauncy Hall School admitted a few girls, but with reluctance, as its large classes were filled with boys, most of whom expected to go to Harvard College. When Boston University opened a college of Liberal Arts to which young women could be fitted to undertake the work of the freshman year. Dr. I. Tisdale Talbot, dean of the School of medicine in Boston University, and his wife had two daughters for whom they desired the best education possible. "Finishing schools" seemed to them no solution for young women with real intellectual power, and with great foresight they had their elder daughter Marion begin the study of Latin when she was ____________________________________________________ The story of the founding of the Association appears as Chapter I of the AAUW History, published in 1931 for the fiftieth anniversary of the Association. This chapter is reprinted here, in slightly abridged form, as part of the record of AAUW's indebtedness to Marion Talbot. Miss Talbot and Mrs. Lois K. M. Rosenberry collaborated in writing the History; this chapter was written by Mrs. Rosenberry. ten years of age, and the study of Greek when she was thirteen, partly by private instruction and partly by attendance at the Chauncy Hall School. It seemed to these farsighted parents that modern languages should be a part of an educated woman's equipment, and they therefore took their family to Europe for fifteen months, that a speaking and reading knowledge of French and German might be acquired. Even with this unusual equipment, their daughter Marion was unable to fulfill all the requirements for entrance to the College of Liberal Arts of Boston University, and as the Girls' High School could give only " small Latin and less Greek," the principal of the school, Colonel Homer B. Sprauge, directed her study of the Aeneid and the Iliad. So slow was the pace set for her, in even the advanced class in geometry at the Girls' High School, that Dr. and Mrs. Talbot arranged for her to enter college at the beginning of the winter term (1876-77), gradually making up her entrance conditions and the work of the fall term which she had missed . . . and year by year she proceeded on her course until June of 1880, when she was graduated with the degree of Bachelor of Arts. But this unusual course had resulted in what was almost social ostracism for the young graduate, who had by her college course cut herself off from her girlhood friends. No "Junior League" or "Sewing Circle" of those days wanted as a member a young woman whose aims were so different from their own, and whose time was absorbed by what was to them a hopeless tangle of tormenting questions whose solution got one nowhere socially when it. 81 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITY WOMEN was all over. As a consequence, Marion Talbot came out of college to a world with which she had little in common, and to a life of comparative leisure to which she was entirely unaccustomed. It would evidently be highly desirable to choose a definite occupation for which her preparation fitted her; but the choice would have to be made in spite of difficulties and uncertainties, and even when the choice was made, the opportunities for carrying it out were meager, if not actually hazardous. Her friends, who looked forward to marriage as the only possible step after the finishing school and the formal début, did not speak the same language as this young graduate of 1880. HERE, then, was Marion Talbot with a college degree and an absorbing desire to make herself and her education useful, but with as barren an outlook for such a future as one can imagine. The fall of 1881 saw her mother's friend, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, herself a courageous mother of young daughters, interested and eager to help her puzzled young friend. The Saturday Morning Club had been established for Miss Maud Howe and her friends, and by her admission here, Marion Talbot renewed in a measure her relations with the young women whose companionship her entrance to college had compelled her to forego five years before. But once the urge of an idea takes hold of one in thorough-going fashion, one is bound by it for life, and so it was with Marion Talbot. The satisfactions obtained in the pursuit of truth make other searches seem trivial in comparison, and the use of one's mind becomes not only a fascinating, but a compelling task. Not satisfied with what four years of college had taught her, Marion Talbot began the study which led to a master's degree, obtained at Boston University in 1882. In the mean time, the younger daughter of the Talbot household, Edith, was facing the same problem and the same difficulties in preparing herself for college as had her older sister. Convinced that the path to college for boys which the Boston Latin School made so clear and easy and unswerving, should be opened for her daughter and all other young Boston girls whose desires lay in the same field, Mrs. Talbot gathered a small but equally courageous group of friends about her, and made a determined assault upon the Boston Latin School hoping to make a break in its walls whereby girls might enter along with their brothers. But tradition was too strong and conservatism was too stubborn, and the wall held. t was pointed out to Mrs. Talbot that the traditions of the Boston Latin School were too precious to be sacrificed, that fair play had nothing to do with the question, and other arguments as old as the story of Eve were brought up to buttress the case. The struggle had been brave and vigorous, but inevitably hopeless, and reluctantly Mrs. Talbot and her friends accepted a substitute for their far-sighted and idealistic plan. This substitute was the establishment of the Latin School for Girls, which was not allowed, however, to use "Boston" in its title, since there might be confusion with the Latin School for Boys, which had dated its existence from 1635. Mrs. Talbot's eyes were not thoroughly opened to the unreasonable and manifold obstacles to women's education and later use of that education as the foundation for a career. The difficulties which she had met in the task of securing thorough training for her own daughters had added immeasurably to her lifelong interest in education in general. In particular, her elder daughter's experience after leaving Boston University had brought home to Mrs. Talbot the realization that in addition to the small group of women who were able to utilize their college training as teachers, especially in institutions of collegiate rank, there was arising a class entirely new and destined within a few years to be large - that of the women whose intellectual urge had sent them to college, whom the freedom from economic 82 THE FOUNDING OF THE ASSOCIATION pressure had left after graduating with leisure and fine standards of taste, but with few ways outside of the home in which such equipment might to advantage be utilized. A college course, with its definite aims and its training in habits of persevering industry, did not fit young women to live on the easiest terms with other young women less systematically trained. A conventional social life seemed lacking in purpose or even in providing friendships on any such basis as college provided, and was inadequate as a satisfying end in itself to this new generation. Moreover, it was obvious that the same problems (albeit not of exactly the same difficulty) must exist all over the United States, and only through cooperation and united action could any solution be found. Three questions had to be answered by any thoughtful young woman who in 1880 had a college or university degree. First, what especial value had a college degree been to her individually and personally? Second, if there were value in such a degree, how best could she assist in forwarding the aims and ambitions of other young women who also wished such training? Third, how best could she fit herself into her community and play the part in its life and program which was at once her interest and her evident obligation? These were the questions which, in October of the year 1881, Marion Talbot was trying to answer, in the intervals of her study for her master's degree. Seated day after day in the comfortable home of her parents at 66 Marlborough Street, in this same city of Boston which had been so inhospitable to new ideas on the subject of women's education, she pondered their solution. One day the doorbell rang, and a young woman asked if she might speak with Mrs. Talbot. When Mrs. Talbot entered the room, the young woman apologized for presenting herself so unconventionally and without formal introduction, and added the information that she was Alice Hayes, who had been graduated the preceding June with a bachelor's degree from the comparatively new college at Poughkeepsie, New York -- Vassar College. Miss Hayes further explained that her family was quite unwilling that she take a regular teaching position, partly because she was not physically very vigorous, and partly because there was no financial necessity for her so to do. But Miss Hayes was determined to earn a small income of her own by her own labors, and she felt able and amply equipped to do tutoring, for example, for a few hours a week, if only such a position could be found. Knowing Mrs. Talbot's interest in women's education and in college training especially, Miss Hayes said she had ventured to call to see if by any chance she could get advice as to how to proceed in her search for a position. Thereupon the conversation was opened, the whole situation canvassed by question and answer, and there stood revealed a definite case of attainments unquestioned, of ambitions most worthy, of young womanhood, modern in its training and its ideas, balked at every turn by tradition and prejudice. TO Mrs. Talbot came the thought of her own daughters, of the number of such young women as were they and Miss Hayes, scattered the length and breadth of the whole United States, and it that moment came a vision. As if by inspiration she saw constantly increasing numbers of young women, with similar training and congenial tastes, drawn together in a great body for the advancement of human folk. She saw how by cooperation and by organization these young women might set the stakes ahead in the matter of educational methods, might encourage young girls in more definite aims for their lives, might give support to the student struggling for lack of funds wherewith to make a purpose come to fruition, might formulate plans for investigation of the very problems which at the moment seemed incapable of solution, and by such investigation point the way to their answers. 83 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITY WOMEN She saw, too, as if in a flash of light, what would come of such association when trained young women learned to work together in a common interest, with unity of thought along with diversity of method, the whole in a spirit of self-sacrifice and loving service. She sent for her daughter Marion, and there the two young women met, Mrs. Talbot revealing to them her vision and smarting to them her fire. The whole scene is symbolic - the older woman trained in a different school, by different methods, in a different environment, but wholly sympathetic with a younger generation; the younger women looking in respect and admiration to one whose years of experience in a world where she had keep consistently her idealism made her judgement well worth having. At once Marion Talbot consulted her friend and teacher, Ellen H. Richards, and together they issued a call to all the college women they new- few indeed in that day- to meet on the 28th day of November, 1881, in the hospitable halls of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Eight colleges were represented by seventeen women: Oberlin College, Vassar College, University of Michigan, Cornell University, University of Wisconsin, Boston University, Smith College, Wellesley College. It is of interest to note that, with four exceptions, no one of the group had been out of college more than five years, and six had graduated that year or the one preceding. Ellen H. Richards was made chairman of the meeting, and Marion Talbot its secretary- an office she continued to hold for fourteen years, exercising its functions until 1892 from her old home, where was made manifest the vision which led to this first meeting. It was fitting that Miss Talbot should state the object of the Gathering, and when she had finished, it was significant that the acting president of Wellesley College, Alice E. Freeman, should rise to make a motion, "that a meeting be called for the purpose of organising an association of women college graduates, with headquarters at Boston." On January 14, 1882, sixty-five women answered the call and attended the meeting. Miss Talbot gave in brief outline the work she thought might be accomplished by such an organisation as the one proposed. Alice E. Freeman spoke, as was her wont, with authority and contagious enthusiasm. While no detailed record of her speech is preserved, those present remember how clear and sound were her views...She believed that the Association should exist and be fostered for the sake of society, for the sake of knowledge, and for the sake of the individual members themselves. She thought it was important that women who had gone to college should carry the college ideas far and wide in the community and make it a rightly valued thing for a girl to go to college. She desired to set up a standard for the higher training of women, to insist that it be held there, and she thought it important that those young women who go out from the colleges into different occupations should feel the helpful influence of an unseen but guardian company close around them. On that January day in 1882, there was launched upon its long career the first association of college and university trained women in the world. Transcribed and reviewed by contributors participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.