Evening capital and Maryland gazette. (Annapolis, Md.) 1910-1922, 1917-10-12
KATE FIELDS AND HER TIMES
Common Errors To Which Writers
OF This Period Are Addicted.

One OF the commonest errors to
which writers of this period. in the
United States, appear to be addicted
is that of assuming woman to have
been more or less negligible factor in
the public life of the country. up to
the present. generation. Such a belief
is. of course. founded on ignorance of
the facts. without intending 10 make
any invidious distinctions. it might be
said, with the strictest regard for
truth, that, relatively speaking, there
were more women of striking in
dividuality. and of acknowledged abil-
ity and prominence, in the United
States in the last generation, and in
the generation before that. than there
are in this one.
II is true. perhaps, that Dolly Madi-
son found herself beyond her depth
When they got TO talking about seri-
Gus things" and it may be true that
Jessie Fremont, the great Missouri
Senator's daughter, was not every
deep in book knowledge" The con-
tention here, however, has nothing to
do with the social queen, but rather
with the intellectual leader, like, for
instance, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Julia
Ward Howe, Mary A. Livermore,
Belva A. Lockwood, Olive Logan,
Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Frances
Willard. Harriet Prescott Spofford,
Anna Dickinson. Kate Field, and
score of other women, perhaps equal
ly entitled to honorable mention.
Between 1910 and 1880 stretched a
period in which the women of Amer
lea obtained a hearing, not altogether
because the things they advocated de-
served it, in the public estimation, not
because the advocates were women,
but because the ability with which
they wrote and talked commanded
attention.
Joseph NJ Field, of English birth
and of early adoption in the United
storming times, in those romantic
days when there was a great deal
more money than culture in the coun-
try, travelled up and down the coun-
try making one-night stands, as did
the elder Booth, Davenport, Forrest,
Charlotte Cushman, Jefferson, and
Adams. In the middle of the last cen
fury, Field found Ben Debar and some
other genial brother professionals in
the prosperous town of st. Louis. and
decided TO settle there. In his theatre
he presented the people of the Mound
(~sfxr nd nf fhnncaYndc w hn
came in on the Missouri river float
ing palaces" with the standard Eng
lish drama, and later, that they might
be still further advanced in the potter
branches of knowledge, he published
for their edification newspaper, call
ed the Reveille. He was something of
a genius and a humorist, and he was
the father of one of the most popular
and perplexing little women of the
steamboating, land-speculating, slave
holding Civil War and reconstruction
period She talked charmingly about
everything. She inherited her fathers
literary taste. She wrote prose and
verse She lectured. She acted. She
travelled abroad as a newspaper cor
respondent. She appeared in Booths
great New York theatre as Peg
Wellington" with whom she had often
been compared She headed numer-
Gus movements for the improvement
of the condition of women, finally
lending herself TO a cooperative
dress association. in New York, which
proved a failure. In the end she pub
lished Kate Fields Washington. a
weekly newspaper of literary tone, at
the capital, and gave TO the world her
various writings in book form.
Kate Field, it should be remember
ed, had many competitors There
were others as bright, vivacious, and
charming as she on the lecture plat
form. Her career covered decades
when a score of brilliant women
claimed and obtained a hearing. She
held her own not only among women
but among men, and the Redpaths and
the Ponds never sent out, among
their wonderful galaxy of lyceum
celebrities, anybody, woman or man,
who was more certain to draw, and
hold, crowded and profitable house.
Christian Science Monitor.