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Title
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Minutes 20 April 1906
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Description
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[Page 1] On the afternoon of April 20th, thirteen members assembled with Mrs. Charles Grey, the our one guest present being Miss Lucy Martin whose presence among us gave much pleasure to us one and all. We hope she did not view us with a critic’s eye, but we confess to some small trepidation at discussing general literary subjects before a teacher from a school whose Literary Society is called The “Lanier,” for the name is associated with all that is vague & transcendental! The Club welcomed back to its midst Mrs. Smith, whose long absence from our meetings has been the source of general regret. There was too a feel of spring in the air: in the woods just in sight the red-wood was in full blossom, and huge branches of log-wood here & there reminded us that nature was again making all things beautiful. As the theme of the evening was to
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[Page 2] be Alice Brown and her native land New England, our items on this occasion consisted in quotations from the bountiful writings of some of New England’s most gifted sons, Lowell, Whittier, Holmes, and Emerson: among other familiar and well-beloved lines we noted the final clause of Bryants Thanatopus grand and clear and soul inspiring as it will always be. Through some singular lapse of attention the Current Events were omitted on this occasion: perhaps the deafening shrieks of a disobliging freight train that planted itself just outside may be in some part accountable for this omission. Mrs. Grey announced our author Miss Brown, & her rather puzzling new book, Paradise, as our subject: she then read us a somewhat curt, but a always polite missive from Miss Brown, informing us gently but firmly that she had no
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[Page 3] time to bestow upon The Davidson Book Club. Mrs. Grey then inform asked Miss Neel to read for us some review of Paradise, after which she announced that as information concerning our author had been denied us & owing to the decided negative character of the book, she had decided to devote sometime to a slight review of Whither, Lowell, Holmes & Emerson. Mrs. Worth’s regretted absence deprived us of a review of Lowell, but Mrs. Price spoke to us in an interesting way of the Quaker Poet, Whittier, of the privations surrounding his early advantages, & read to us some familiar, but ever new passages from Snow Bound. Mrs. W. R. Grey then told us of the gentle Doctor Oliver Wendell Holmes, he of the universal sympathy and wellnigh universal knowledge, who has since our infancy entered into the warp & woof of our culture, from the time when we
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[Page 4] laughed over the “One Horse Shay” to the hour when we enjoyed the delightful School Mistress in The Autocrat, or shuddered over the weird spell of Elsie [Fenner]. Mrs. Charles Grey then read us “The Courtin,” and so well did she do it & with such evident spirit as to forcibly remind us that the days of her own “courtin” were not yet ancient history. Emerson yet remained to be discussed, but O, perish the thought that the great man, the Sayer, the hamer should be dispatched by any Club toward the close of any meeting! He is so unknowable, veiling his dark fairly forbidding face amid the thick clouds of his own knotty sentences. But we did speak of him, be it never so comely of his leadership among men and minds both when he lived & now, we did touch lightly upon, his loving intercourse with nature, his aloofness from all that was small & sordid, admitting too
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[Page 5] that his one great fault was a lack of power to formulate & combine all that he thought & said & put it in some a coherent & cohesive whole. Mrs. Harrison closed her reminded us, that despite this great fault, William P. Trent claims one really perfect poem for the great thinker, “The Rhodora,” and she then closed her struggling effort by reading this really beautiful gem of poetry. We had hoped that young James Wharey would have been passed around to us as event refreshment, but earlier in the meeting we had sighed to see his white bonneted head disappearing out of the front door. After consoling ourselves for this disappointment with a delicious cream ice & some genuine white cake, the Club adjourned amid the friendly hubbub of leave taking, all alive to the fact that we were indebted to Mrs. Grey for a pleasant as well as profitable afternoon.
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Subject
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Women-North Carolina-Davidson-Societies and clubs.
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Books and reading.
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Women-Societies and clubs.
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North Carolina-Davidson.
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Creator
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BookLovers Club
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Publisher
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Davidson College
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Date
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20 April 1906
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Rights
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For permission to reproduce image, contact archives@davidson.edu
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Language
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eng
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Type
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text
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Identifier
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bl-059
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Coverage
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1906
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4049696
