Emily Bliss Gould: An American in Italy–A Guest Post by Etta M. Madden
Etta Madden, who is also an American in Italy whenever possible
Etta Madden is Professor of English at Missouri State University and the author of Engaging Italy: American Women’s Utopian Visions and Transnational Networks (SUNY Press), Eating in Eden: Food and American Utopias (U Nebraska Press) and Bodies of Life: Shaker Literature and Literacies (Greenwood). She has also published numerous articles on American literature and intentional, spiritual communities in the US and in Italy.
In addition to receiving a Fulbright award, she has been a research fellow at the New York Public Library and is a two-time recipient of Mellon fellowships from the Library Company of Philadelphia.
Take it away, Etta!
Emily Bliss Gould with Venetian Bartoli children, from Italo-American Schools at Rome [1874], New-York Historical Society. Credit: Photography ©New-York Historical Society.
Gould went abroad in 1860 with her husband, retired US Naval physician James Gould. The story is that they went to Italy for her health, but his retirement followed leadership changes and likely factored into their decision. He soon became the recommended physician for US expats in Rome, according to travel guides such as John Murray’s A Handbook of Rome and its Environs (1867). Emily was not merely a trailing spouse when she went abroad in her mid-thirties She found a cause to fight for when she first witnessed schools in Italy’s Piedmont region. The work of the Waldensians—non-Roman Catholic Christians whose history predated Martin Luther—impressed her. The Waldensian schools in rural mountain villages around Turin served impoverished children, and Gould (like many others) believed education would benefit them dramatically. She wanted to see more of such good work.
In 1867 Gould picked up her pen to join the forces for better education. She wrote in December from Florence, Italy, in the dining room of the US Ambassador, George Perkins Marsh and his wife Caroline. Her chosen battle? Finding funds to support the Florence Evangelical School, “a school of some 200 or 300 children.” She wrote to Dr. Thompson, President of the American Foreign and Christian Union, begging with all the metaphors she could muster. Gould employed the language of agriculture rather than warfare, plowshares rather than swords. “We must educate future regeneration of the land,” she wrote. By land, she meant the people, instead of the peninsula’s depleted soil. The children possessed promise. And because Florence was “now open to religious and intellectual improvement,” she wrote, US citizens might help.
In 1870, and with the funds she had raised, Gould had moved south to Rome. There she established what became known as the Italo-American Schools. These provided housing and were orphanages as well as industrial schools—that is, schools that taught hands-on skills rather than classical literature. All the students learned basic literacy and math, but additionally, the boys learned typesetting and printing, while the girls learned needlework. (Gould did not have a problem with this gender division). Like many privately-funded schools, the education also included some pointed messages regarding political and religious beliefs. Children learned patriotic songs and bible stories. But Gould’s overall stated purpose with the school efforts were, along with literacy, skills that might help young people earn a living–what today is called “workforce development.” As she explained, it was “to christianize and civilize, not to propagandize.” Not surprising, what she hoped would be unifying work for the good of all was divisive.
Wherein, beyond financial support, lay the battles?
One, to be expected, was with Roman Catholics who saw Gould’s work as threatening. But more significant, as her successes grew, Gould realized a few non-Catholic men were trying to wrest control from her. This new warfare with words erupted in Gould’s private letters, rather than on any public stage. She expressed her frustration to Ambassador Marsh that one Italian male leader misspent funds—he needed to learn the ABCs of finance. And in another, she wrote that a certain church leader wanted to oversee not only the organization but also—surprise, surprise!–all the funds she raised for it, by putting it “under the charge of” the American Sunday School Union. Her fiery words about this individual (beyond the scope of this blog post), elicited a strong response from the Ambassador. Marsh, in agreement, referred to this “altar man” as an “ass.” Marsh seems to have been an ally, but there is no evidence that he fought on her side. We can only imagine that his words and their ongoing correspondence indicate at least emotional support.
What we do know is that as Gould’s work continued, her voice in the annual reports and fundraising letters grew stronger. Initially, her words were subsumed by the male board of directors. Gradually, her name and words appeared less-obliquely within the reports. In fact, in the last report before her death in 1875, Gould wrote directly with an appeal to readers, even signing her name as “Directress of the Italo-American Home and Schools.” This culminating publication included a portrait—albeit not of Gould dressed in armor and on a horse ready for battle but rather posed as a gentle mother figure. She holds in her lap two Venetian children, Marietta and Bepino Bartoli. This public posture counterbalanced her private aggressiveness.
The other private battles with “Mrs. Gould’s Works and Wants” (as one annual report of the Italo-American Schools was subtitled) engaged Waldensians. These insiders to the language and culture, also experienced with running schools, had helped her mission; she had collaborated with them for several years. Communications with Matteo Prochet, longstanding President of the Evangelism Committee and linguistically adept (he knew multiple languages and traveled throughout Europe and to the US) indicates that Waldensian leaders wrestled with Gould over teacher placement and school management. Then, as now, finding and keeping teachers could pose a challenge. Yet the letters also suggest, as those between Gould and Marsh did, that the battle involved power dynamics. Who exactly was in charge of this fight for education in Italy?
Some might say that both Gould and the Waldensians triumphed—a win-win situation. Following her early death in 1875, Gould’s husband handed her work over to the Waldensians. Yet testimonies left in articles such as one published in L’Italia Evangelica (1881), or in her biography, A Life Worth Living (1879), by Leonard Woolsey Bacon, celebrate Gould’s mission and vision. Visitors to Florence may see Gould’s name on the wall of the Waldenisan guest house in the Oltrarno neighborhood. And an institution bearing her name—still helping children—remains in Florence today and under Waldensian direction.
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Want to know more about Emily Bliss Gould? She is one of the three women featured in Engaging Italy: American Women’s Utopian Visions and Transnational Networks (SUNY Press 2022). (You can get a 30% off sale coupon for the paperback edition, which will be released on October 1, on Etta’s website, ettamadden.com.
For more insights to American women writers abroad and, specifically, about Italy, subscribe to Etta’s monthly newsletter, All Things Italy through the website.
Want to schedule a talk? Feel free to reach out through email or social media: Ettammadden@gmail.com
You can follow Etta on Twitter and Instagram at @ettamadden
Road Trip Through History: Unexpected Stories in Quincy Illinois
Quincy, Illinois, was our final stop on this segment of driving the Great River Road.* It wasn’t so much a stop as a pause on our way home. But it was a good pause, with some unexpected stories.
The town has a number of museums and restored historical homes. It also has an interesting outdoor display about Lincoln’s visit to Quincy for his debate with Stephen Douglas: basically the city’s equivalent of an academic poster session.
It will probably not surprise you to learn that we spent most of our time at the local historical society, which is located in a restored historical home. Like many local historical museums, it had exhibits on the town’s founders,** its early residents, and some of its successful industries. (I addition to All of which is always interesting.
But two exhibits that were less typical caught my imagination:
One room was dedicated to the interactions between the residents of Quincy with Mormon refugees, first in the winter of 1838-1839 when they were driven out of Missouri and again in 1846, when they were forced to abandon their settlement in neighboring Nauvoo.*** I won’t try to condense the history of the Mormon exodus here. It is too complicated. And it wasn’t the focus of the exhibit, which detailed the efforts of a small town to provide food, shelter, medicine, and most important of all, compassion to strangers in need.
Another room focused on the history of Quincy’s Black residents. While many historical museums today are attempting to add women and people of color to their exhibits—an act I salute—it is quite clear that the Quincy museum’s exhibit predates that effort. Part of the room told Quincy’s role in the Underground Railroad but much of the room focused on individual Black citizens and their contributions as entrepreneurs, educators, abolitionists, and decorated war heroes.
Within that exhibit, one story stood out for me:
“Free Frank” McWorter and his wife Lucy founded New Philadelphia, the first town in the United States to be platted and registered by Black settlers.
McWorter was born a slave in South Carolina in 1777 and then was taken to Kentucky by his owners. There he met Lucy. He was allowed to hire out his time, which meant he could buy their freedom. He bought Lucy’s freedom first, in 1817, which meant any children they had after that date would be born free. He bought his own freedom in 1819, then that of his oldest son.
In 1830, the McWorters moved to the Illinois frontier, where they established a farm. (The same year Abraham Lincoln arrived.) In 1836 , they founded the town of New Philadelphia. The town was racially mixed from the beginning and its residents were active in helping escaped slaves go north. The McWorters also managed to purchase the freedom of at least sixteen more family members.
Like many other frontier towns of the period, New Philadelphia did not last, but it was never forgotten. By 1885, many villagers had moved away looking for new opportunities. By 1940, nothing remained, though descendants of the town’s residents lived in the area until the 1950s.
Today, the New Philadelphia site is the subject of ongoing archaeological explorations, which are uncovering information about daily life in free Black rural communities. There isn’t much to see now, but legislation is in process to make the site part of the National Park System.
*Some of you may be saying, “Finally!”
**Who took advantage of the equivalent of the G.I. Bill for veterans of the War of 1812, in which the government set aside 5.4 million acres in Western Illinois, between the Illinois and Missouri Rivers. Each veteran or his descendants was “entitled” to a warrant for a full quarter section (160 acres), which allowed him to claim land and receive title for it. (The exhibit did not point that Native Americans already lived there, so I will.)
***Which was our first stop, back in 2014, on what has become a multi-year Great River Road adventure. We’ve got at least one more stretch to do. Maybe two.
*****
Travelers’ Tips
Thyme Square Bakery and Cafe in Quincy is an excellent place for lunch. If we’d gotten there earlier, I would have bought a loaf of bread to take home, but the locals had beat me to it.
If you want to visit the New Philadelphia site, do NOT put New Philadelphia, Illinois in your GPS. It will take you to an existing town in the other direction. Trust me on this.
From the Archives: Word with a Past- Vaudeville
Over the last week I’ve spent some time thinking about vaudeville, cabaret, and music halls. I was about to plunge down a research rabbit-hole in service of one throw-away sentence, but historian and writer friend Sunny Stalter-Pace pulled me back from edge. (Sunny is currently working on a book a group biography called Backstage at the Hippodrome: The Show People Behind New York City’s Most Spectacular Playhouse. If that sort of thing is your bottle of sarsaparilla, you would enjoy her research blog.)
All of which reminded me of the one thing I already knew about vaudeville, from a post first published in 2014.
In 1648, revolution broke out in the streets of Paris. Known at the time as the Fronde ,* it was in many ways a rehearsal for the French Revolution(s) that would follow. Barricades went up in the streets. Aristocrats were pulled out of their carriages and shot at. Militias paraded in the public squares. There were threats of pulling down the Bastille.
More important for the purposes of this blog post, the Fronde was fought in the media as well as in the streets. Printed placards were put up in public places and distributed door-to-door. Small notices, called billets (tickets), were strewn around the city streets. Peddlers sold political pamphlets on street corners like newspapers.** And satirical political songs, known as vaudevilles, became popular.
A contraction of the the phrase voix de ville (the voice of the town), vaudevilles were well named. Writers took popular tunes and wrote new lyrics to them about current events. Singers were paid to roam the streets and sing the latest tunes. Rich and poor alike would hum them as they went about their day. The songs became so popular that collections of greatest hits were compiled.
In eighteenth century France, vaudevilles became a way to get around restrictions on the theater. Theaters presented vaudevilles in conjunction with pantomime and comic sketches. Tap shoes optional.
* Slingshot, a name with a David and Goliath feel appropriate for a revolution that was, at base, about privilege.
** Almost a historical reference in its own right.