The Incident
Halloween 1897 fell on the date of a major rite of passage for Natalie Barney. For girls like Natalie, who held substantial wealth from the mother’s side of the family, their twenty-first birthday was usually the date when they would start receiving income from trust. This allowed for a measure of independence that was always a cause for celebration. At Bryn Mawr, where the goal was women’s independence and leadership, Eva would have been thinking of Natalie as All Hallows’ Eve approached.
As it happened, Eva’s mother was in town with her second husband, the physician and cultural historian Robert Abbe. A clipping from the Philadelphia Inquirer mentions a Professor Abbe in connection with a talk given by the polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen that very weekend.[1] Catherine Abbe might have had another reason to visit Philadelphia. The artist Cecilia Beaux was going to paint her portrait.[2] In 1895, Beaux had secured a regular teaching position at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (she was the first woman to do so).[3] Catherine Abbe might have met with Beaux in Philadelphia in the fall of 1897 before her sittings began in Beaux’s New York studio the following year. This, too, was something to celebrate.
The time was right for a party.
Two days later, on November 2, Eva was facing an interrogation. The Student Government Association (SGA) accused her of having served wine to her fellow students. But the SGA officers did not know who had been at the party. They had to ask Eva “the number and condition” of the party guests. In other words, were any of them students?[4] Eva freely admitted that she had served wine—to her mother.[5]
We have searched the Bryn Mawr Archives for correspondence between President Thomas and Mrs. Abbe, hoping it might clarify the facts of this matter. No such correspondence exists in Thomas’s files for those years.
A woman like Catherine Abbe would most likely have given advance notice of her arrival on campus to whomever was in charge. Eva probably suggested that her mother contact a highly-placed faculty member who was a fellow cosmopolitan: Mamie Gwinn. Miss Gwinn would most likely have been the one to offer Mrs. Abbe dinner before the party. As they walked toward Radnor Hall, they may have been joined by other like-minded faculty members.
As for any student guests, drinking wine on campus may have been officially prohibited, but it was common practice. Only two months later, three other students would write openly about enjoying a bottle with their friends:
Our box of matches, quarts of alcohol
With all that goes to make a party nice
Vanish, as if they heard a magic call
And of the party, we get ne’er a slice.
I understand how, when the cork is out
My alcohol will all evaporate.
But please explain, why, when all wrapped without,
The bottle, too should share the selfsame fate![6]
The SGA’s pretext of serving wine was just that—a pretext. What could Eva Palmer have possibly gotten up to on All Hallows’ Eve that merited an investigation? Witchcraft? A bacchanal? Whatever she was doing, who could have been so wicked as to do it with her?
Though prepared to admit that serving wine to one’s own mother lay within the realm of acceptable behavior, the SGA began to press Eva further: Had she not served wine to any of her fellow students? If so, which ones? Eva refused to name names. Would she ask them to report themselves to the SGA? Eva replied that “she considered reporting against her friends to be an essentially wrong principle.”[7]
Were the SGA officers under pressure from President Thomas to keep investigating? Thomas, though herself in what we would today call a lesbian relationship, seems not to have been troubled by any guilt over double standards. She may well have been willing to discipline lesbian or bisexual students when they were indiscreet enough to be caught. Thomas was known for micro-managing the outcomes of her favorite students...and torpedoing students who were not her favorites.[8]
Or was the SGA acting entirely of its own volition? Were the officers simply determined to exercise what they thought was their jurisdiction, even though they had almost none of the facts? Could the SGA have been attempting to create a scandal in order to cause embarrassment for President Thomas and gain power for itself? Perhaps they never intended to target Eva personally at all.
Either way, Eva’s defiance was a serious setback for the SGA. The officers would not render judgment until May 1898. In the meantime, Eva had embarrassed them. The officers needed to find a way to save face.
Notes
[1] “Dr. Nansen Talks of His Expedition,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 30 Oct. 1897, 9. News was also made in New York that weekend. The day before Natalie “served wine” to fellow students in her dorm room, the city’s leading mayoral candidate drew his last breath of “apoplexy” in his hotel room. His wife was said to be present. “Death Strikes Down Henry George on Almost the Eve of the Election,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 30 Oct. 1897, 1.
[2] Cecilia Beaux, Mrs. Robert Abbe (Catherine Amory Bennett), 1898–1899, oil on canvas, 74 x 39 in. (188 x 99.1 cm), Brooklyn Museum, gift of Mr. and Mrs. R. Schweitzer, 1999.113, https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/objects/2531.
[3] Frank H. Goodyear, Jr., Cecilia Beaux: Portrait of an Artist: An Exhibition Organized by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Cooperation with Museum of the Philadelphia Civic Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, Indiana, 1974–1975 (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, ca. 1974), 12; Kathleen Kuiper, “Cecilia Beaux,” Encyclopedia Britannica,https://www.britannica.com/art/Impressionism-art.
[4] The SGA had authority only over students.
[5] Executive Board Minutes 1897–98 (box 7, folder 2, vol. 4), 68–73.
[6] P., G., and H., “Private Property with Friendly Use,” The Fortnightly Philistine 4, no. 5 (Jan. 7, 1898): 5, https://archive.org/details/fortnightlyphili04stud/page/n67/mode/2up.
[7] Executive Board Minutes 1897–98 (box 7, folder 2, vol. 4), 69–70, 73. Our italics.
[8] She was also notoriously antisemitic and racist, even by the standards of her day. See, for example, Gensheimer, “A Tale of Many Cultures,” 17. After Clara Landsberg graduated from Bryn Mawr, Thomas, who was also a board member of the Bryn Mawr School in Baltimore, blocked the headmistress from hiring Clara as a teacher. Thomas and Garrett were determined not to associate the school with “a Jew by race.” Clara had converted to Protestant Christianity, and her life-partner was the headmistress’s sister. Thomas and Garrett, however, were unswayed.