“In the Spotlight.” In the Evening Star (Washington, D.C.) of Sunday, April 4, 1915, part 2, page 3. Similar in the Sunday Telegram (Clarksburg, West Virginia) of 1915-04-04, second section, page 4.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox and Ruth Davis are collaborating on a play to be called “Victory.” John Philip Sousa is to write the incidental music.
“Small Talk of the Stage.” In the Washington Herald of Sunday, April 11, 1915, Society page 5.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox and Ruth Davis are writing an allegorical play in three acts, called “Victory.” John Philip Sousa is to supply the incidental music. The theme is a conflict between selfishness and unselfishness.
“Writing Opera.” In the Sunday Telegram (Clarksburg, West Virginia) of Sunday, April 25, 1915, second section, page 4.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox is writing the libretto of a new opera to be called “Victory,” and John Philip Sousa will compose the music. It may be produced in August.
”Ella Wheeler Wilcox working on new allegorical play, ‘Victory.’ ” Stereotyped press release including photograph. In the Perrysburg Journal (Perrysburg, Ohio), of Thursday, September 16, 1915, page 6.
Also in the Daily Herald (Grand Forks, North Dakota) of 1915-09-07, the Ogden (Utah) Standard of 1915-09-07, the Sunday Telegram (Clarksburg, West Virginia) of 1915-09-12, the Arizona Republican (Phoenix) of 1915-09-21, and others.
[Caption.] Ella Wheeler Wilcox (right) and Ruth Helen Davis, at former’s summer home, Short Beach, Conn.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox and Ruth Helen Davis have just completed an allegorical play which they have called “Victory.” The idea has been taken from the world war now in progress. The play, in which there will be more than one hundred characters, will be produced at “The Anchorage,” the magnificent estate of Mrs. Simon Baruch, who is a regent of the Daughters of the American Revolution, at Long Branch, N. J.
“Monmouth Historians Elect New Officers.” In the Monmouth (N. J.) Inquirer of Thursday, September 2, 1915, page 1.
The Monmouth County Historical society met Thursday afternoon [...]
Mrs. Simon Baruch made an appeal in behalf of the Long Branch Hospital. She invited all to come to an entertainment to be given on the lawn of her home in the near future, the tickets to be $1, the entire proceeds to be donated to the hospital. A play written by Ella Wheeler Wilcox will be presented by well-known players.
“Society Will Present Drama.” In the Newark Evening Star of Saturday, September 4, 1915, page 4. Also condensed in the New York Tribune of 1915-09-05, page 6.
Long Branch to Witness Allegorical Play, “The Victory.” Special to the Evening Star.
LONG BRANCH, Sept. 4.—Although vacationists are gradually returning to their homes, the few remaining weeks of the season promise much gaiety. Society has been interested in the rehearsals this week for an allegorical drama written by Mrs. Ella Wheeler Wilcox called “The Victory.” It will be staged as a benefit Labor Day afternoon at “The Anchorage,” the summer villa of Dr. and Mrs. Simon Baruch.
Another production will be run at the Deal Casino next Wednesday. Cottagers of Deal, Elberon and Allenhurst will participate. The entertainment is in the hands of Mrs. Louise Morgan, of New York. Aiding her are Mrs. Howard Borden, Mrs. Mortimer Schiff, Mrs. Adrian Riker and Mrs. Albert Symington.
Angling from the boardwalk has not been the least exciting sport here this week. A ten-pound striped bass was landed from the Elberon beach Wednesday morning by Mrs. Joseph Cawthorne. [...]
”Long Branch Society Plays to Help Poor.” In the New York Tribune of Sunday, September 12, 1915, page 5.
“The Victory” Given on Banks of the Shrewsbury.
Long Branch, N. J., Sept. 11.—Society from all along the Atlantic Coast, between Atlantic Highlands and Sea Girt, turned out this afternoon to witness the first presentation of the art drama, “The Victory.” It was given at the summer home of Dr. and Mrs. Simon Baruch, in Atlantic Avenue, overlooking the Shrewsbury River. The play was given for the benefit of the Long Branch Society for the Improvement of the Poor and the Long Branch Visiting Nurse Association. It was staged on the river bank by Mme. Ada Dow Currier. The orchestra was under the direction of Max Jacobs.
Norma Phillips headed the cast, which included Arvid Paulson, Hinda Hand, Genee Parke, Georgia Wilson, Joseph Bruell, Joseph Leonard Doyle, W. Percival Monger, Brandon Peters, Mattie Roubert, Ashton Tonge, Philip Tonge and John Wray.
Following the performance there was dancing in the Baruch boathouse. The campfire girls were ushers and the Boy Scouts of St. James’s Church escorts.
The patrons included: Mrs. Leonard Hill, of Spring Lake; Mrs. Samuel Metzger, of Asbury Park; Mrs. Hamilton Fish Kean, of Deal; Miss Julia Hudnut, of Allenhurst; Mrs. Daniel Guggenheim, Mrs. George B. Hurd, Mrs. Thomas Sealy, Miss Ortrude L. Crum, Mrs. H. Edgar Mason, Mrs. U. H. Painter, Mrs. G. M. Pullman, Mrs. Brent Good, Mrs. Harry C. Scobey, Mrs. Scudder, J. Woolley, Mrs. E. R. Slocum, Mrs. Walter Lewisohn, Mrs. Richard Deeves, Mrs. G. H. Prentiss, of Long Branch; Mrs. Leroy W. Baldwin, Mrs. L. L. Clark, of Monmouth Beach; Mrs. James A. Scrymser, of Seabright; Mrs. John Jay Knox, of Rumson; Mrs. L. S. Thompson, Mrs. Thatcher Brown and Mrs. Samuel Riker, of Red Bank; Mrs. L. C. de Coppet, of Shrewsbury, General and Mrs. William Crozier, Daniel Frohman, Charles A. Wimpfheimer, Mrs. Charles Abbott, Mrs. Charles Simmons and W. A. Jamison.
”Long Branch.” In the New York Tribune of Sunday, September 12, 1915, page 20. (Yes, the same edition as the item above.)
Long Branch, Sept. 11.—Enough cottagers and hotel patrons remain to assure a lively September. Society from this and neighboring resorts attended the production of “The Victory,” by Mrs. Helen Ruth Davis and Ella Wheeler Wilcox. It was staged by Mme. Ada Dow Currier on the lawn of the Anchorage, the summer home of Dr. and Mrs. Simon Baruch. Among those comprising the cast were Miss Norma Phillips, Miss Gene Park, Miss Hinda Hand, Miss Georgia Wilson, John Wray, Joseph Bruell, Philip Tong, Brandon Peters, W. Percival Monger and Joseph Leonard Doyle. The play was given as a benefit for the Visiting Nurse Association and the Long Branch Society for the Improvement of the Poor.
“Working on Allegorical Play ‘Victory.’ ” Stereotyped press release including the same photograph as above. In the Richmond Times-Dispatch of Sunday, October 3, 1915, Society page 6.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox (right) and Ruth Helen Davis (left), who have recently completed an allegorical play, which they have called “Victory.” The idea has been taken from the world war now in progress. The photograph shows the two writers in the summer house at the “Bungalow,” the home of Mrs. Wilcox, at Short Beach, Conn. The play, in which there were more than 100 characters, was produced at “The Anchorage,” the magnificent estate of Mrs. Simon Baruch, who is a regent of the Daughters of the American Revolution, at Long Branch, N. J.
“Ella Wheeler Wilcox turns to playwriting.” Full-page spread including artwork and the same photograph as above. In the Washington Herald of Sunday, October 17, 1915, Feature Section, page 2.
[Caption.] Miss Wilcox (right) and Ruth Helen Davis working on their allegorical play, “Victory.” Photo by Underwood & Underwood.
“He who dares assert the ‘I,’
May calmly wait
While hurrying fate
Meets his demands with sure supply.”
One picks up ’most any present-day magazine and opens it to a featured poem or article by Ella Wheeler Wilcox. The subject is usually something of vital interest at the moment: child labor, divorce, the war. The viewpoint is humanitarian, yet not propagandic. It tells the other side of the story so simply and straightforwardly as to carry absolute conviction.
The daily newspaper somewhere within its pages carries similar poems and articles. Sometimes they set forth new thought and sometimes they are just help and encouragement, meant to lift heavy hearts above the din of strife.
Whatever the subject, it is impossible to estimate the influence that the author is wielding. It is impossible to be thoroughly in earnest and not convince. Therefore it is as though she spoke personally into thousands of ears every day. Which privilege is the ambitions of years and years ago fulfilled. No life could have been more circumscribed, no limits narrower than were hers in the beginning.
*** *** *** *** Ella Wheeler Wilcox, first called the “Poetess of Passion,” and later, by her friends, the “Poetess of Purpose,” was born in a little home on the Wisconsin prairie, a dozen miles from a town and five miles from a post-office. Most of her early education was picked up from stray books, with the help of her mother and older sisters. The important part of her training, however, was acquired alone from the wind as it sang over the rolling spaces, the light in the evening sky, the rain marching like a gray army before her eyes. And hers was the miracle of expression. When she was a little girl of eight she wrote stories and verses. She seemed gifted with a natural sense of rhythm and word values. It was inevitable that she should write for the joy of writing.
When she was fourteen she saw her name in print for the first time. A little local fame came her way then, bringing pain rather than happiness. For it meant criticism, and the least unfavorable comment always plunged her into depths of darkest despondency. Praise accordingly lifted her to the heights, so she began to live an existence of moods and acutely developed emotionalism. She greeted every new day with exhilarating expectancy; a peculiar spiritual egotism led her to look for special dispensations of Providence in her behalf—a sort of setting aside of nature’s laws and a violating of reason’s codes that she might be cared for. All about her was the deadly monotony of the commonplace, yet she ever looked for the romantic to occur. This exalted state of the imagination cast a glow around a time that otherwise would have been lonely, troubled, and difficult.
Such concentration of anticipation brought result. Unusual things did happen. And the imagination magnified them and made them seem like so many shining crowns of happiness. Every commonplace thing took on a guise of rare loveliness; between what was happening, what she believed had happened, and what she expected to happen, the world widened. And through all pulsed the deep consciousness of the wonder of life and the enjoyment of it.
Years afterward Mrs. Wilcox said that the versatile quality of her mind which made it possible for her mood to shift suddenly from gloom to glory was better than a million-dollar dower, even though it caused her to place exaggerated values on things and events—to water her own stock and find it worthless when offered to her later judgment for sale.
At the University of Wisconsin a new aspect of life opened. She began to earn money, and the satisfaction of being helpful to the family brought her new happiness. She was the youngest of four, and there were nephews and nieces to assist, as well as need of money in the homes of brothers and sisters. Perhaps there was just a bit of vanity in her unselfishness: a pride in being looked upon as an equal by her elders. If there were vanity it brought its own punishment, for her nature was of the type to be wounded by any suggestion of lack of appreciation. When she had become more balanced by experience she wrote: “To look for any return—even gratitude from another—changes benevolence to barter and sale. To do good for good’s sake and to think no more about it, believing the seed will grow into a harvest of goodness for the world—that alone brings happiness.”
*** *** *** *** Then came the hour which brought Mrs. Wilcox the conviction that her talent meant influence and responsibility. It suddenly became dignified as she reasoned that instead of being merely a helper in the home she must become a helper in the world. To mold thought, guide conduct, and sustain purpose—these were to be her duties; humanity was to be her family and all men and women her kin.
About this time she began to be sought by lion-hunters from Madison, Milwaukee, St. Louis, and Chicago. The lure of city life and its pleasures threatened to drown the voice of ambition. But after taking stock of the situation she decided that there were three ways out: to curtail her enjoyment of city life, lessen her helpfulness to others, or increase her income. The latter course seemed the logical one, permitting her to follow inclination as well as duty. Accordingly she went to work literally to mill short stories, poems, essays. Nine out of every ten went back and forth between her home and New York at least a dozen times before they finally found the haven of a purchaser. And slowly but steadily her income increased. It was a hard fight, with the world on one side and her pen on the other. She made mistakes and suffered from lack of judgment, often running into by-paths and blind alleys in her eagerness to push quickly along the highroad of progress.
Marriage in 1884 took her to the wonderful land of her dreams—the east. It seemed then as though highest ambitions were being realized. She had time for study and reading and for physical culture. She entertained at her winter home in New York and her summer home on Long Island sound, many whose names alone had brought happiness into the old life. Existence grew richer as time flew along; the breadth and enchantment for which she had longed as a girl were hers; the desire to bring something of confidence and peace to others was beginning to be realized.
*** *** *** *** That those who have always been ready to discourage, criticize and question her viewpoint were only a part of her development is the firm belief of Mrs. Wilcox. That they were placed along her way for the purpose of saving her from the evil of self-complacency is her further conviction. Though assured that all she might say had already been said by great writers, she wrote on, thinking that she had her own personal message for the world. Though told that her poetry was merely versification and her prose platitudes, ranking only as third place in literature, she wrote on, determined to do her very best as a writer of third magnitude. It seemed to her that life was too big, feeling too intense, time too short to trouble about what a few seemed to believe, especially as there was an appreciative and ever-increasing audience for her.
“I expected much of life; it has given, in all ways, more than I expected,” is what she has to say now, looking back upon a long life of usefulness.
Her last work has been playwriting. With the assistance of Ruth Helen Davis, Mrs. Wilcox completed an allegory, “Victory,” the idea of which was suggested by the world war. It was produced for the first time recently at the Toy theater, Boston, opening the season at that pretty little playhouse to a large and fashionable audience.
“Victory” is described by the critics as a cheerful little fairy tale based upon a variation of the old story of the princess endowed by all the fairies at her birth, including one evil spirit who wasn’t invited. As Miss Davis willed it, the princess is kidnaped by the evil spirit, Amour Propre, and rescued by the hero, Disinteresso, after a realistic sword fight with the demon.
There are about one hundred actors in the play and thirty-two speaking parts, so Mrs. Wilcox’s beautiful lyrics, with their lofty sentiment, are delivered as she probably hoped to hear them. Although there is no singing, there is much incidental music, including a motif by Arthur Foote, which recurs frequently. A group of fairies dance attractively. Ruth Helen Davis plays an important role.
The play was first given a tryout at “The Anchorage,” the magnificent estate of Mrs. Simon Baruch, regent of the Daughters of the Revolution, at Long Branch, N. J. It will probably be played throughout the principal cities of the United States.
*** *** *** *** Although she is sixty-two years old, Mrs. Wilcox has the freshness and beauty of a girl. Her golden hair is just beginning to be shot with gray, her spotted brown eyes are timid and appealing as a child’s and her cheeks tinted with pink. Many and wide are her interests, and in an hour’s talk she touches upon most of the matters that are making history today. Her philosophy of life she states in a few words.
“I have gone my way alone,” she says in her gentle voice. “I found my road and walked it alone and I’m glad I did. And, looking back, every sorrow, every unfaithfulness, has been worth while, because it taught me not to lean on human appreciation, and not to work for gratitude and applause; that the pleasure of doing work was its reason.
“This, my philosophy of life, to make the very utmost of myself, my possibilities, and my environment as a woman. And I never want to be anything else but a woman, because it’s a glorious thing to be.
“The rapid rush of the years passing by have made me realize how much I could have done had I but realized that they were mine, but perhaps that, too, was not possible. My failures have led me to this realization.
“So many girls and women write me, praying for my influence to make them successful writers. They don’t need help. It lies in oneself. Given certain ideals, aspirations, ambitions, never lose sight of the fact that you have it in yourself.
“Take an inventory of your possibilities and probabilities. A pygmy in stature should not aim to play the role of an Amazon, but should have the resolution to make herself the most complete and powerful pygmy in the world. But a pygmy should not delude herself into thinking herself big, for self-obsession will make her always mediocre.
“The young woman starting out must not take too seriously the praise of the world. My idea of the purpose of life is not to have power, fame or wealth, but to give back to the creator those talents bestowed upon me improved and perfected, and whoever does that has influence on other lives for good, and who attains to worth-while success, her spirit is enlarged.”