PEOPLE I HAVE KNOWN
Evans, Elizabeth Glendower
PEOPLE i HAVE KNOWN PERLE ROUS WILKINSON — A MUSICAL GENIUS By Elizabeth Glendower Evans N AN earlier number of LA FOLLETTE'S I have told something of the Woman's Reformatory at Framingham,...
...With his wife, he returned to England, where he acted with various stock companies, while his wife trained the choruses of various London theaters...
...Thereafter, for almost six weeks, they played -together daily...
...Arthur Wilkinson, and they were presently married...
...A year ago she went to Russia with the Reconstruction Farm unit...
...Perle from her earlier years chafed at her narrow surroundings, and longed and longed to escape to the East, where she made sure she would find music, her heart's desire...
...These few years were the radiant ones of her life...
...He proved to be Frank Damrosch, a brother of Walter Damrosch,v the famous Symphony conductor of New York...
...His promises proved greater^ than his performances...
...Presently she became the Superintendent of the Girls' Refuge at Randall's Island, where she served until the institution was disbanded...
...The Bach Festival ARECENT experience of Mrs...
...It would be difficult to imagine a more adequate life and one richer in human service than has been carved out for herself by th» itarved child of the Middle West, this venturesome member of musical troups, and this young widow, left to support herself and her child...
...And there Mts...
...Nevertheless, naturalist^' have studied the lifespans of animals and have found that certain of them frequently outlive man by many, many years...
...Her father served for a few months in the Civil War, and returned almost stone deaf, a terrible handicap in his career of a teachfc...
...Although she is on the down side of sixty, she has all the attributes of one in the hey-day of life...
...There their daughter Julie was bom...
...For the most part they have given up the style of dress to which, like the Friends, they long clung...
...And it was Perle's habit, whenever the company stayed in a place for more than one night, to take possession of the piano in the hotel parlor...
...Gerald DeGecr, of Sweden, by a method the scale and accuracy of which win the praise of geologists, places its age at 9,500 years...
...There music would certainly greet her and make her one of its own...
...She has enthusiasm, of course, and likewise she has gaiety and charm and beauty...
...He returned/ however, under the escort of the hotel manager by whom he was formally introduced...
...In her eyes, it seemed a small affair...
...But she stuck to the work for four years...
...Hodder somehow heard of her and enticed her to put her experience and her talents into the Reformatory, where she has developed the notable performance I have described...
...Dozens of the institution i.ificers flocked to Boston this spring to *see I'danthe and The Pirates of Penzance, and to contrast Winthrop Ames' highly artistic ren...
...ring with the performances of the girls at the istitution...
...Then there was another ancestor, a planter in Kentucky, who gave freedom to each of his slaves, to every man a horse, a saddle, a suit of clothes and fifty dollars, and To every woman the furnishings for a cabin...
...gymnasium with the women not iu the iraraa seated flat on the floor, all dressed in a liitp, and taking part in the final burst of niisic, it ranked well with similar affairs given iiv professionals...
...Her Marriage IN 1886 she met Mr...
...In the course of her duties she comes into contact with a very large number of the girls, and with a few, into really intimate contact...
...But she belonged to music—to that thought she clung...
...WILKINSON is of the genius type...
...As Musical Director iT IS Mrs...
...A main feature ot Mrs...
...Chief among such women has been Mrs...
...Her mother some years back had bought a farm in New Hampshire and tried her hand at chicken raising...
...The people who get up this performance are Moravians since I don't know how long ago, dedicated to the Protestant religion and to a refusal to take any part in war, who fled from the persecutions of the old world and founded their Moravian settlement at Bethlehem...
...Wilkinson has been like a piece of my own soul...
...Again on Her Own * BOUT a year before her husband's death, ii Mrs...
...Of her companion she wrote, "Mrs...
...And by one of these she was introduced to a gentleman, a quite famous musician, who offered to teach her and who promised her a great career...
...In 1894 her husband was thrown from the top of a bus and killed, and his wife was left to support herself and their child...
...He had a large family and he found it a desperate task to make ends meet...
...Seeing these, dramas given year i i'ter year, one does not realize that the per-irmors are taken from an institution always !i flux, and that thus each of them is given by ^irls new to the role...
...There she hopes to have Julie this autumn, as she is about to return from Russia...
...One can imagine how such rare deeds won him the ill-will of his fellow planters...
...Washington official publications tell of an anonymous government scientist, who went seven different times into the Cave of the Winds underneath the waterfall to study the roar of Niagara...
...Given in hi...
...It was the most holy thing I ever imagined," said Mrs...
...She lodged in the house in Bulfinch Placv, where lived Mr...
...There one of her sisters lives the year round,-while she goes there for her summer vacation...
...Hodder to attend the famous Bach Festival which is held yearly at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania...
...They made their home in London, having delightful lodgings in Scho...
...As the years had passed, Julie had grown up and had gone to college, and had taken her training for Rural Health Work, which took her up to Northern New Hampshire...
...Wilkinson'^ has been a journey taken with Mrs...
...The hazards of life they face are too great to permit many of them to live long...
...Wilkinson had returned to Indiana to show little Julie to her people, and there she had encountered again the non-musical atmosphere from which she had formerly fled...
...Warren and others of the famous Museum Company...
...Age of Animals Most wild animals die long before they attain old age...
...Parrots and crocodiles also enjoy very long lives...
...One day, as she played, a gentleman sought to make her acquaintance, but she withdrew in fright...
...He says that, after the early excitement wore off, he distinguished the rhythm and tone of music in the mighty sound, music which became more and more distinct at each succeeding visit...
...He was an Englishman whose father had been organist in the Cathedral at York, and he himself as a boy had sung in the Cathedral choir...
...But, urged By him, she resigned from Hazel Kirke, and engaged with first one and then another small musical troup with which she traveled into Maine and to various small places...
...Such tales made Mrs...
...of schools where there were no subordinate teachers and where the prevalent idea of singing was simply to yell...
...Finally Hazel Kirke reached Boston, the goal of Miss Perle's desires...
...As the Librarian IT IS Mrs...
...The mors common animals have relatively short lives...
...Then she went to New-York and taught in the Ethical Culture School...
...Her Upbringing SHE WAS born in a village not far from Indianapolis...
...Chickens may live a dozen or more years, mice three or four, squirrels, sheep, foxes, dogs and wolves, ten to fifteen and cats about as many years as they are reputed to have lives...
...Singing Water Niagara Falls is receiving some extra attention from modern naturalists...
...She had no least doubt that, could she but get to Boston, her career would be safe...
...Wilkinson who has charge of entertainments which have become a notable '¦atuie of the institution...
...Owls and woodpeckers may live three score years and ten...
...Often she was out of w.ork and in desperate straits...
...Hodder's success has been her ability to attract women to its service who have .something of importance to contribute, and to whom she has given the scope in which their talent may be developed...
...Elephants sometimes last a couple of centuries and eagles, falcons and swans half that period...
...Thus she secured her first musical instruction...
...PEOPLE i HAVE KNOWN PERLE ROUS WILKINSON — A MUSICAL GENIUS By Elizabeth Glendower Evans N AN earlier number of LA FOLLETTE'S I have told something of the Woman's Reformatory at Framingham, Massachusetts, presided over by Jessie Donaldson Hodder...
...Most scientists have estimated the age of the great chasm as anywhere between 25,000 and 50,000 years...
...Wilkinson sold her New Hampshire farm and bought a dwelling place on the Cape...
...When she was a girl, as a means of escape, she accepted a small part in the Hazel Kirke Company which came her way, and ran for two years, playing all across the country from Chicago down to New Orleans, then up to Seattle and into Victoria and finally returning to the East...
...It is good talking when she tells tales of her ancestry—how a great-great-grandfather of hers was killed by the Indians when he was taking his family on a flat-boat from Maryland to KenT tucky, and his wife and six children were all taken captive, to live with the Indians for three years, and finally to make their escape, all of them alive and well...
...But this was manifestly not her vocation...
...But not so apparently did it seem to strike the folks of Indiana, for when she was left a widow, she received a letter from the Superintendent of Schools of Indianapolis, urging in terms that would not allow a refusal, that she become the Superintendent of Music of the schools of that city...
...but nevertheless they made the impression of a peculiar people, dedicated to God's service...
...and from then on the life of music has been her own...
...A Summer Home on the Cape AFEW years ago, Mrs...
...Guests from beyond the institution attend these musical dramas and pay and over-pay for admission...
...Giant sea turtles are the real patriarchs...
...There is one girl now in the institution of strange and tragic experiences who is responding passionately to the new world which lias- been opened to her, and is developing into a really first-class scholar...
...Wilkinson, and Mrs...
...Hodder wrote on a festival post card bearing a most beautiful and noble head of Bach, "America is not lost, one feet's, after this imposing of the Spirit of the Lord...
...He had come to this country with one of the Gilbert and Sullivan companies...
...Wilkinson and her own achievements seem possible...
...Prof...
...She describes the work she undertook as simply impossible—to teach singing in a scor...
...Perle Rous Wilkinson, who acts as librarian and musical director of ;trc institution...
...Wilkinson's part, as the librarian, to help the women in their reading, calling the attention of all to books just beyond their present imaginations, finding out the few who are capable of receiving the best, and seeing that all are provided with the books from which they can profit...
...Of the Genius Type MRS...
...A special fur^d has thus been provided which has given the institution a grand piano and other things not covered by the state appropriation...
...A man and his wife gave up their own bedroom for the accommodation of guests come from afar, and asked them to share their simple meal...
...The library, where Mrs...
...They sometimes carry on for moro than three hundred years...
...The Christmas Mask which I saw there las, winter was a really beautiful affair, with the costumes most ar-ti.stically arranged and the solo voices and the ¦ ¦'larus well trained and harmonious...
...In desperation, while on this visit, she had offered to get up a cantata at the village church...
...Wilkinson meets the girls for informal talks and for consultation, has become a really beautiful room, the walls lined with books and adorned with beautiful pietu res...
...The horse rarely exceeds 40 years...
Vol. 19 • October 1927 • No. 10
