Ellen Duvall: A look at the whole person
Katie Kazmierski, February 28, 2018
During our summer research, the name “Ellen Duvall” began to be tossed around always accompanied by a sort of painful giggle in response to whatever problematic (see: racist) thing she had done in the meeting minutes next. I didn’t know much about her, but I began to hate Ellen Duvall. And when I was assigned to research and read her published works, that same painful giggle came back. I already knew what I’d find: Ellen Duvall writing a lot of problematic things that would be difficult to get through reading. I expected I’d continue to hate her.
I think you can see where this is going. It turns out, I don’t hate Ellen Duvall. I hate the racist things she’s done and said, and this isn’t me giving her a get out of jail free card. I think she’s teaching me, though, that it’s important to see the whole person: not just someone’s flaws. And these women are all deeply flawed, just as we are.
Looking at Duvall’s work, I was surprised at how good some of her stuff is. By some, I do mean some though. I read five pieces and I really only liked two. I found “A Point of Honor” and “Estelle” gripping and actually very wise and relatable. “A Point of Honor” is a short story involving a young woman, Adela, who seeks out the advice of her aunt, Miss Miriam Hatley. Basically Adela likes this dude who she’s been close friends with for ages, and then her friend Ethel comes along and her and the guy end up hitting it off. Adela begins to resent Ethel, and Miriam helps her to look at the situation more rationally, and also simply to not let a man come between a female friendship. Duvall writes,
“I know how prone we all are to think that love in itself constitutes some sort of claim; but it does not. It simply gives the right to stand aside or to serve, as the case may be.”
The story is written really well and touches beautifully on themes of jealousy, pride, and love.
A quote from the beginning of “A Point of Honor” perhaps sheds some light on Duvall’s own thoughts toward her ‘responsibility’ as a writer:
“For she thinks that the reader has no responsibility toward the author, but the author has every responsibility toward the reader.”
Duvall clearly loved to write. She has countless published works, mostly fictional short stories and the occasional article. She was fond of Shakespeare and wrote about him a lot too, as is mentioned a lot in the meeting minutes.
It was difficult to find Duvall’s birth and death dates, and to my shock I couldn’t find a single short biography about her. I kind of expected her to have a Wikipedia page at the very least, just because of the extent of how much she’s been published. I thought I’d found her on Find a Grave, which is, I think, the source Sydney had originally used to find her age back during our summer research, but it turns out that’s the wrong Ellen Duvall, though they were buried in the same cemetery. It doesn’t help, of course, that she doesn’t have an uncommon name.
A newspapers.com and ancestry.com free trial later, I found out that Ellen Duvall was born in Delaware in (I think) 1854. According to ancestry.com, she died in 1943, but according to her obituary, she died in 1944, so I’m going to go with 1944– which means she was an astounding 90 years old when she passed.
When I set out searching on newspapers.com, I knew finding an obituary would be key to finding other biographical information. It wasn’t easy though– Ellen Duvall was mentioned in The Baltimore Sun hundreds of times. Usually, it was in conjunction with a mention of the WLCB which was mentioned a lot, or her doing a reading somewhere, or she was even highlighted in a spread of Baltimore women writers, which many of our ladies were showcased in as well.
A spread of Baltimore women writers, many of whom were members of the WLCB. Drawings of Lizette Woodworth Reese, Lucy Meacham Thruston, Mrs. Myra Gross, Miss Louise Malloy, and Miss Virginia Woodward Cloud.
I couldn’t find her obituary for a while precisely because she was everywhere. And when I did, it was by mere chance because I almost missed it in its sparsity. After years of mentions like those above, here is Duvall’s obituary in the same paper:
Ellen Duvall’s obituary is surprisingly sparse. Notice also, how her age isn’t listed.
Perhaps the highlight is that she’s credited as being one of the founders of WLCB and an ‘associate of’ Cloud and Reese, but wow– no mention of her ‘notable works’ from the mini-biography published in the Sun years prior; no mention of her being a published author even.
Duvall spent most of her life as a single boarder. It’s mentioned in her obituary that she died in the home of her nephew, Philips F. Lee, the son of her younger sister, Laura Duvall. She had five siblings total, and seemingly alternated between living with one of them or her parents over the years. I wonder what her relationship with her family was like– I wonder if she ever longed to live on her own, or if she was content.
As I read and find more of Duvall’s work, I look forward to finding out more about her. Despite her high status in the Club, countless publications, and single status and therefore easily google-able name, even she, it seems, has fallen somewhat through history’s cracks.
This content was migrated from the The WLCB log: Documenting the Woman’s Literary Club of Baltimore 1890-1941