ALYSON RICHMAN
The blue ink from the printmaking press was still visible on Emma’s fingers when she ran down the steps of the Art Students League. Only after she emerged into the blazing sunlight of Fifty-Seventh Street did she stop and tuck the stack of flyers underneath her arm and pull on her gloves.
A surge of adrenaline rushed through her. No longer in her artist smock, Emma felt transformed, wearing a long sage-green skirt and the white cotton blouse that she had dyed lavender the week before in the bathtub of her boardinghouse. Emma aspired to embody the suffragette movement as much as possible, and while some chose to wear white in its honor for that afternoon’s parade, Emma chose the more vibrant colors of its political party because they made her feel confident and bold.
She believed color and images were another form of language, just like poetry or music. For months she had juggled her classes at the league with her part-time job at the ad agency, hoping to find a way to put her artistic skills to good use. It had not been as easy as she thought it would be when she first left the safety and security of living with her parents. New York City was a far cry from the bucolic setting of her Connecticut childhood. The bustling streets, the expense of living and studying in the metropolis, and the need for her to gain street smarts were all things she had been forced to navigate on her own. Under Ida Sedgwick Proper’s mentoring, she had learned so much, and now she realized all the hours she had spent in the printmaking room, perfecting the illustration that would not only be printed on the flyers, but also on the cover page of The Woman Voter journal, had not been in vain. She felt quietly victorious, not just because Ida had ultimately chosen her image, but because she knew she was now stronger and more confident after having created it.
For months, Emma had worked on her print for the contest. After several misguided attempts, she arrived at her final version, one of three female figures: a little girl in a pinafore, a young woman close to Emma’s age, and an older woman, with a carefully detailed face, whose lines were meant to represent wisdom. All three had their hands interlocked and were facing an enlarged wooden ballot. “Fight not just for one generation,” it announced in bold black letters. “But for all!”
As Emma started walking down Fifth Avenue, she pulled out flyers from beneath her arm, offering them to men, women, and children alike; she believed she was channeling a little bit of Ida’s spirit with each hand that reached out for one of the sheets of paper. “Come to today’s parade!” Emma added with boundless enthusiasm. She wanted everyone to feel the sense of purpose that she now felt. Ida’s energy and determination had been infectious, affecting nearly everyone who came into contact with her. It was hard for Emma to believe it had been only four months since she’d first walked through the office doors of The Woman Voter to find out more about them before crafting her submission for their contest. The journal was seeking an original image to be printed on all the promotional flyers for the suffragists’ October twenty-third parade in Manhattan. It was the lure of the fifty-dollar prize that first caught Emma’s attention when she saw a notice about the contest, as that amount of money would be more than three months’ salary at the Speyer Creative Agency, where she had been working part-time to pay for her studies.
Emma had been desperate to find an extra source of income to support herself and prove her father, who had remained skeptical of her artistic pursuits, wrong. When she first arrived in New York at the start of the school year, she combed the classifieds looking for work. How many times had she arrived at the reception of a particular creative agency, only to be turned away when they saw she was a woman? Emma didn’t have enough fingers to count the rejections. It was only after she had nearly given up hope that she found herself in the office of Lewis Speyer’s ad agency.
Speyer had greeted her himself, claiming his receptionist had already left for the day. A large man wearing a wool sack suit that was far too small for him, the buttons of his jacket strained to keep his voluminous belly locked beneath the chalk-striped fabric.
“You must be Miss Kling.” He appeared to appraise her before his eyes settled on her face. Then with an exaggerated flourish of his hand, Speyer motioned her to follow him to his office.
“So … you’re the artist applying for the job?” he asked her briskly, and told her to sit down. “Studying at the Art Students League? Is that right?”
“Yes, sir,” she answered. Emma was proud to respond affirmatively. She would have struggled to have the confidence to call herself an artist when she lived at home. But now that she was officially a full-fledged student at the league, she felt she could legitimately claim the title.
“I’ve been sketching ever since I could hold a pencil in my hand.”
Her eyes scanned the framed newspaper ads from New York’s leading department stores that Speyer displayed on the office’s buttermilk-colored walls. These ads featured hand-drawn illustrations of women wearing beautiful dresses and hats, their hourglass bodies exaggerated for effect.
Emma knew she was capable of creating similar sketches; she just needed Mr. Speyer to give her a chance. As she looked at him perched like an overstuffed owl at his desk, forehead glistening with perspiration, she forced herself to remain focused. She would see past his rapaciousness if he’d just see past her gender and give her the job. She loved drawing fashion sketches. Her mother had always sewn her own clothes, and Emma knew how to re-create the drape of fabric and the movement of a skirt on paper. She was confident she could make those fashions come alive; her imagination began to spin with the excitement of the unfurling possibility of being employed there.
“I brought my portfolio.” She handed him the leather case with her drawings and watercolors. She had also brought along her sketches of models that resembled the ones framed in Speyer’s office. “As you can see, I love capturing a woman in motion.”
Speyer unlaced the leather folder and glanced at her drawings. He did not study them carefully like her professors who assessed her work, but rather looked quickly, shuffling through the pages like they were a card deck. He then folded his pink, pulpy hands in front of him.
“This is the deal, Miss Kling,” Speyer explained matter-of-factly. “You do the drawings for our clients … bold drawings of the models wearing the latest fashions for our large clients—B. Altman, Lord and Taylor, all the big names who advertise in all the major papers—and it’s great work.” He paused. “But, there’s just one other detail you should be aware of…”
He leaned back in his dark black chair, unbuttoned the two jacket buttons of his wool sack suit, and lit a cigar. “I sign my name to the drawings. You get paid, of course. But the client won’t know you did the work. Does that sound amenable to you, Miss Kling?”
Emma’s face reddened with indignation. Had she even heard Mr. Speyer’s words correctly?
“My clients wouldn’t feel comfortable knowing a woman was sketching the illustration … so I consider my offer a generous one, don’t you think, Miss Kling?”
She looked at Speyer’s face, which had now become engulfed in shadow as the afternoon sun descended in the window behind him. Had she a piece of charcoal in her hand, she would have sketched his face in dark, smoky smudges.
“What do you think?” he asked her again, fixing his gaze hard upon her. Little red embers burned at the end of his cigar as he rotated it between his two fingers.
Emma fell mute for a moment. She was still trying to silence the voice inside her head, which was raging: Wouldn’t being paid for your work and getting credit for it be a better deal? But she held her tongue. This was the first interview she had gotten in weeks. She needed the job.
“I just want to make sure I understand you correctly, sir.” Emma formed her words slowly. “Your clients believe they are hiring you to do their drawings for their advertisements?”
“Yes.”
She swallowed hard. “But, in fact, you employ others like myself to do them under your name?”
“Correct.” He sucked at the cigar and blew circles of smoke in her direction. “A lot of ambitious, artistic women have been delighted to have the opportunity, Miss Kling.” He smiled again, his tobacco-stained teeth reminding her of a soiled paint rag. “It’s what I’d call a mutually beneficial arrangement, one that I’m happily extending to women exclusively.”
Emma knitted her hands together. A visceral repulsion swept over her. She was nauseated by his unctuous gaze and unfair work proposition. But she had been looking for a job like this ever since she arrived in New York, and had not found a single person willing to employ her at all. She needed the money, and Emma realized that if she was left with just this one option, at least it was a chance to do something she loved.
No matter what, she refused to entertain the thought that she would be forced to return home and admit to her father that she couldn’t support herself. That would mean the end of her dream of ever becoming an artist.
She thought of her parents back in Connecticut and how she had struggled to convince them to allow her to go to Manhattan for art school. Her father had been particularly resistant. Emma would do anything now to prove to him that she could manage on her own; she’d make nearly any sacrifice to achieve her goal of becoming a working artist. How many afternoons had she not eaten lunch because she wanted to save the money to instead purchase one of the more expensive tubes of pigment for her oil class, like cobalt blue or cadmium red? She knew her parents had made certain sacrifices when they decided to leave their home country and start anew in America.
Her parents, Elsa and Milos, Hungarian immigrants, had come to America before Emma was born, frustrated by the failure of reform and lack of safety in their home country. The deprivation they had experienced in their childhoods was hardly ever mentioned, as they forged ahead in a new country that inspired them with its sense of possibility, tolerance, and hope. Now they owned a small hotel in Stamford, where they channeled their European background into creating an ambiance of old-world elegance and hospitality.
Yet, even as they put the past behind them, they still experienced difficulties as they tried to adapt to their new surroundings. The English language proved difficult for them to master, and guests often struggled with their accents or sometimes seemed put off by the foreign-sounding dinner options of beef goulash and kohlrabi soup that Elsa prepared. But Elsa was determined that their guests see beyond their broken English and their foreign traditions. She had a natural sense of style and a talent for sewing, a gift she used to transform everything from her own wardrobe to the rooms in the inn, which she described as “nests of beauty.” Each guest room had its own palette. She pulled colors from nature for her inspiration, telling Emma that the blue in one room was meant to evoke the same shade as a robin’s egg. Another room was painted bright yellow to resemble marigolds in bloom. Emma learned to see the world through her mother’s naturally artistic eye. And although she did not inherit her mother’s talent with a needle and thread, ever since Emma was a child her hands were always grasping for a piece of chalk to draw on any surface she could find.
As she grew older, Emma yearned to draw from real life. She painted still lifes of the delicate Herend pitcher in the kitchen and the vase of seasonal flowers in the living room. Other times, she would sit in the kitchen with her sketch pad and draw the faces of those who came in to help her mother prepare the food and clear the dishes.
Soon she began to experiment with pastels and watercolors, and by the time she was eighteen, she had started to work in oils, learning to blend the pigments to re-create what she saw in her mother’s garden. It was a hotel guest who first took notice of one of Emma’s small landscape paintings framed and on display near reception, and told her parents she should consider enrolling in classes at the Art Students League in Manhattan.
The gentleman wrote down the name and address of the school, telling them that his own son had attended classes at the league and was now a successful portrait artist in Boston. The following morning, when he was having breakfast in the dining room, he pulled Emma aside and told her what he had shared with her mother and father.
“You have a gift, young lady,” he reminded her. “Don’t squander it. I see something in your paintings that I saw in my son’s work. I would hate to see your talent used only to decorate the walls of your parents’ hotel. That would be a real shame.”
His words affected her. For the past few years, her life had seemed particularly shuttered. Ever since Emma had graduated from high school, she had ceased to interact with many of the girls she had known since childhood.
Her mind had swirled with the prospect of traveling to New York to study art more deeply.
But the following evening, when she broached the subject with her father, he could not muster a single ounce of enthusiasm for the idea.
“Absolutely not,” he told her. “It is out of the question.”
Milos had a whole litany of reasons why he would not even consider Emma’s wishes. “It’s not a stable life for a woman to be an artist,” he retorted quickly. He imagined Emma following in her mother’s footsteps, using her gifts to make their surroundings at the inn more beautiful. He wanted her to marry, have children, and eventually take over running the hotel with her future husband, whoever he may be.
Emma had heard her father mention how friends and family members back in Hungary had cautioned her parents about leaving for a country they knew so little about. But Milos had not been swayed from what he believed to be the right course of action. He had been brave—some might even say adventurous. Now he was telling his daughter to be the complete opposite of what he himself embodied.
“Papa, I can’t improve as a painter unless I learn from others who know more than I.”
The possibility of a whole new world beckoned, and to Emma it was almost within reach. She had tried since she was a teenager to expand her horizons, finding enormous pleasure in the books she had taken out from her local library. It was in those pages she had first learned about artists like Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot, who were Impressionist painters just like the more well-known Monet and Renoir. Emma longed to travel to Paris. She imagined the energy of the big city. Her spirit yearned to be unbridled.
But Milos sought to diffuse the high emotions of his only daughter.
“It’s too dangerous,” he insisted. “You’d be living unchaperoned. Impossible.”
Emma’s mother stared at her hands, looking at them as though she had just let something slip through her fingers.
While her father’s words infuriated Emma, her mother’s silence pained her even more deeply. She had stormed off and retreated to her room after her standoff with her parents. The apricot-colored walls that her mother had painted years ago and then matched with sage-green drapes now seemed to trap her.
“Emma?” Her mother gently rapped at the door. “May I come in?”
Emma ignored the request, but Elsa turned the doorknob and entered cautiously anyway.
“Don’t be angry at him, darling.” She sat down on Emma’s bed and placed her hand on her daughter’s back. Emma pulled away from her mother and lifted her hand to wipe her tears.
“A stranger told me I had talent. He instructed me not to squander my gift!”
“I know. He told your father and me the same thing.”
“New York is only a few hours away. I am not asking to return to Budapest.”
Her mother squeezed her hand. “Your spirit reminds me of myself when I was your age.”
Emma could hardly imagine her mother acting in any way but that of the graceful woman with the high lace collar and sweeping skirt sitting behind her Singer sewing machine or arranging flowers.
“I will talk to him, I promise. Just let me figure out the best way to make him understand.” She threaded her fingers through Emma’s hand. “It’s not easy to be a woman with a dream that stretches beyond the living room or nursery.” Her gaze fell away. “I understand that more than you probably realize.”
Later that evening, Emma overheard her parents having a heated argument in their bedroom. “We came to America to have greater opportunity, Milos,” her mother pushed in her native tongue.
“You and I are supposed to be united on how we raise our daughter, Elsa. I want you to talk to her and stop this nonsense! I’m not telling her she has to stop her watercolors or sketches. She can do that right here in Connecticut.”
Elsa continued to try to convince him. “Just sleep on it, Milos. Please.”
Minutes later, her mother returned to Emma’s room.
“I’ve tried my best to get him to at least consider the possibility,” she lamented. “But your father can be so stubborn, you know that…”
Emma pulled herself up from under her covers. She was exhausted from all the fighting. “Yes … I do know that. But is it so wrong of me that I dream of another type of life than yours?” She did not say what she really thought, which was that she never imagined a life of domesticity like her parents’. She instead yearned for a life of infinite possibility, where every day presented itself like a blank page thirsty for new strokes of color.
Elsa fell silent. There was much she had never shared with Emma. Like the fact that as a girl back in Budapest, she had dreamed of studying costume design. She imagined herself creating the sumptuous costumes for the Royal Opera House or the National Ballet. Her imagination always flickered with her own interpretations on how she would dress Brünnhilde in Wagner’s Ring, or Papageno in Mozart’s Magic Flute. Elsa had even been granted a rare invitation to apprentice under the opera’s wardrobe mistress, an opportunity that still pained her because of her own parents’ refusal to permit it.
Her mother and father had spoken nearly the same words then as her husband did now. Elsa could easily recall that terrible memory of having her dreams cut down by the very people she loved the most. That feeling of despair, from over twenty-five years before, still felt like a fresh wound when she thought back to that time in her youth. And while she ultimately channeled her artistic spirit into making curtains and coverlets to evoke beauty and elegance at the inn, she knew it could never compete with the joy of fitting a live model or creating a gown that would come alive onstage.
Over the course of several days, Elsa struggled to convince her husband to let Emma at least attend class for one semester. At night, after the last hotel guest had retired for the evening, she’d find her husband at the foot of the bed, massaging his tired feet, and she would gently advocate for her daughter’s studies.
“We must let her try, Milos. If she doesn’t succeed, she will always have the hotel to return to,” her mother reasoned.
At first, her father still refused. But when yet another customer commented on his daughter’s talent, and then another, Milos started to feel that perhaps he needed to listen to his wife and give Emma a chance to further her studies.
“If things don’t work out the first semester, then promise you’ll return home.” Her father believed this to be a fair compromise.
But Emma would do anything to make sure that would never happen, even if it meant working for men like Lewis Speyer.
The months she spent at Speyer’s ad agency had been a challenging ordeal. At his insistence, she had to do all her drawings in the office, often during the nighttime after she had finished her classes. He would hover over her as she worked on her sketches, sometimes placing his hand over hers as she put pencil to paper.
Emma hated the sensation of his cigar breath on her neck. His swagger and his brash way of speaking similarly annoyed her. But by far the worst part of her employment was when she handed over her sketches to him to deliver to the client.
He would take the heavy stock paper and lift it to the light, examining her careful and deliberate strokes. She tried to make the drawings look effortless and carefree, but they each had taken several hours, to make sure the artwork embodied the elegance of the particular dress or conveyed a sense of motion and vitality to the image. The goal was to entice women to visit the store for that particular piece of clothing. Emma strove to capture that desire in ink on paper, and it often took many revisions before she got it just right.
And then—after all that hard work, all those endless drafts that ended up in the wastepaper bin—she was forced to endure watching a smile appear on Speyer’s lips as he took out a fountain pen from his breast pocket and signed his name with great satisfaction. In those few quick strokes, he rendered her invisible. No one would know it was her hand that had created those images, and she despised him for the deception.
So it was a mixture of curiosity and self-preservation that made her take pause when she noticed the ad tacked to the bulletin board at the Art Students League.
Contest! Suffragette newspaper looking for original artwork to promote October 23rd New York City parade. Image must embody spirit for the passing of the 19th amendment. $50 prize money. Submissions must be delivered in person to The Woman Voter by May 30th, 1915.
Emma wrote down the address in her notebook. She had leafed through copies of The Woman Voter on occasion when one of her classmates, Mildred Stein, handed them out after class periodically. Milly, as her friends called her, was in Emma’s printmaking class, and was an outspoken suffragist. On more than one instance, she had tried to corral Emma and another female classmate of theirs to attend a meeting downtown.
She spoke on a first-name basis about women whom Emma knew very little about. The names Florence Guy Woolston and Vida Goldstein often rolled off her tongue. As well as the names Ida Sedgwick Proper and Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, who were artists themselves. Emma had been impressed by Milly’s zeal for women’s rights and the need to have their voices recognized by the government, but she never made time to attend one of the meetings that Milly spoke so passionately about.
Emma had been so preoccupied during her first semester with finding a job, and then later started working for Lewis Speyer, that the thought of making time to attend a suffragist meeting seemed untenable. But now the fifty-dollar prize money made her infinitely more curious about them.
She pulled Milly aside after one of their classes together.
“I’m thinking about your invitation to go to one of the suffragist meetings … I’d be honored to go to one with you if you’re still open to taking me…”
Milly, never one to mince words, smiled and said, “Ah, I see you noticed the announcement I posted on the bulletin board for the image contest.”
Emma blushed. “Well, yes, I did actually see that.”
“Ida Sedgwick Proper, the art editor of The Woman Voter, asked me to put that up. She was a student here herself before traveling to Paris to study further.”
Emma’s heart quickened. Just hearing about a woman who had pursued her artistic training in France gave her an enormous sense of hope.
“Paris?”
Milly laughed. “Yes, Paris!”
Emma shook her head. “I’ve so dreamt of going there myself, but just getting my parents to let me come to New York City was difficult enough.”
“Ida has had her own trials—her father was a Lutheran minister who thought there was no reason for her to go to college, but she persevered and put herself through school. She’s always reminding us to stay the course for what we believe in.” Milly’s voice was imbued with a mixture of respect and awe for the journal’s art editor. “It was her idea to create the contest to bring a little more attention to trying to pass the Nineteenth Amendment, but also to make sure that a woman’s hard work would be rewarded by the prize money.”
“I assume you’re entering the contest, too?” Emma queried.
“Are you kidding? I started working on my image even before I tacked up the announcement on the bulletin board.” Milly patted the front of her canvas satchel. “But it’s not just the competition; it’s the comradery.” She gave a little pump with her fist. “There’s a meeting at The Woman Voter next Tuesday. I’ll meet you after class and we can go together.”
Tuesday arrived and Emma found herself taking the subway downtown with Milly. They walked through Washington Square Park as mothers strolled in pairs with their enormous prams and men in their black suits and hats smoked pipes as they conversed on park benches. Milly talked excitedly about all the artistic and political activity being done by women in Greenwich Village. “Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney has a sculpture studio on MacDougal Alley!” Milly chirped ebulliently. “Can you imagine that? An heiress creating her own artwork on a street where, only a few years ago, horses were eating hay!” Milly laughed.
Emma couldn’t imagine it. Her experiences in Manhattan had been limited to the exuberance of attending classes at the league and the wretchedness of working for Speyer. She had spent a few exhilarating hours wandering the halls of the Metropolitan Museum, where she found inspiration in the paintings of the Dutch Masters and the ink scrolls from the Orient. But she rarely had the time or money to imagine all the possibilities the city had to offer or the people who were as wealthy and as trailblazing as Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney.
“It’s like what Professor Clark said to us yesterday: the most important quality for an artist to have is the curiosity to see. You’re helping me open my eyes, Milly.”
Milly beamed. “It makes me happy to do it!” She squeezed Emma’s hand and gently tugged her in the direction of the meeting.
When they arrived at The Woman Voter, the smell of fresh newspaper ink greeted them, and the room buzzed with activity. Women in long, dark skirts and lacy white blouses were working at wooden desks, scrutinizing page proofs and conferring with one another with great intensity. An immediate spark ignited inside Emma as she felt the energy and sense of purpose in the room.
Women immediately approached to greet Milly. One girl with fiery red hair came over and embraced her. “We’ve been working all night on the journal. Come here and see.”
“Let me first introduce my friend Emma.”
Milly began making informal introductions and took great pleasure telling the other women that Emma was also an artist at the Art Students League, just like her. “It took Ida’s image contest and the fifty-dollar prize money to whet her interest, though,” Milly said, and laughed.
“You brought another artist?” A strong, confident voice suddenly emerged from behind the circle of women. Ida stepped forward and looked to Emma. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”
“Emma … Emma Kling, ma’am.”
Ida extended her hand. “A pleasure to meet you, Emma. I’m so glad Milly brought you to see what we’re doing here at The Woman Voter. Did I hear Milly correctly that you’re a student at the Art Students League?” Ida’s eyebrow lifted with curiosity.
“Yes, ma’am. Milly and I are in the same landscape and printmaking classes.”
Ida smiled. “How wonderful! I’m so happy the contest enticed you to come down and see some of our work.” She gestured toward the printing press in the far corner of the room.
“I’m very fond of the league. I took classes there myself, as did our fellow suffragette Gertrude Whitney. That’s why I told Milly to put up a notice about the contest.” She folded her hands in front of her. “I’m indebted to many of the teachers I had there. Professor Merritt Chase is the one who encouraged me to continue my studies in Paris.”
“Milly told me you were in France. It’s always been my dream.”
“Paris truly is an extraordinary place.” Ida’s face softened as the memories returned to her. “I hope to go back one day. But in the meantime, I have my work set out for me here with the vote.” She motioned to the posters set against the brick walls and the copies of journals stacked on the front table. “I’m looking forward to seeing your contest submission, Miss Kling. Often an image has more power than words.”
“That’s what I think, too!” Emma blurted out. She found herself blushing at her inability to contain her enthusiasm.
“Good! That’s what I like to hear from my girls. Come spend some time with us,” Ida offered. “Look around at what we do, read the paper, speak with some of the other suffragists, and learn what we’re doing to get us the vote. You’re a woman. You’re an artist. I’m sure you know how hard you have to fight to be heard.”
Emma did, in fact, know that, and for several hours after she had left The Woman Voter office, she still heard Ida’s words ringing in her ears.
That evening when Emma entered Speyer’s office, her sketches from last week were on the reception desk with a note saying they were to be delivered to the executives at Bonwit Teller. Lewis’s prominent signature appeared on the corner of each and every one of them.
As she sat herself down at her drawing board, she thought about the suffrage movement. It had seemed so abstract to her in the past, but now she realized its objectives mirrored her own desires. Wasn’t fighting for the right to vote part of a desire to be heard? To be justly represented? In her employment with Speyer, Emma struggled with this every day.
Her drawings were bringing him not only praise and income, but also a sense of accomplishment and recognition, despite his never having touched the paper with a single stroke of his pen. She hated how he took such delight in signing her sketches and taking full credit for her work. She had been denied recognition for her own drawings because of this dreadful man. He had rendered her voiceless by signing his name where hers should have been.
Now with the office to herself, Emma took out her pencil and began to sketch. And this time it wasn’t for Speyer’s client—it was for the contest. Her desire to create something that embodied the spirit of all the women she had just met took over. She wanted to have her voice heard just as much as they did.
As the deadline for the contest approached, Emma began attending weekly meetings downtown with Milly, finding herself drawn to the courage and independence of the other women there. She didn’t share with them the details of the horrendous deal she had made with Speyer in order to pay her bills, but every time she went to a meeting, she felt herself growing stronger as she threw herself more into her sketches for the contest, hoping that she might win.
Many of her first sketches, however, found their way into the waste bin. She drew a woman standing next to the Statue of Liberty with her hand similarly raised in the air. She depicted a woman dressed in an American flag, and another one waiting in line with men to cast a ballot. But none of the images appeared powerful enough to Emma. She knew that the graphic had to embody more than just a woman’s right to vote, but also the entire spirit and vision of the suffragist movement.
It was, oddly, during a visit home to her parents, a place that felt so far removed from the women’s movement, that she finally found her seeds of inspiration.
She had just shared a cup of tea with her mother in the kitchen, and Emma was struck by how her mother’s face looked more lined than the last time she had visited and her expression appeared more reflective.
Elsa spoke softly. “I know you have often felt frustrated by your father and me. But I want you to know that when you speak of trying to get women the right to vote, it inspires me. When I was your age, back in Budapest, I think I had already given up dreaming of so many things.”
“You’ve done so much to inspire me, Mama. You create beauty with everything you touch.”
Her mother lifted her hand and touched Emma’s cheek. “In the case of you, that is true.”
“Mama…”
“Listen, Emma. What you’re doing with Ms. Sedgwick Proper is wonderful. I assumed when you went off to study art, you would learn more technique, and strengthen your own artistic style, but I never dreamt you would also find another voice inside yourself.”
Elsa paused for a moment.
“You’re not yet a wife or mother, but your work is not just for the young women of today. It is for every woman. Young and old.”
Emma absorbed her mother’s words. They were simple, but there was so much truth in them.
Instantly, Emma could envision an illustration to accompany them. Three generations of women. Their hands threaded together and their message floating in unison above.
She leaped up to retrieve her sketchbook from her satchel.
“Mama, that’s just it. I think the image I needed just came to me!” Her excitement was bubbling forth. “Would you mind letting me sketch you for part of it?”
Her mother’s expression changed. “Of course not. But, really, me?”
“Yes, you’ll see. Just wait.”
No longer did Emma see the thin feathering of lines on her mother’s face. Instead, Elsa’s face beamed. Transformed like a beacon of creative light.
Emma took out her pencil and began to draw.
Emma worked the whole weekend on perfecting her sketch. She used her mother as the model for the older woman, and sketched herself for the middle female. But for the child who represented the youngest generation, for whose future they were all now fighting, she found herself struggling to get the girl’s face just right.
Elsa walked into the kitchen where Emma was working, her robe tied tightly around her waist, her hair protected by her nightcap. “I was searching for this photograph upstairs while you’ve been drawing. I have been thinking about it all evening.” Elsa handed her a small sepia photograph of two girls nearly the same age, wearing dark wool dresses and with their hair in braids. The photograph was creased, but Emma was sure the face of the older girl was her mother’s. She put down her pencil.
“Mama, is that you?” Her finger hovered over the person in the left corner. She had the same eyes as her mother, and her expression was eerily familiar.
“Yes, it’s me.”
Emma squinted at the other girl, who had to be around three or four years old in the picture. “But who is this other person?”
“It’s my sister, Fanny,” she uttered so softly that Emma at first thought she had misunderstood her. “Fanny died two months after that photograph was taken. She was always so full of life, running all over the place. She had the most infectious laugh…”
“But … but you’ve never mentioned her before.”
“I know, Emma. There is so much of my life in Hungary that I haven’t shared with you, like Fanny’s death. We both took sick with the measles. I survived. But she didn’t.”
Elsa’s voice broke midsentence.
“My parents forbade me from doing so many things afterward. They worried about losing their only remaining child. They wanted me to have a family. Many of the same things your father and I worried about when you went to study in the city were the same fears as my own parents’. But now I look at you and you make me so proud. Maybe you’d want to draw Fanny into your sketch for Ms. Sedgwick Proper’s contest?” Elsa dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief. “I would love to think that Fanny is contributing somehow for a woman’s voice to be heard, since hers was silenced so young.”
Emma took the photograph from her mother. She looked at the two girls sitting side by side, their neat braids framing their faces, their collars trimmed in white lace. Their expressions were somber. But beneath their formal reserve, Emma began to imagine their distinct personalities and hidden layers. As an artist, she yearned to bring those qualities to life.
She tore off another sheet of paper and began sketching the three female figures with a renewed vitality. When she finally finished, the women were arranged in descending age, their hands were threaded together, and their expressions were united in conviction. Yet the figure inspired by Fanny would prove to be her favorite, for she would symbolize not just the face of the young, but also of the women in Emma’s family who came before her. Her spirit permeated each stroke that Emma put down on the paper.
When Emma submitted it for the contest, she was no longer fixated on the prize money. She felt she had given a voice to her mother and to Fanny. That was the wonderful thing about art; it had the capacity to transcend time and even defy death. Looking at her drawing, she felt she had not only resurrected a part of Fanny, but had given three distinct faces for the cause. That was what drew Emma to a creative life, the ability to believe that anything was possible.
Weeks later, Milly and Emma took the subway down to the journal’s office for the grand unveiling of the winning submission. Emma had invited both her parents to attend, but she discouraged them from undertaking the special journey.
Don’t make the trip or special arrangements for coverage at the inn, she had written her mother. There are so many talented artists submitting entries. It’s doubtful I will win.
Her mother had written that she would try to figure out a way to come. Your Papa has his hands full with the guests, as you might imagine, but how I would like to come and support you, my darling, her careful writing scrolled on the page. But the following day another letter arrived saying they wouldn’t be able to make it. How I wish I could be with you when the winner is announced, her mother lamented, but you know how he doesn’t like me to travel without him. In his mind, Manhattan is teeming with pickpockets and other menaces … Emma had read the last letter quickly and then placed it in the back of her desk drawer.
On the day of the awards ceremony, Emma and Milly entered the office and discovered nearly a hundred people standing in the long, narrow room. Many of them were familiar faces, fellow suffragists who came in frequently to assist with the journal, but there appeared to be family members of some of the artists she recognized from the league. She told herself that her parents would have been far too uncomfortable in such a crowded space, but when Milly’s parents surprised her by attending the ceremony, she felt her heart sink. Even though she’d told her mother she didn’t need to come, she now wished she had.
“Attention, everyone!” Ida stepped to the podium. “I am so thrilled to be here this afternoon to announce the winning submission.” She pointed to an easel draped in a heavy dark cloth. “Beneath that veil is our winning image!”
The crowd rustled with anticipation.
“This has been such an honor to have so many artists enter our contest. We at The Woman Voter wanted an image that would unite the generations fighting for the vote, and I believe we found just the right one.” She took a deep breath and smiled. “Thank you, Miss Emma Kling!”
Ida pulled away the cloth and revealed Emma’s detailed drawing. As the sound of clapping permeated the room, Emma’s head spun. She was incredulous Ida had announced her name. Milly threw her arms around her. “You won! You won!”
Emma walked to the stage, her heart beating loudly within her chest.
Ida handed her the prize money and whispered in her ear, “Aside from the prize money, know there is a part-time job as a junior artist on staff at the journal open to you, too.”
That night, as she came home to her boardinghouse, she was able to use the public telephone to call home and tell her parents the news. She could hear the disappointment in her mother’s voice that she had not been there to witness her daughter winning the prize.
“I’m so proud of you,” her mother said, her voice breaking with emotion. “And knowing Fanny is part of your image makes me think you’ve given new life to her.”
“Thank you, Mama,” Emma answered. She still felt dizzy from the news.
“Before I put your father on, please tell me where I can send a note to Ms. Proper and tell her how grateful I am for recognizing the talent I’ve always known was inside you.”
Emma gave her mother the address of The Woman Voter, then straightened her back in anticipation of speaking with her father. When he finally got on the phone, Emma made sure she not only mentioned the fifty-dollar prize money she had been awarded, but the new part-time job as well. Sharing with him the news of her newfound employment, something that was a direct result of her artistic skill, made her latest victory that much sweeter.
Emma’s real triumph, however, was witnessed by no one besides herself. With her new job at the journal, Emma could now do what she had been dreaming about doing for months. She walked into Speyer’s office the next morning and told him that she was quitting.
“I wanted to give you notice,” she explained with a confidence that caught him off guard. “I will no longer be working here as of today.”
His face fell into a scowl. “You can’t just leave. We have three drawings due tomorrow! You promised them to me last week!”
Emma folded her hands in front of her. “I don’t owe the client anything, sir. You do.” Her face lit up in a smile. “It’s your name on the drawings, Mr. Speyer, not mine.”
His face matched the flame of his cigar. “Get out!”
“Out!” he had cried at her, and the sense of liberation she had when she left Speyer’s office for the last time was now extended into the exhilaration she felt as she walked toward lower Fifth Avenue to meet Milly and her other friends who were marching in the afternoon suffragist parade. The crowd had begun to fill the streets, and the music of marching bands filled the air. One could sense the excitement lifting off the skin of everyone who had come out to show their support.
Hundreds of people were lined up already for the parade, and thousands were expected to witness as spectators. Emma saw groups dressed like Grecian goddesses with gold leaves woven into their hair and sandals on their feet. Others from the Women’s Trade Union League wore washboards across their chests emblazoned with the call for the vote. Women who looked to be around Emma’s mother’s age wore suffrage slogans printed on their aprons, and younger ones pushed baby strollers with their infants tucked inside draped in the suffrage movement’s banners. Flags were hoisted into the sky, and row after row of handheld banners called for women’s suffrage. Emma was surprised by all the men who had also begun to fill the streets in anticipation of the march. She passed one with his daughter on his shoulders waving a sparkler.
Emma felt that the joy on the little girl’s face was contagious. She eyed her watch, as it was already nearly two and she knew she was supposed to meet some of the other women from The Woman Voter near Washington Square Park.
She had one last flyer left. “Can I have one, miss?” one of the men on the sidewalk hollered out to her.
Emma went over to him, happy to give one out to another man who wanted to give his support. As she approached she could smell alcohol on his breath. His face was yellow as a wax bean.
“Aw, girly, thanks ever so much,” he said, and winked at her. She went to walk away, but he interrupted her movements. “Wait! Hold on a second!” His voice was slick and oily. “Watch this!” he announced loudly.
With a great, exaggerated flourish, he raised the flyer in the air and tore it straight down the middle.
“Good luck today!” he muttered. A gap-toothed grin spread across his face. Before Emma had a chance to walk away, another one of his friends stepped forward and added: “Stupid women should keep their mouths shut and their hands off the ballot!”
“Tear it all you want! We’re still going to get the vote!” Her anger flared. She went down to pick up the torn pieces of paper before they tumbled ahead.
A teenage girl knelt down to help her. “Don’t get too upset. We’re the majority here. Not them!”
A group of teachers with sandwich boards that read Women teach little boys to read. Grown men owe us the right to vote! were walking in front of her. With each passing minute, the streets were growing more crowded and harder to navigate.
Emma glanced at the large clock above a bank entrance. It was nearly two p.m., and she still had fifteen more blocks to walk until she got to Washington Square Park to meet the others before they officially began marching.
Emma looked enviously at the women who were sitting on large floats and the rare group on horseback. Her feet ached. Her outfit that she had been so proud of when she set out that morning was now soaked with perspiration. She had been walking for what seemed like hours, and she wished she could have taken the subway, but the lines were so long, it would take hours to even enter the station. Why hadn’t she left for the parade earlier that morning? She was irritated at herself, but she could have never imagined so many people outside at one time.
Finally, when she approached the meeting place for all the women from The Woman Voter marching together, she thought she was witnessing a mirage.
She saw Milly and some other women holding posters with her image printed on it. But what truly amazed her was the beauty of their costumes. The twenty women were wearing sumptuous silk capes in the most radiant jeweled colors. Deep violet. Forest green. Blue and gold.
As they congregated near the park’s fountain, the hems of their cloaks lifted off the ground and fluttered like the wings of exotic birds. They looked majestic. And Ida looked like a queen in the center as she held aloft a gold banner of the American Woman Suffrage Association.
But it wasn’t just the banner that took her breath away. Nor was it the sight of a woman marcher raising a poster with her winning illustration. It was the sight of someone Emma never expected to see there, marching arm in arm with Ida.
Beneath a garland of green leaves in her hair was the shining face of her mother, who was resplendent in a purple dress.
Elsa left the others and raced over to greet her beaming daughter. She took the crown of verdant ivy off her hair and placed it atop Emma’s head. “I made this one just for you.”