Rhetoric Review, Vol. 30, No.

4, 389405, 2011 Copyright Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 0735-0198 print / 1532-7981 online DOI: 10.1080/07350198.2011.604610

M ERRILL D. W HITBURN, J OSHUA L. C OMER , G AINES S. H UBBELL , L ISA M. L ITTERIO , R AYMOND A. L UTZKY , AND M ICHAEL A. R ANCOURT
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
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Elocution and Feminine Power in the First Quarter of the Twentieth Century: The Career of Carolyn Winkler (Paterson) as Performer and Teacher

The professional life of elocutionist Alvina Winker Paterson suggests that previous views about women being excluded from rhetorical activities in the earlier twentieth century need to be revised. Like many other contemporary women, Winkler Paterson was able to avail herself of private instruction in elocution and become a highly successful performer and educator in the Northeast. Her career casts considerable light on the nature of elocutionary performance, the course of elocutionary education, and feminine access to public arenas and power at the time.

In 2001 Julie Garbus characterized recent rhetorical history as an effort to highlight overlooked or marginalized rhetors or alternative sites of rhetoric and rhetorical education (201).1 Among the overlooked or marginalized rhetors that have attracted considerable research have been women, and among the alternative sites of rhetoric and rhetorical education that have drawn some attention is elocution. Such notable works as Linda Buchanans Regendering Delivery: The Fifth Canon and Antebellum Women Rhetors and Nan Johnsons Gender and Rhetorical Space in American Life, 18661910 focus on both women and elocution. Additional research focusing on both women and elocution in the early twentieth centurya time period later than the focus of the Buchanan and Johnson textscan suggest rhetorical opportunities more favorable for women than those said to exist in the nineteenth century.

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Susan Zaeske and Sarah Jedd recently called for broadening the scope of recovering womens voices and understanding how rhetoric affected the lived experience of women by calling on present-day scholars to seek out primary sources using . . . new research strategies (185, 199). In line with that goal, we discovered and purchased two scrapbooks containing the newspaper clippings, programs, invitations, tickets, and professional letters of elocutionist Alvina Carolyn Winkler (Alvina Winkler Paterson after her marriage) at two separate auctions at HR Tyrer Galleries in Glens Falls, New York. One scrapbook (Scrapbook 1) covers her early years of learning, performing, and teaching in Troy, New York, from 1900 (her rst elocution lesson at the age of eight) to shortly before her marriage in 1920. The second (Scrapbook 2) covers her years teaching in Troy from her marriage on August 15, 1920 through October 1924. We also tracked down and met with David G. Paterson (Winkler Patersons grandson) and Mary Paterson (Winkler Patersons daughter-in-law) in Saline, Michigan, not just to conduct an oral history interview, but also to gain access to another scrapbook and a plastic tub lled with the interpretive readings used by Winkler Paterson for both her performing and teaching (including some written by herself). We not only conducted traditional archival research but also discovered and developed other primary sources to recover information about Winkler Paterson that provides important social history about America in the early twentieth century. Historians of womens rhetoric have often devoted attention to the ways that cultural constraints have silenced women throughout history. In Man Cannot Speak for Her, for instance, Karlyn Kohrs Campbell describes nineteenth-century America as consisting of a male sphere of politics and nance in the working world and a female sphere of domesticity conned to the privacy of the home; the male sphere is lled with aggressive and competitive rhetoric while the female sphere excludes rhetorical action (I.910). In Gender and Rhetorical Space in American Life, 18661910, Nan Johnson accepts this division and describes cultural suggestions in letter-writing guides, conduct literature, and parlor-rhetoric texts that direct men to professional rhetoric in the working world and conne womens rhetorical activities to the parlor and reside (3, 113). She uses the term public rhetorical space for the male sphere and suggests that women were discouraged from entering that space not only in the nineteenth century but also as late as the early twentieth century (2, 6). Women were not expected to participate in business and public affairs (81), speak to mixed audiences, or apply the arts of expression outside the home. Women were said to need rhetorical skills only to improve their performance as wives and mothers (3, 15, 27). They were dissuaded from having strong voices and encouraged only to facilitate and not to command rhetorical attention in the parlor (49, 69). The ideal woman was expected to be modest, gentle, submissive, retiring, and quiet (5, 16, 23, 48). Johnson indicates

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that the cultural context discouraged women from seeking formal education in the rhetorical arts (3), and Joy Ritchie and Kate Ronald, in Available Means, agree with her: Rhetorical education was designed by and for upper-class males well into the twentieth century (xvii). Winkler Patersons life and career provide an example of a woman prospering in public rhetorical space different from the alternatives described by Campbell and Johnson. She was born on November 22, 1891 in Troy, New York (about one hundred and fty miles north of New York City) and died on May 3, 1982 at the age of ninety. In the earlier years of her life, at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, elocution was an important and bustling enterprise thatfar from setting up obstacles to female participation welcomed and encouraged women. Elocution included both performance and education. Performance included such activities as the interpretation of short literary works, singing, dancing, and acting for church benets, concerts, vaudeville, the theater, and other venues that differed in many respects from what might be encountered today. Education included helping not only performers but also those with speech defects (through speech correction) and immigrants and provincials (through renement of speech and carriage that enabled their assimilation into American society). Winkler Patersons career included all of these efforts. Far from being excluded from rhetorical education, Winkler Patersonwho grew up in afuence (her parents, Ferdinand and Minnie Much Winkler, operated a successful saloon)was able to avail herself of private instruction offered by both men and women that enabled her to develop capabilities in performance, administration, entrepreneurship, and teaching. As a result, she was able to assume prominent social roles in both entertainment and education. Despite persistent views that women should be conned to the home in roles as wife and mother, discouraged from applying the arts of expression outside the home, dissuaded from speaking to mixed audiences, and constrained from business and public affairs, Winkler Paterson was encouraged by both men and women to become an itinerant performer in the Northeast (sometimes before large, mixed audiences) and itinerant educator in New York Cityboth money-making enterprises in the public arena. Far from becoming the supposed ideal of a modest, gentle, submissive, retiring, and quiet woman who sought to avoid a strong voice, Winkler Paterson used her education and experience to become not only a commanding presence everywherethe home, the stage, and the classroombut also a wealthy woman in her community. This article argues that early twentieth-century elocution provided a means for afuent, educated women to access public rhetorical space and develop capabilities to become strong social forces in their communities. We rst provide some relevant context that enables us to see Winkler Patersons activities in light

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of rhetorical history, next we explore her early career until the age of nineteen when she travels to New York City to further her studies in performance, and then we detail her later career that includes some performance but is devoted largely to teaching. Information about the two stages in Winkler Patersons career casts considerable light on the character and purpose of elocutionary performance, the kinds of elocutionary education available, and feminine access to public arenas and power. The available information about Winkler Paterson is sufciently detailed to provide a concrete picture of elocution and the life of an elocutionist who was able to take advantage of the opportunities at the beginning of the twentieth century. Historical Context Nan Johnson names the Roman rhetoricians Cicero and Quintilian from classical antiquity and such elocutionists from eighteenth-century England as Thomas Sheridan, John Walker, and Gilbert Austin as important elocutionary inuences in nineteenth-century America (Nineteenth-Century Rhetoric in North America 155), but precedents for Winkler Patersons activities go back even to the sophists of ancient Greece. A sophist such as Gorgias was both performer and teacher. At Panhellic festivals such as those at Olympia and Delphi, Gorgias presented theatrical displays of epideictic oratory, the ceremonial rhetoric of praise and blame, designed to entertain audiences with playful parody in a captivating, balanced style (Consigny 7, 151, 166). In various cities of Greece, including Athens, he was an itinerant teacher of citizens who could afford to pay him, offering self-improvement through speech in a society where upward mobility was becoming possible. Among Gorgias students was Isocrates, whose ideas about the importance of rhetoric profoundly inuenced Cicero and Quintilian. Both Cicero, in De Oratore (I.xxxi.142), and Quintilian, in Institutio Oratoria (III.Pr.6), divide rhetoric into ve parts, or canons, with delivery the fth after invention, organization, style, and memory. Cicero wrote: Delivery . . . is the dominant factor in oratory; without delivery the best speaker cannot be of any account at all, and a moderate speaker with a trained delivery can often outdo the best of them. The story goes that when Demosthenes was asked what is the rst thing in speaking, he assigned the rst role to delivery, and also the second, and also the third . . . (III.lvi.213) Quintilian emphasized the importance of delivery by reminding his readers that Cicero saw delivery as the supreme element of oratory (XI.iii.78) by repeating

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Ciceros story about Demosthenes (XI.iii.67). Quintilian linked delivery with actors in the theater (XI.iii.4), reminded his readers that Demosthenes was taught by the actor Adronicus (XI.iii.7), and suggested that delivery had to be free from all traces of a rustic or foreign accent (XI.iii.3031). Eighteenth-century English elocutionists such as Thomas Sheridan (17191788) did even more to shape nineteenth-century and early twentiethcentury American elocution than Cicero and Quintilian. Although drawing on the Roman rhetoricians, Sheridan (an actor and theater manager) gave delivery such importance that it crowded out the other four canons of rhetoric (Howell 152). Sheridan set the pattern for those later elocutionists who would become both performers and teachers. Besides acting, Sheridan performed in Attic Entertainments that included recitations of literary works, singing, and other musical entertainment (Bacon 36). He taught elocution privately (Bacon 37), published a number of books about elocutionary education that emphasized naturalness (Bacon 1), and promoted the spoken English of the British Court as a standard that Scotch, Irish, Welsh, and American provincials and rustics had to strive to emulate (Howell 21920). The greatest inuence on speech training in America until the 1920s, which directly impacted Winkler Paterson at the beginnings of both stages of her career, was Francois Delsarte (18111871), who taught instrumental music, vocal music (including opera), and acting through recitation to musicians, singers, actors, and teachers in Paris (Thomas 49; Shaver 204, 206). His students included the American actor and theater director James Steele MacKaye, who helped Delsarte with his teaching and then began a lecture tour in America in 1871 to spread Delsartian ideas (Shaver 207). In 1878 MacKaye presented a series of twelve lectures at the Boston School of Oratory at Boston University at the invitation of founder and Dean Lewis B. Monroe, who incorporated Delsartian ideas into his teaching and promoted them to his students, including Charles Wesley Emerson, Anna Baright, Samuel Silas Curry, Leland T. Powers, and Franklin H. Sargent (Shaver 209; Renshaw 302). Although Boston University and a number of other institutions had strong programs of elocution in the late nineteenth century, abuses of elocution that involved articiality, exaggeration, and melodrama together with an emphasis in many universities on philosophy and a rejection of rhetoric as vocational led to at least a partial exclusion of elocution from universities and an opportunity for private schools and independent teachers to dominate education in the area. Among the notable private schools founded by Monroes students were the Emerson College of Oratory, the School of Expression (founded by Anna Baright and co-managed by Samuel Silas Curry after their marriage), the Leland Powers School of the Spoken Word, and Franklin H. Sargents American Academy of Dramatic Arts (Renshaw 30407; Shaver 209).

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The American Delsarte movement involved many women as performers and teachers and, as Helen Thomas argues, played a signicant role in their liberation (50). Delsartism evolved into a system of training the voice and body that included among its tenets that vocal and physical expression should be outward manifestations of inner states (Georgen, Introduction). On the one hand, the body could be in stasis, which manifested itself in such forms as tableau staging of famous paintings, Greek statues, great moments in history, or literary scenes. On the other hand, the body could be in motion, which manifested itself in such activities as dancing, recitation, acting, pantomime, theater, and gymnastics. Since the body had to be free to express inner states, some women rejected such restrictive clothing as corsets and advocated free-owing clothing (Fahey 83; Kendall 2930). These activities not only liberated women from Victorian clothing but also opened the way for middle-class women to participate in performances such as dance that had been discouraged in the past (Thomas 48). As early twentieth-century books such as Clarence Arthur Perrys Community Center Activities suggest, entertainment in American communities (both amateur and professional) often had Delsartian breadth in combining activities involving the body in stasis and motion with vocal and instrumental music. These performances were called vaudeville or rened vaudeville by many. Such leaders in the American Delsarte movement as Genevieve Stebbins and Eleanor Georgen served as models for women by being both performers and teachers. Stebbins, who has been called the most inuential of the American teachers of Delsarte, acted on Broadway, founded the New York School of Expression, became director of the board of the National Association of Elocutionists, published widely on Delsarte, and, unlike the ideal woman of the time, became a model of independence, condence, and self-assertion (Donawerth 195; Fahey 17174). Georgen acted in professional theater in New York City, authored and performed recitations, became a founding member of the National Association of Elocutionists, published a book on Delsarte (addressed largely to women and endorsed by Sargent), and taught at Sargents American Academy of Dramatic Artsone of the institutions that Winkler Paterson later attended (Ruyter 6465). Inspired by such models, women increasingly sought formal education in institutions inuenced by Delsarte; for instance, from 1884 to 1903, the American Academy of Dramatic Arts enrolled one hundred and sixtyone womenfty-eight percent of its two hundred and seventy-eight graduates (MacArthur 102). Many graduates of such institutions returned to their communities to compete with other women and men as performers and educators, developing interpretive, administrative, and entrepreneurial capabilities in public rhetorical space that had been rare for women in previous American social history. Winkler Paterson was able to take advantage of the resulting opportunities in elocution at both stages of her career.

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The Early Career Winkler Patersons handcrafted history in the scrapbooks documents a life that reveals how elocution could affect the experiences of women at the beginning of the twentieth century. The city where Winkler Paterson pursued her elocutionary careerTroy, New Yorkwas one of the more prosperous areas in the country and had a population of 150,000; iron, steel, and garment industries; workers at collar industries who were at least eighty-ve percent female; Emma Willard, the oldest secondary school for girls in the country; Rensselaer Polytechnic, the oldest technological institute in the English-speaking world; and a lively elocution scene that included private elocution teachers and no fewer than three local elocutionary societies (Troy Society of Elocutionists, Troy Society for Spoken English, and Tri-City Speech Arts Association)an indication of the importance given elocution at the time. At the turn of the century, education in elocution was hardly provided only by men, and girls and women were not discouraged from seeking education in the area. As a measure of the involvement of women in elocution toward the end of the nineteenth century, the membership of the National Association of Elocutionists in 1895 included fty-nine men and one hundred and forty-ve women (seventyone percent)many of them providing private education to girls (Proceedings 20815). Elocution was taught to elementary school students either through private lessons or in private (not public) schools. Karl R. Wallaces History of Speech Education in America contains many articles about elocution in this country in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but one of the real deciencies of the book is the failure of any of the contributors to discuss the crucial role of private educators in teaching students of elementary school age in the area. At the beginning of Scrapbook 1, Winkler Paterson states in a handwritten note that she took her rst elocution lesson at the age of eight on October 20, 1900 from Mrs. William G. Lempe, a woman providing private lessons. Lempes credentials are listed in a later article (Elocutionist Many Years) in the same scrapbook. Among the schools Lempe attended were the Emerson School, Leland T. Powers School of the Spoken Word, and Samuel Silas Currys School of Expressionall schools strongly inuenced by Delsartian ideas. Winkler Patersons early elocution activities suggest that she was hardly conned to the home and discouraged from entering public rhetorical space before mixed audiences. Only ve months after her rst elocution lesson (March 21, 1901), she was invited at age nine to perform as part of the twenty-fth concert of the Cecilian Choral Society in Troy Music Hallthe largest music hall in the city at that time, famous even today for its acoustics, and important throughout its history as a stage for major national and international performers. Winkler Paterson gave her recitations as part of a program that included a soprano, a chorus, and

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organ selectionsa combination of elocution and vocal and instrumental music not found in concerts today (Cecilian Concert Programme Changed). One of her recitations called Sandys Romance had been composed expressly for Henry Davenport Northrops Delsarte Manual of Oratory (41). In Scrapbook 1 Alvina calls this performance a great success, and the newspaper clippings in the scrapbook conrm her view. For instance, the Cohoes Dispatch notes: Little Miss Winkler . . . captivated her audience by her recitations. She is one of the best recitationists for her age that has been heard in Troy in a long time (Cecilian Choral Society). The male reporters writing the articles could hardly be more enthusiastic and encouraging; David G. Paterson suggests that at least one reporter saw Winkler Paterson as a protg. Many of Winkler Patersons early elocutionary performances took place at church benets, and they help suggest not only the role that elocution played in helping churches but also the variety of a young elocutionists activities and the variety of Delsartian activities in performances at the time (such genres of rhetorical presentation as gymnastics, drama, recitations, pantomime, tableaus, and instrumental and vocal music). Beginning April 14, 1901 at Germania Hall, for instance, Winkler Paterson was part of a week-long church fair, at which she delivered recitations in conjunction with songs, gymnastic exercises, and comedy, to help the German Evangelical St. Pauls Church eliminate its debt (Mayor Opened a Church Fair). As another example, on May 13, 1903to benet the carpet fund of the Universalist ChurchWinkler Paterson told jokes as part of a program that included pantomime, an instrumental quartet, poetry readings, violin solos, songs, tableaus, and recitations (Church Entertainment). Her performances evoked praise: Miss Winkler of Troy kept the attention of the audience riveted to the stage whilst she gave two splendid proofs of her marvelous powers as a public reader and recitationist (St. Bernards Fair). At the same time that Winkler Paterson was providing economic support to churches and entertainment to community members, her community was helping her to develop her abilities as a performer. In the evening of February 6, 1906, an event involving Winkler Paterson took place that would be unimaginable todaysuggesting the kinds of public platforms opening up for women and the condence of Winkler Paterson in making such an appearance. The Supreme Court of the City of Cohoes (near Troy) was conducting one of the most celebrated criminal cases in the history of the State of New York, in which a man was charged with breach of promise of marriage and the testimony included some rather lurid details. A large crowd assembled for the trial, and while the jury was out deliberating its verdict, Winkler Paterson now fourteencame out like a fairy, beautifully attired and carrying a tamborine [sic] of owers. She recited The Gypsy Flower Girl. A journalist gave this

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evaluation: Miss Winkler is a very young lady but she gave in this classical selection a nish in gesture, interpretation and histrionic effect that many older professional elocutionists might envy (Breach of Promise). Later that same month (February 22), Winkler Paterson gained her rst administrative and entrepreneurial experience by creating and managing her own professional concert at the age of fourteen. She writes in Scrapbook 1: First recital at the Universalist Church. Cleared twenty-two dollars, and managed the whole affair alone, besides selling seventy-two tickets in two days. In an article titled Miss Winklers Recital, the Evening Standard reported that Winkler Paterson gave three readings, each followed by an encore. As support for her efforts, she had gotten two pianists, two vocalists, and a violinist to round out the programan effort that helped her develop networking capabilities. The newspaper included a positive evaluation. As a result of such successes, Winkler Patersons condence soared. An article titled A Talented Elocutionist in the Cohoes Republican reported: Miss Alvina C. Winkler . . . has been before the public in an amateur and semi-professional way now for over ve years and she gives promise of reaching a commanding pinnacle. In her scrapbook, Winkler Paterson has crossed out gives promise of reaching and has boldly written in the margin has reached. She has become an extraordinarily condent young woman and hardly the modest, submissive type supposedly ideal for women of the previous century. Winkler Patersons administrative and entrepreneurial work soon expanded to include group work not just in Troy but on the road as well. In early March, 1907, Winkler Paterson helped organize a professional group called the Ilium Quintette, which included a pianist, cornetist, soprano, violinist, and Winkler Paterson herself, reader and the youngest member at fteen. On March 13, the Ilium Quintette gave its rst concert at the Universalist Church in Troy. Alvina noted in Scrapbook 1 that the concert cleared over sixty dollars. Clippings and programs in Scrapbook 1 indicate that Winkler Paterson had a substantial and successful afliation with the quintette. Bookings of the group took herfor the rst timebeyond Troy to a range of towns and cities in New York and Vermont. Like the sophists of old, Winkler Paterson had become an itinerant entertainer for pay, learning how initiative, hard work, and nancial discipline could turn a prot. In 1907, Winkler Paterson reached a pinnacle of sorts in performance and began her career in education. In a program from that year, the Albany Printing Pressmens Union included Winkler Paterson in its twenty-rst anniversary celebration and called her the leading elocutionist of Troy (Corrie). Nothing in Scrapbook 1 had called Winkler Paterson the leading elocutionist of Troy until this item. Elsewhere in the scrapbook appears the following entry on her

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teaching debut: Oct. 5, 1907 Gave rst lesson, with out [sic] teachers [sic] help or knowledge to Clara Butcher for $.50 an hour. Then 15 years old. Winkler Paterson clearly relished both the independence and responsibility she had assumed at such a young age. On February 11, 1909, at the age of seventeen, Winkler Paterson presented her rst major professional concert. She asked two of her colleagues from the Ilium Quintette to join her on the programCarrie A. Richardson for two soprano solos and Mae E. Butcher for a piano solo. She presented three recitations alone and a sketch together with Ralph Revilo, an impersonator with whom she had appeared previously in programs billed as vaudeville and rened vaudeville. The R.P.I. [Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute] Mandolin Club played three selections, and another participant played a violin solo (Concert). In Scrapbook 1, Winkler Paterson calls the event a great success. The greatest I have ever had. She adds: Hall was lled, seats about seven hundred. Success nancially. The season of 08-09 very successful. Lots of large important engagements, several with the club [Mandolin Club] and also out of town. In rst large play. Merry Cobbler taking part of Rosalie. Going up. Ill get there sometime. An important event in Winkler Patersons later career, however, would prevent her from fully realizing her promise. The Later Career The second stage of Winkler Patersons career included a mix of performance and teaching with the performance gradually tapering off until teaching was her sole concern. Her initial efforts as a teacher were conducted without the benet of advanced education, and she gradually acquired enough students to begin holding recitals. By December 1909 she had enough students so that she could hold a recital in her home. Her students included eleven girls and one boy, all of whom delivered recitations. Mixed in with the recitations were orchestra selections, two piano solos, and a violin solo (Troy Times). On June 21, 1910, she held a similar recital not in her home but in Association Hall, and the number of her students had grown to twenty-one (Recital). One of the recitations delivered at this event was written by Winkler Paterson. In the interpretive readings used by Winkler Paterson for her performing and teaching, ten were written by herall of them light amusement pieces. It was not as a teacher, however, that she wanted to make her mark. In the fall of 1910, Winkler Paterson and her mother decided it was time for Winkler Paterson to obtain advanced education in preparation for a career on the New York stage. Elocution and the stage were connected in the beginning of the twentieth century much as they were in ancient Rome, eighteenth-century

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England, and nineteenth-century America. In October, shortly before WinklerPaterson was nineteen, the Troy Record contained an article that began: Miss Alvina C. Winkler . . . , one of the most talented of the readers and reciters of this city, has gone to New York to further continue her studies to the end of developing her remarkable talents in this direction. She will spend the winter studying at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts . . . , of which Francis H. Sargent is the president. The article indicated that Winkler Paterson and her mother had met with Sargent, who said that Winkler Patersons voice was remarkable, and that very much might be done with it. The article also indicates some of Winkler Patersons future studies: The fair Trojan . . . will be taught how to act, voice culture, dancing, fencing, English diction and French pronunciation (To Study Dramatic Art.). On November 18, 1911when Winkler Paterson would have been completing the rst semester of her second year at the American Academy of Dramatic Artsher mother died of cancer. According to Mary Paterson, Winkler Paterson had envisioned, and her mother had envisioned for her, a dramatic career on the New York stage. Winkler Patersons father had no such ambition for her, however. After his wife died, he asked Winkler Paterson to return home because he and his son needed a woman to take care of them. Winkler Paterson had to return to take care of . . . father and son because thats what women did. Her inability to pursue her New York stage career was a serious loss. Certainly, social expectations hinder the full achievement of Winkler Patersons goals, and this incidentat least to some degreesupports views about the restrictions on some womens vocational possibilities at the time. Instead of studying at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in the spring of 1912, Winkler Paterson resumed her career in Troy. Because of her education for the stage at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, her performance afterwards tended to focus on the stage (although she continued to perform in some recitations). For instance, on March 28, 1912, she was director of an Evening of Plays, a presentation of two plays at the First Universalist Church. From the fall of 1913 through the fall of 1919 (the second through the eighth season), she became a member of the Masque of Troy, an amateur dramatic company (Troy in the Drama). The company presented as many as twenty-ve performances in a single season to benet such organizations as churches, schools, the YMCA, the YWCA, the Red Cross, a re company, Knights of Columbus, and a PTA (Masque of Troy Programs, 191418). Winkler Paterson, then, supported nonprot organizations and charities not just through recitations but also through

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performances for the Masque. When she left the Masque, it consisted of about thirty memberstwenty-two speaking parts and an orchestra of eight (Troy in the Drama). The content of the rst two seasons did not differ substantially from vaudeville bills in which Winkler Paterson had already appeared. For instance, the second season (when Winkler Paterson joined the group) included orchestra music, impersonations, dialect recitations, a piano solo, a whistling solo, and three one-act comedies (in two of which Winkler Paterson appeared) (Gave an Entertainment). In the third through the eighth seasons, the company devoted its full efforts to a play each season. Winkler Paterson received high praise for her performances. For instance, the Troy Times wrote of her performance in Mrs. Temples Telegram: Miss Alvina C. Winkler, who portrayed Mrs. Temple, had plenty of opportunities to create lots of laughter by her characterization of this wife. She did well, as she always does, and her excellent work has, in this show and in other years, done much to give to the Masque its present reputation (Masque of Troy Opens Its Sixth Season). Winkler Paterson must have wondered often enough how she would have succeeded on the New York stage. While she was acting in plays of the Masque of Troy, she returned to New York City for additional education in July and August 1914, taking a course in expression at Columbia University that emphasized elocution, advanced reading, and phonetics. After her studies at Columbia, she embarked on an extensive range of activities that further developed not only her networking, administrative, and entrepreneurial capabilities but also her time-management skills. In October 1914 she became a teacher with her own studio at the Troy Conservatory of Music, a private school that taught instrumental and vocal music besides elocution. She was later promoted to Head of the Elocution Department there. Her courses included instruction in breathing, the technique of the voice, action, diction, life study, pantomime, elocution, lyrics, orations and dramatic literature. As part of her activities, she continued to organize public recitations for her students. She also became manager of the Criterion Foura group of young women featuring elocution and instrumental and vocal music not unlike the Ilium Quintette except that Winkler Paterson only managed and did not perform. Finally, like the sophists, she became an itinerant teacher, opening a private studio in New York City and traveling to another nearby townMechanicville, New Yorkto direct the Elocution Department at the Ada Fancher Allen School of Music for one day per week. In her role as teacher, Winkler Paterson provided the elocutionary pieces that her students presented at recitals. Although her collection of these pieces contained few that she herself delivered, it held many delivered by her students. The pieces are hardly great literature with the exception of an occasional

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contribution from such authors as Mark Twain or Charles Dickens. Pathetic, religious, heroic, sentimental, and tragic pieces are represented, but the most prevalent are humorousa generous child who gives her family and neighbors whooping cough, scarlet fever, measles, chicken pox, and mumps; the eight foreigners of different nationalities reacting to the Statue of Liberty; a boy pestering a bald man about his baldness; the extent to which men fuss and need pampering when all they have is a cold; and the troubles caused in a family by that new contraption called a radio. The presentation of these and other recitation pieces by Winkler Patersons students won them many honors, which are described in newspaper clippings in the scrapbooks. Some students saw Winkler Paterson as someone to imitate and had similar career patterns. For instance, Esther Weisbergs elocutionary career from child performer to adult teacher is contained in the scrapbooks. Weisberg studied under Winkler Paterson as a child, attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and Empire Theatre School of Acting (also in New York City managed by Sargent), returned to Troy to teach in the Chopin School of Music, and was an itinerant teacher in Tarrytown, New York. On November 24, 25, and 26, 1919 (shortly after Winkler Patersons twentyeighth birthday), the New York State Association of Elocutionists held its annual convention in Albany, New York. Franklin H. Sargent of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts gave an address on Training for Speaking and Acting (New York State Association of Elocutionists). Winkler Paterson was one of only three New York elocutionists invited to give recitations. The Troy Times wrote: Miss Winkler . . . was commended for her exceptional work (Troy Elocutionist at Convention). It must have been a moment of mixed emotions for Winkler Paterson. On the one hand, she was recognized by leading elocutionists in the state. On the other hand, Sargents presence must have reminded her that she had not realized her aspiration to succeed on the New York stage. The clipping about the Albany convention is the last in the scrapbooks in which she appeared as a performer. It was no doubt a bittersweet climax and conclusion to that part of her life. The last major changes in Winkler Patersons life and career took place in 1920. In June of that year, she began a course of study in speech correction under Frederick Martin at the City College of New York that included work on stammering, stuttering, lalling, and foreign accent (Engagement Announced). When she completed this course, she married Frederick Charles Paterson, an upholsterer whom she would not marry until he had three thousand dollars in savings in a bank account, which led to a considerable delay in the wedding (D. Paterson). After her wedding, she not only continued her previous teaching in expression but added work listed on a card as Correction of Speech Defects: Stammering, Lisping, Stuttering, Lalling, Defective Phonation, [and] Foreign Accent. The view of

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foreign accent as a speech problem that requires correction has a long tradition, reaching back through Sheridan at least to Quintilian, and Winkler Patersons work in this area no doubt helped some of the large numbers of immigrants ooding America to become assimilated into American society. The character developed by Winkler Paterson in the course of her career, like that developed by Genevieve Stebbins, does not t the ideal image of women supposedly current in the nineteenth century. She was hardly modest, gentle, and submissive. The notes in the scrapbooks suggest that she combined a full appreciation of her abilities with a soaring ambition and strong determination. According to Mary Paterson, She had an iron will. She could accomplish what she decided she was going to accomplish. She may have submitted to her fathers wish for her to return from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts to care for him and his son, but, otherwise, she dominated everyone, including her husband: The marriage was very good, but she was the dominant partner. How could she not be? She dominated all of us. She was hardly retiring and quiet either. David Paterson reports: Grandmother was always a raconteur. Mary Paterson added: She was a great personality. Wonderful at parties. She had all these stories she told. And jokes. . . . Alvina was like a spider in the middle of a big web. Shed shake it, and all the ies would come in. She would sit in her chair, and people would come in close to see what Alvina was talking about. She was always the center of attraction because she was great. And she loved it, of course. Clearly, then, Winkler Patersons career and life afford new insights about women and elocution at the beginning of the twentieth century and complicate assumptions about the role of women in rhetoric during this period. Claims that only men developed rhetorical education that was directed only to other men well into the twentieth century are untenable. While education in elocution was not available in public schools, well-off parents could afford a range of opportunities for their daughters: private lessons, private schools for younger students, and, if a young woman wanted to make a career in the area, such institutions as the Emerson School, Leland T. Powers School of the Spoken Word, Samuel Silas Currys School of Expression, the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and Columbia University. Lists of participants in programs, newspapers, enrollment records, and elocution society proceedings indicate that large numbers of girls and women were able to take advantage of these opportunities. Educators in elocution such as Stebbins, Georgen, Lempe, Winkler Paterson, Weisberg, and many other women helped develop elocutionary education for these girls and women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

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Any claims that womens participation in public rhetorical space was resisted, that they were expected to conne their rhetorical activities to the home, and that they were not expected to be successful in the world of work need qualication, too. Public rhetorical space included not just the platform and pulpit but also the stagethe site of elocutionary entertainment. The only resistance that Winkler Paterson seems to have encountered came from her fathers wish after her mothers deaththat she return home from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts to care for him and his son. The cultural expectation that women acceded to such wishes militated against her ignoring her fathers wish and may have prevented her from achieving the dramatic stardom to which she aspired. Except for that, however, support and encouragement for Winkler Patersons elocutionary activities in public rhetorical space seem to have come from every directionher mother, other teachers and performers (male and female), and newspaper reporters. More research is needed not just to explore that odd mix of Delsartian elocutionary activities in public rhetorical space that looks so strange to us today but also to determine more fully the substantial impact of Delsartian ideas at the time. The kinds of resources found in scrapbooksfor instance, newspaper articles, programs, letters, and professional cardsneed more attention as research aids to help establish this social history. Access to the world of elocution through performing and teaching empowered girls and women in a range of different ways. Performing in a way that evoked desired audience responses and praise helped develop communication abilities and condence. Managing successful recitals, plays, operettas, rened vaudeville shows, and groups of itinerant performers developed networking, administrative, and entrepreneurial capabilities (and more condence to undertake new initiatives). All of these abilities developed as performers helped elocutionists become successful in classrooms, run departments in schools, and manage independent studios, schools, and institutions for prot. The extraordinary range of activities at any one time by an elocutionist such as Winkler Paterson required excellent time-management capabilities. Given all this accomplishment, it was not surprising to nd out from Mary and David Paterson that Winkler Paterson designed her own house, became a wealthy investor in stocks, and was prominent in social circles. Elocution afforded women the condence, opportunities, and capabilities to take charge of their own destinies.
Note
owe thanks to RR reviewers Susan Kates, Andrew King, and RR editor Theresa Enos for signicant help in revising this manuscript. We also owe thanks to Amber Davisson for using the scrapbooks to create a chronology of Winkler Patersons performances that was useful in the writing of this article.
1 We

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Writing this article was one of the assignments in Rhetorical Analysis, a course in the Communication and Rhetoric PhD program at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Merril D. Whitburn was the professor, and Joshua L. Comer, Gaines S. Hubbell, Lisa M. Litterio, Raymond A. Lutzky, and Michael A. Rancourt were the PhD students.