Today is the birthday of Mary Mahoney, born in 1845 in Boston. Mary Mahoney was the first African-American woman to be a registered nurse. Nursing school hasn’t changed much since Mahoney went to school – she and her classmates had grueling 16-hour work days for little pay with plenty of studying to do in between.  

Things didn’t get any easier after Mary completed the nursing program. Minority nurses were often lumped together with the household staff, their education and training overlooked. To distinguish herself as a professional, she would eat suppers alone in the kitchen, separate from household servants when employed at a household. As her reputation as a professional nurse and outstanding caregiver spread, Mahoney found herself with a number of private wealthy clientele.

Mary was a strong advocate for ethnic equality, insisting nurses of all colors should receive equal pay, particularly when they all had received the same or similar degrees. She also was a supporter of women’s suffrage and was one of the first women to register to vote in Boston in 1920

Today is the birthday of Robert Browning, English poet and playwright. Such phrases as “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp” and “Less is more” we get from Browning’s work. John Lennon’s song “Grow Old With Me” was inspired by Browning’s poem “Rabbi Ben Ezra” which starts with the lines: ‘Grow old along with me! / The best is yet to be”. Yoko Ono’s song “Let Me Count the Ways” was inspired by Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s sonnet “How Do I Love Thee.” (Elizabeth Barrett Browning is the beloved wife of Robert Browning.)

Robert avoided public speaking throughout his life, not a lover of the lime-light, unlike some of his predecessors in the Romantic Era. However, there does exist a recording of Browning from 1889 during a dinner party, recorded on an Edison phonograph. He begins to recite lines from one of his poems, but stops, apologizing for forgetting “me lines.” 

And today is the birthday of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Russian composer and conductor. Tchaikovsky had an aptitude for music at an early age, but for the most part his teachers and classmates didn’t see it as a precursor to the fame he would eventually achieve. His two best schoolmates said of his early piano playing “We were amused.” It really wasn’t until his late twenties, after five years of music schooling, teaching, composing, and critiquing that his compositions began to gain favor.  

Tchaikovsky hit a rough patch after a failed marriage. It only lasted 2 months, but had disastrous effects on Tchaikovsky, his social anxiety flaring up. He spent a few years traveling through Europe and composing but avoided contact with most everyone. 

In 1884, Tsar Alexander III bestowed an honorary title upon Tchaikovsky, leaving no doubt in anyone one’s mind that his work was of value. The title thrust him into new social circles and with that his social anxiety and life-long stage fright began to wane. Almost as soon as he stepped into role of conductor in the late 1880s, he was in demand all over Europe, even making a stop to perform in New York City at Carnegie Hall. 

The Nutcracker, the ballet, was first performed in 1890 in Russia. It was received with mixed review, some critics confused as to why Tchaikovsky had agreed to compose the music for it. However, two years later, Tchaikovsky had arranged a 20-minute Nutcracker Suite which was received with hearty praise. 

And lastly today is the birthday of Olympe de Gouges, a spitfire of a woman during the French Revolution. She strongly believed that women were equal in mind to men and should be allowed the same rights, such as voting and owning property, the basics. Her feminist writing, criticizing the Revolution eventually led to her demise at the guillotine. Her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen influenced feminists from Mary Wollstonecraft in England to the women who gathered in Seneca Falls, NY in 1848 for the first Women’s Rights Convention.

Robert Browning

 

 The gray sea and the long black land;  

And the yellow half-moon large and low:  

And the startled little waves that leap  

In fiery ringlets from their sleep,  

As I gain the cove with pushing prow,

And quench its speed i’ the slushy sand.  

  

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;  

Three fields to cross till a farm appears;  

A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch  

And blue spurt of a lighted match,

And a voice less loud, through joys and fears,  

Than the two hearts beating each to each!