When I joined the _World_ staff of writers, in 1860, a few weeks after
the foundation of that journal, I found Jenny June already there. She
did not often appear in the office in person, the lady auxiliary in
journalism not being so familiar a figure as it now is, and she had
not yet adopted her pretty _nom-de-plume,_ but her husband, David G.
Croly, held an official post on the staff as city editor, and her
contributions, which were invariably well written and interesting,
appeared from the first in the _World_ columns, and as the years went
on while she and Mr. Croly remained associated with it, with
increasing frequency. They were written by a woman mainly for women,
and the maids and matrons of her country over all its area from ocean
to ocean and from "lands of sun to lands of snow" have never been
addressed by one of their sex whom they came to know better or to hold
in higher esteem. Her work assumed no pretentious or high importance,
but was sweet and wholesome, sensible, and a mirror of the nature out
of which it proceeded. The name Jenny June, which she adopted a few
years later, became a beloved household word throughout the land,
perhaps more widely known than that of any lady journalist who has
ever wrought in it.
Mrs. Croly's social dispositions and her aptitude for gathering
interesting people around her were gracious endowments of nature's
bestowal, as strongly marked in her youth as in her maturer years,
when she gradually came to have a wider stage on which to display
them. Her pretty little drawing-rooms, somewhere on the west side near
Grove Street, are well remembered by me, and first and last I met in
them a goodly number of people well worthy to be remembered, some with
their trophies of success yet to win, but their merit divined by their
clever hostess, perhaps before it had obtained any full recognition
elsewhere. Many also came who had won their spurs and epaulets and
shone bravely in the bright glitter of both. In her little
unpretending salon of that day might be met the brilliant young Edmund
Clarence Stedman, in the morning glow of his poetic fame; Bayard
Taylor, risen into the mid-forenoon of his fame, with his Orient
lyrics published and his translation of "Faust" well begun; perhaps
Phoebe and Alice Cary, though on this point I cannot be certain, and
many another of note and distinction in that time, her hospitality
taking in all arts, and all the presentable workers in them, so that
poets, painters, sculptors, singers, actors were equally welcome, as
were those who brought to her only their bright young countenances
and winning smiles. Her later drawing-rooms, when she had removed up
town, nearer to the Mayfair of society, became widely celebrated, and
she founded something perhaps as near to a salon modeled after the
traditional Parisian standards as any that America has known.
Mrs. Croly is recognized as the chief among the founders of Sorosis,
the most celebrated woman's club in the world, and parent of the
innumerable organizations of like sect which have sprung up since
their renowned progenitor became with fewer vicissitudes and trials
than might have been anticipated firmly planted on its feet and
attested its self-supporting and self-reliant character. No social
development of the modern period is more striking than the swift
multiplication of women's clubs, not in this country alone, but in
others, and they have shown a power of beneficent work most
advantageous to the community at large, which even the most sanguine
among their promoters could not have anticipated. They have also shown
that women can legislate and administrate and rise to the point of
order and lay things on the table in a manner as parliamentary and
self-restrained as men. For such testimony the world should be
thankful, as it never got anything of the kind before. Among the
founders of this now most impressive group of social organizations no
name stands out more brightly and conspicuously than that of Jane
Cunningham Croly.
Her recent death, though a surprise and shock to her innumerable
friends, came when she had passed her seventy-second birthday, and it
cannot therefore be said that she passed away with her work
uncompleted. It was fully and most worthily performed, and was the
fruit of a systematic diligence never remitted, and in which few of
her sex in any period could have exceeded her. Her memory is fragrant
as the month from which she took her _nom-de-plume_, and will at least
be cherished by those whom her gentle discourse, continued for more
than a generation, has entertained and instructed.