Widow of Peterbero

Twenty-five years ago Composer Edward Alexander MacDowell, driven to distraction by city confusion and interruptions, made a dying request that his summer house in quiet Peterboro, N. H., be turned into a retreat for worthy creative artists. Last week Frederick Stock in Chicago, Sergei Koussevitzky in Boston, Leopold Stokowski in Philadelphia and Issay Dobrowen in Manhattan conducted MacDowell music, made him the only U. S. composer ever to have an anniversary so widely celebrated. Conductors in other cities have scheduled the romantic Indian Suite or the more vigorous Second Piano Concerto. Some 2,000 music clubs are giving MacDowell programs. Each of these, besides commemorating the composer, will honor the 25th birthday of the MacDowell Colony, started and gallantly kept alive by MacDowell's small, alert widow. Partly because she is an expert pianist herself, Mrs. MacDowell thoroughly understands an artist's need for solitude. When she and MacDowell were living in a tiny Manhattan flat she often went for long walks so that he could be alone. To earn a livelihood MacDowell became Professor of Music at Columbia University. When he died she used the little money he left to start the Peterboro colony. She toured the U. S. giving concerts -- on crutches when an accident crippled her -- and raised $100,000. The colony grew to have dormitories, a community dining-hall, a valuable library, 23 studio-cabins (the colonists are limited to 25) where for $12 a week people can work all day un interrupted. The Widow of Peterboro makes few rules. She forbids anyone to visit a worker uninvited. Even luncheon baskets are left on cabin doorsteps. Composers Aaron Copland and Louis Gruenberg, Poets Edwin Arlington Robin son and the late Elinor Wylie, Novelists Thornton Wilder and Willa Gather have spent summers at Peterboro. Mrs. MacDowell busies herself quietly among her brooding artists, looking after the property, raising money. At the colony she usually wears a lavender dress and a big straw hat with a purple band. It used to be a common sight to see her driving a horse & buggy across fields, ignoring roads whenever she felt like it. Now she rides around in an automobile driven by her companion-secretary. At a MacDowell Festival Concert in Manhattan last week the Widow of Peterboro made her only public appearance of the season. Members of the Philharmonic-Symphony played MacDowell's music. The Mendelssohn Glee Club (which MacDowell conducted for two years) sang his songs. Composer Louis Gruenberg played the Daniel Jazz which he wrote at Peterboro. Colonist Ruth Draper read poems by Colonist Edwin Arlington Robinson. When Mrs. MacDowell came on the stage, wearing an old-fashioned short-sleeved dress, her hair in old-style pompadour, the audience stood up. In a short, dry little speech which overshadowed the one made just before by Writer John Erskine she declared that it was obstinacy which had made her plough ahead with the Colony, that the vision had been her husband's. Earlier in the week she said: "I am not a remarkable woman. I am like a person who finds a diamond in the street. You don't have to be very clever to find a diamond in the street."

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