The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, November 3, 1901, Page 6

S LN, e\ \fil\\}‘:\'/" W rg “Qalifornia’s Best Known Club Women!” Do you know who they aref Cr, in knowing who they are, have you ever studied their person-litics to know why- they should be consid- ered the “best known’’? This s'zetch cf Mrs. Robert Burdette is the fi1 5t in | an interesting series on just those Jines. UNDAY CALL e — - e oo OBERT BURDETTE says that enough to be energetic in the matter of home is a typical home of the south— when he married the presept Mrs.. woman's clubs, Mrs. Burdette drifted into roomy, spreading, with plenty of lawn, Robert Burdette he became a club the work in the big sister town and the plenty of piazzas; above all, plenty of Ebell claimed her. hospitality. woman, When a wife can make a club woman out of a man it shows what she can accomplish, Mrs. Burdette has prob- ably been instrumental in making as many c¢lub women as any one in the State of California, and when she and Mr. Bur- dette joined hands they also joined forces and have been “clubbing it” jointly ever since, The first thing accomplished after both of them set to work in this partnership was her election to the State presidency. California clubs decided, after much ar- gument, to federate; having federated they decided to elect Mrs, Burdette to be their president, That happened in 1900, Up to that time she had been identified chiefly with the Ebell Club of Los Angeles. Her home has for a long time been in Pasadena, one of the Orange Grove av- enue homes that are counted very nice to live in. As Pasadena is hardly large In the Ebell she used her influence to- ward the same ends that she is working for now as State president. . Among club women she stands out noticeably as a champion of the home life. They all do this in their words, but Mrs. Burdette shows by her life that she means it, Her home is a great deal more to her than her club, “Club life and has not reached its highest type, the evolution for women is an evolution she says, ‘‘Ten years ago was represented by ‘self-culture’; then culture of self through culture of neighbor; then culture through service. There was once danger of woman’'s training her head at the of her but that danger cost heart, seems now to be past. No work is good that does not emanate from l))-* home, in its results return to the home and it must be always secondary to the home.” This is the keynote of her teachings and she not only teaches but follows her own instructions like the good divine, Her The Burdettes are Californians in the proverbial sense of the word, They believe that their house is for the purpose of en- tertaining friends. They eat less than half their dinners alone and the entertainments they give are known for their lavishness, “Bob" furnishes good wit for the feast and his wife's tact keeps the wheels of the entertainment running smoothly. With all this life as a hostess she has found time to start work and keep it 8O- ing among her own The public school reform has been one that has in- terested her and she has worked diligent- ly to drive politics out of the system and sex, to arouse the desire for higher standards of instruetion, Another of her lines of work has been for preserving the forests of this State, She sald once in an address: “The wom- en of New Jersey are saving the Palisades of the Hudson from destruction by men, to whose greedy souls Mount Sinai is only a stone quarry; the women of Colorhdo 0 S 7 T A NS i\ AT N N =7 AV g " Z Wz Z_.s N o7\ 2 kS -, =9, NS N2 7, N O ~ =l are saving thetr clift dwellings and pueb- 1o ruins: here in California we must pre- serve our fq s from men whose souls are Nor is she a sentimentalist on the sub- gangsaws. ject, but a strictly practical, scientitic thinker. At that time she pointed out the reason for saving the forests on account water their She was one of the foremost in of the shades promcting the work that has ‘since been supply guarded by carried out. Another of her watchwords is, ‘‘prefl- ormation is Dbetter than reformation.” “Let us keep out vice,”’ she warns her hearers again and again, ‘‘California has not yet become infected with slums such as the Eastern cities know. Let us keep out slums instead of trying to drive them out after they-have been implanted here.” In appearance Mrs. Burdette is the last woman of whom you would expect radical and vigorous views. She is small, gentle in manner, having a soft voice that. with some difficulty reaches all its listeners and a face that shows more sweet good tem- per than strenuousness. She is rather round-faced, in fact, and extremely rosy. There is something in her smile that is almost childlike and absurdly in contrast with the. proverbial expression of the “club woman."” . She is not eccentric in dross.h is blessed with a good'plenty of money, with which she buys expensive gowns when she goes East or to Europe, and the wom- en of Southern California have come to look for the latest styles from Mrs. Bur- dette, as if she belonged to the whirl or to the stage. Think of looking for Paris fashions from a club woman! soclal She has not a striking personal appear= ance, and although she Is a good speaker and an earnest one she has won out by means of something else. It is her tact, This tact is what makes her a good host- ess and a good presiding officer. She is satisfactory, more than that, upon the platform in her official capacity; but the truth is that her real power shows itself when she leaves the chair, descends from the platform and drinks afternoon tea with the club members as an excuse for ‘““heart-to-hearts." The people who think that club life un- fits a woman for romance will find them- selves up against a serious obstacle when they confront her pretty little story. The most romantie kind of a romance is told of her and *“Bob"” Burdette—how they loved when they were very young and very poor, and the latter adjective was what enforced their separation. After they had drifted they each married some~ body else, but it seems that the first love for years later when the was carried by fate across the path of the wealthy widow they had their courtship all over again, and the result is an Arcadian exists tence in Pasadena, was not dead; widower, a successful man,