WOERISHOFFER, Carola (1911)

The sitter was the younger daughter of banker Charles Woerishoffer and Anna Uhl, and sister of Countess Antoinette Seilern. She was born in August 1885, educated at the Brearley School, New York, and at Bryn Mawr College, PA (Graduate Class of 1907) and dedicated her short adult life to social improvement. She died in a car crash on September 11, 1911, leaving a bequest of $750,000 to Bryn Mawr College which, in 1915, founded the Carola Woerishoffer Graduate Department of Social Economy, the first graduate school in the field in the United States to offer a Ph.D.

Bibliography:

Bryn Mawr College Class of 1907, Carola Woerishoffer: Her Life & Work, Bryn Mawr, PA, 1912.

Robin Kadison Berson, Marching to a Different Drummer: Unrecognized Heroes of American History, Westport, Connecticut & London, 1994.

Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, The Power & Passion of M. Carey Thomas, University of Illinois Press, 1999, p.380.

Ida Tarbell, ‘A Noble Life: The Story of Carola Woerishoffer,’ American Magazine 74 (November 1911), pp.281-28

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A portrait, presumably posthumous, was evidently executed in 1911. This is confirmed by a letter in the artist’s papers and copies of two others in the papers of the second President of Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania (M. Carey Thomas, Bryn Mawr College Archives). The first, dated January 12, 1912, reads:

‘Dear Sir,

I find I cannot go to your studio on Friday morning between 12 and 1pm as I hoped.

I will try to get there on saturday afternoon at 12 o’clock unless I telephone you to the contrary. I may possibly reach your studio on Friday but it is very doubtful. Please do not stay in for me but give orders to have me shown the portrait.

       Sincerely yours, M. Carey Thomas.’

The first of the letters in the Bryn Mawr archive, dated February 20, 1912, but with the word CANCELLED written across it, says:

‘Dear Mr. Urey (sic),

We are entirely satisfied with your decision to leave the portrait of Miss Woerishoffer as it is. It is now charming and I agree with you that it would not be wise to run any risk of injuring it in any way. The portrait has just arrived from Knoedler and Company. We will hang it is the great reading room of the library where our other portraits are hung until the memorial room is ready for it.

I hope that some time you will come to the college and see how it looks in its permanent position.

         With kind regards and thanks

                                                Sincerely yours,’

The following day, February 21, 1912, M. Carey Thomas wrote to Muller-Ury as follows:

‘Dear Mr. Ury,

I am greatly surprised to find that I have misunderstood you about the portrait and that it was not ordered by Mrs. Woerishoffer in order to present it  to the college. I realize that I am very much at fault for not having written directly to Mrs. Woerishoffer about it before accepting your invitation to go and see it. I misunderstood your letter and everything you said in your studio tended to confirm my impression that it was a gift from Mrs. Woerishoffer.

I regret the misunderstanding very much indeed, as the college has at  present no money with which to purchase the portrait. As you know if you know anything about the way in which colleges are conducted we are spending all of our income, and sometimes more than our income, in providing the best possible teaching for our students so that there will be no surplus from which to purchase the portrait from this year’s income. If the executors of Miss Woerishoffer’s estate do not pay it over to the college until a year from the date when letters testamentary were taken out that, until January 1913, there will not be any available income from her gift until the latter part of next year. I am sure that our Board of Directors will not feel that they ought to run into debt in order to purchase the portrait of Miss Woerishoffer.

Under these circumstances I am sure that you will understand why it is necessary for me to send back the portrait which to my surprise arrived two days ago from Knoedler and Company. I am having it returned to you expressage prepaid. I should be very glad if you would kindly send me by Adams Express collection delivery the college gown which you write me is packed in the box.

I will bring this matter before the Board of Directors at their next meeting and will write you their decision which must I think be in accordance with what I have written as I known as well as they do the financial situation of the college.

    With sincere regret for the misunderstanding,

                Very truly yours, M. Carey Thomas

P.S. The box in which the portrait was packed was so fragile that I had to have it strengthened by our college carpenter.

                                                                        M.C.T.’

There is no portrait of Carola Woerishoffer as an adult in an academic gown in the Bryn Mawr art collection, and it is not known what happened to it.