Book Review
Belva Lockwood
by Jill Norgren
Jill Norgren has quite a story to tell. Belva Lockwood (1830–1917) had to wage an arduous campaign just to get into law school and after completing the course she was refused a degree. An expert lobbyist who befriended influential congressmen, Lockwood marshaled her forces, eventually obtained her diploma, and then had to wage another battle to be admitted to the Washington, D.C., bar. And that was hardly the last public struggle for the first woman to argue a case before the Supreme Court and to conduct the first full campaign for the presidency.

In her new biography, "Belva Lockwood" (New York University Press, 311 pages, $35) Ms. Norgren, a legal historian, explains that she first learned of Lockwood while helping her daughter select books in the children's section at the public library. "I knew nothing about the woman or her accomplishments," Ms. Norgren writes, "virtually none of my university colleagues knew her name."

More biographers — more scholars — should read biographies intended for children, which can serve as a syncretic introduction to the biographical subject. It is shame that Ms. Norgren does not identify the biography she first put in her daughter's hands.

So why has Lockwood languished in biographical purdah? Ms. Norgren faults fashion: the appetite for biographies of "Founding Fathers and fighting generals." Well, sure, but other women of Lockwood's stature have attracted their fair share of biographers.

More to the point, Lockwood's niece, an amateur biographer, never completed the job. At the time, few libraries collected the papers of notable women, Ms. Norgren points out. And then Lockwood's closest surviving relative, a grandson, unforgivably sent her papers off to the Salvation Army as scrap paper that was later pulped.

Many biographers would balk at the paucity of archival sources. But Ms. Norgren persisted, calculating rightly that she would find important traces of Lockwood in others' papers. Lockwood also wrote about her life and published frequently. Newspapers covered her activities. As a practicing lawyer, she appears in all manner of other records, as well.

In Ms. Norgren's credible narrative, Lockwood emerges as a shrewd self-promoter, never hesitating to garner publicity for herself and her causes. After a brief first marriage and the birth of a daughter, Lockwood started on her public career. A second marriage to a much older man was agreeable but also strategic, for Lockwood did not hesitate to use her husband's business contacts to corral her own clients. Nellie Bly, the New York World's "daredevil girl reporter," pronounced Lockwood a worthy presidential candidate, calling her a "womanly woman … intelligent without being manly … the beau ideal of a woman with a brain."

In eloquent detail, Ms. Norgren shows how Lockwood loved the law. As a solo practitioner, she went after all sorts of cases: civil actions, divorces, and criminal trials. Lockwood ventured into other states acting on behalf of clients, and she helped to set up networks of female lawyers who could help one another.

When Ms. Norgren falters, it is hardly her fault. With so much private correspondence missing, it is difficult to picture the private Lockwood. In more intimate settings, was she always able to put on such a brave face? Was she really so unruffled by male chauvinism?

Ms. Norgren could make a little more of Lockwood's personality. An amusing episode, for example, shows Lockwood in motion, deflecting the sort of criticism that made other feminists fume. In 1881, to get to her appointments quickly, Lockwood adopted the then exclusively male practice of riding a large tricycle on the streets of Washington, D.C. The press attacked this unladylike behavior, lampooning it in cartoons and even speculating that it might ruin the "feminine organs of matrimonial necessity."

While certain feminists like Susan B. Anthony made an ideological issue out of the controversy, proclaiming the bicycle an instrument of female emancipation, Lockwood composed a poem:

A simple home woman, who only had thought
To lighten the labors her business had wrought.
And make a machine serve the purpose of feet.
And at the same time keep her dress from the street.

Ms. Norgren calls this ditty "light-hearted," an expression of Lockwood's amusement at the hullabaloo. So it is, but it also demonstrates how Lockwood got ahead, making her vehicle seem like the natural extension of a successful woman's work, while also reminding readers of the alternately muddy and dusty streets of the capital that made it difficult to preserve ladylike behavior.

This episode would be a good way to begin a Lockwood biography — one perhaps a children's biographer could use as a means of amplifying Ms. Norgren's sober-sided book.

crollyson@nysun.com