USA > New York > Onondaga County > Syracuse > Sixty-odd, a personal history > Part 28
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Involuntarily I recalled the fate of other women who had met defeat on that same road. Of one or another it had been said, in the familiar Victorian term, that she "had come down to taking board- ers." Down. If only that word had been suggestive of possible ascent or of some bright goal! But instead, the vision itself was Browning's Childe Roland at the Dark Tower; a windowless dungeon in a hopeless landscape.
Gray plain all round-
Nothing but plain to the horizon's bound. I might go on; naught else was left to do.
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My imagination carried the figure further. The "hoary cripple with malicious eye"; that was the gossip of observers about the "come down" of a woman who had been spendthrift of privilege and birth and education. A boarding-house for students-the most that could be hoped for. This time, though determined, I succumbed to a completely dreary mood. "And all the doubt was-should I be fit." Browning had gripped my will, however, and given me the courage of desperation.
But another person had been reminded of Childe Roland too. My husband and I were very fond of the Rector of St. Mary's, the little Brooklyn church to which we had attached ourselves at the time of our uptown move in 1893. It was very like an English church, standing in a shady close with its rectory and parish build- ings in the midst of an unpromising factory district. The young priest was a warm friend. In one of the characteristically short notes that are sometimes better than the spoken word, he struck the in- pelling tone I needed.
Dauntless the slug-horn to your lips you have set.
So music was once more to play its part in deliverance. The beauty of the slug-horn's blast is that its reverberations remain in the im- mediate atmosphere, and come back to one with many an echoed note of joyful defiance.
It is curious, too, how suddenly a tragic situation may be re- lieved by some trivial interruption. When we waked on the morn- ing of our departure from the "Bird House," to see a squad of wreckers, so to speak, descending upon it, and a gaping van prepar- ing to swallow up our precious furnishings, there seemed naught but black disaster before us-the Dark Tower on wheels. It re- mained for the youngest member of the family to divert that mood.
As there was no one to hold him, small John was fastened into his crib by a shoulder-strap, and lay there gleefully watching the spoilsmen as they carried away bureaus and beds and chairs. His parents were rushing from room to room giving orders, and Roger was making frantic attempts to escape from a young girl guardian, when suddenly there was a call.
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"The baby's gone!"
Apparently he was. A glance into the denuded room disclosed an empty crib and a silent space within four walls. It was an utter impossibility for anyone to carry him away without being seen, but the whole family stopped work and began a dazed hunt. From cel- lar to garret, every corner and cupboard was examined. Finally, go- ing back in desperation to the crib, the searchers heard a chuckle. John had wriggled himself over its edge next the wall, and was ly- ing perdu, suspended by his shoulder-belt, absorbed in reaching for a red ball which had fallen to the floor.
People laughed and cried simultaneously, one old mover even mopping an eye. The worst moment was over, and we crowded into the waiting hack, taking a final view of the house and the pictur- esque group on its porch. Annie, the tall negro girl who had been our friend and buoyant helper for two years, was standing there amid a small company of her relatives, male and female, who had come to help her close up the premises and were clasping various cast-off articles to their breasts. Their brown faces shone in the morning sunshine. Annie herself waved an energetic farewell with a large cracked Canton platter which had been her heart's desire ever since she let it drop a few weeks before. The neighbors sang out good-byes from their porches, and bade us come again soon. So, with sorrowful resignation cloaked by these saving emotions, finis was written under the last chapter of our Brooklyn life.
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We had a happy summer, since Archie came up from New York, and spent weeks with us in Hadley. We did our own housework at the farm, took long drives with Charlie, the old horse of Engle- wood days, harnessed to the accustomed carryall, both retained at Forty Acres for ten years. We painted the blinds of the Phelps house, to relieve its brown walls with a fresh green, and the little boys watched their father as he wielded his brush.
Through July and August we let the children stay up to watch the sun go down. We taught them to listen to bird songs, and to know the wildflowers, whose names their Aunt Molly could always give. Little wild animals still crept out of their holes, and made acquaintance with us; the squirrels ran madly over the roofs, and leaped across from the pine-branches into the elms and maples. There was a woodchuck's hole in the middle of the north dooryard, and the old fellow used to come up and look about him warily when we were eating dinner. We watched him, but did not disturb him; he was surveying territory which was his own by right of occupa- tion. When we were visiting friends in another country-house, Roger inquired politely, after being shown their horses and dogs and cows, "But where is your woodchuck?"
As for our two parental selves, we were no longer in the throes of despair at the coming separation. We had each begun to plan and to look forward to freedom and work; we could enter into one an- other's hopes and share ambitions. It did me good to see my hus- band eager for the future he had previously renounced, and was now planning to recreate.
When I moved to Northampton in the fall of 1900, he came
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back, and helped me settle into my new abode. I was to take the house of which President Seelye had spoken to my father, and board four freshmen who had not been able to find rooms on the campus, reserving one room in which to put up visiting parents.
The house was attractive, situated on the lower side of Round Hill, and with a lovely view of the eastern hills from its rear win- dows. Mount Holyoke lay to the southeast in an altogether difer- ent setting from that of our Hadley outlook; the low range always reminded me of a sleeping lion, stretched out beyond the valley plain. To the west, between housetops, we had a view of Mount Pomeroy, a horizon which was quite new to me.
Just below us, on Elm Street, stood the house which my father's oldest brother, the Honorable Charles Huntington, had built and occupied in long residence; opposite that the two Misses Brewer. once the gayest girls of Northampton, and nieces of Judge Lyman, were living; they welcomed the child of their erstwhile associate, and had the merriest stories to tell of youthful pranks, memories of which kept them in touch with the younger generation. Miss Fanny was tall, erect, handsome, positive; Miss Hannah small, dainty, clever, vivacious. Three other members of the former circle in which my father moved, Christopher Clarke and his two maiden sisters, were original characters, picturesque personalities with old. time touches in their garb and a quaint house in the residential dis. trict that was originally populated by the first families. The Clarke sisters had a lot of old letters, bits of amusing verse, and other tro- phies, witnesses to a lively and select company which in their younger days had earned repute for Northampton as a centre of cultivation and wit. And music also, for their brother Christopher and his colleagues had founded a lyceum which had brought fa- mous artists and lecturers to the town. One of our elderly friends re- marked that "it was taking a whole college to raise the tone of the present generation to anything like the standards of fifty years before!"
In making my own venture, I was the recipient of blessings and curses both, to put it baldly. My family supplied the blessings, but other relatives were divided in their minds as to the propriety, or
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even decency, of exchanging the prestige of a lawyer's wife and what they were pleased to term "good birth", for the inglorious career of a landlady. Quite different, argued discerning Boston, from that condescension which ladies of Cambridge, for instance, had practised during many years past in accommodating a few pay- ing guests of a student or professorial character in their own houses, dispensing cultural advantages thereby. Yes, quite, quite another thing.
This attitude seems incredible today, and luckily I was unaware of it at the moment. However, my cousin Fanny Quincy, whose her- itage from Betsey Porter may have accounted for her large-hearted- ness, sent me some dessert-spoons with colonial markings, and a friend of my father added a French-enamelled outfit of bedroom and parlor furniture, with cordial benedictions. This was pleasant, but I was absorbed in calculating and planning and learning how to cope with artisans and merchants. If I thought at all about my future social status, it was to feel the satisfaction of being able to rank myself among the wage-earners and be recognized by them.
My conception of a woman's college in the year 1900 was, like other inheritances from a romantic age, somewhat ahead of reality; and the conversion of ideals into ideas was bound to be a little slow.
The campus as we had seen it in summer months was thus far only a bare and rather dusty yard, with tall elm trees and transverse paths and closed brick buildings: no hint of life during the period of our stay at Forty Acres. It had never seemed like a part of the town, and we had thought it a bore to exhibit it to strangers. It formed no actual setting for the vision which had always remained in my mind, derived from Tennyson's Princess-and not yet dis- turbed, even by acquaintance with many collegians-of gracious women in academic garb, moving about under the spreading elm branches, followed by fair young girls who gazed at them adoringly and listened to words of wisdom from their lips. In my teaching days at Utica the school had given, under Emily Griffith's direction, a most charming performance of The Princess, with artistic costum- ing and very good dramatic representation. So I looked forward with some amusement to a modernized version of the drama.
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It was a great comfort to find that my four girls, of different types but with good backgrounds, were able to fit into family life as well as into a college schedule. I have always had a particularly warm affection for that quartette, and a deep respect for the up- bringing which made them truly helpful during our common no. vitiate. Through them I learned how to meet the combined de- mands of matronhood and hostess-ship.
I knew little or nothing of the regulations in the other off. campus houses, except from the good advice of a very successful matron whose disciplinary principles awed me exceedingly, and mnade me quite hopeless of ever imitating them. I had to content myself for the time being with making the house regimen simple and orderly so that it might not interfere with college regulations. The children were taught to fall in with this, and learned to go to sleep in the midst of noise and motion, but were more or less re- moved from it in their big room at the back of the house.
The girls, and their many friends, who ran in and out of the house much as the Brooklyn children had done, played with the little boys, taught John to walk, and amused themselves with Roger. We had discovered soon after his third birthday that Roger had taught himself to read, we never knew how. Our visitors, girls and young faculty women whom I had come to know, used to make him recite bits from Shakespeare, setting him up on a table, to hear him declaim with infantile gusto, "Friends, Romans, Countrymen."
It was a comfort to feel that the children could have outdoor life, sunshine and bracing air, with Forty Acres only six miles away and a chance meanwhile to grow up in a community of scholarly habit and tradition. The task of developing system and economic foresight was bright with discovery; now one could have done with sordid calculations and fears.
I was asked to join the Monday Club; the most interesting of the town associations, I discovered. I found myself, rather timidly at first, accepting kind overtures from women of the faculty who had either known my family or had followed up commendations of friends. There were at that time comparatively few men on the staff of the college, and one found these women (divested of Tenny-
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sonian robes!) very delightful company after one had overcome a certain awe which was no more than their due.
They were fine women. It seemed fitting that Eleanor Cushing, who dealt with the higher mathematical values, should have been endowed with a classic beauty of countenance, with dignity and re- serve. When she came to pay her first visit she brought with her a little dark-haired vivacious lady who displayed such familiarity with the doings of the town that one did not suspect her of any connection with the college. I concluded that Hatfield house, in- scribed on her visiting card, signified a small hotel of some sort. I had not yet mastered the campus geography, and did not at the moment dream that I had had the honor of a visit from the star of the English faculty, Mary Angusta Jordan. But after attending one of her classes I could appreciate the brilliancy with which, as analyst and lecturer, she held her audience spellbound.
It was always good fun to visit those classes, for she had a fashion of flinging little asides, over the girls' heads, to adult listeners, and frequently turning from the more commonplace subject of the moment to indulge in an intellectual fusillade which delighted the company. One could well understand that the talented girl would seek her training, even if it implied biting though constructive criticism. And somehow, in spite of her small stature, abrupt man- ner and cryptic nods or shakings of the head in place of words, she was an impressive figure on a commencement platform.
Then I enjoyed Julia Caverno of the Greek department, who out of the dry background of classical research brought human and friendly approach to an ancient civilization, and made its language fascinating. She was a delightful person to meet and greet in one's daily walk, with contagious humor in her smile, and a freedom from pettiness that might well be the outcome of dealing with the immortals.
Elizabeth Hanscom was slight and rosy-cheeked and quick-mov- ing, but uncompromising in her principles, and deaf to all appeals of the non-studious; her Shakespeare course brought out so much in her recognition of the dramatic and poetic values in their rela- tion to life, and so keen an exposition of the essential and eternal
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humanity of the great dramatist, that the girls looked upon it as almost a fitting in itself for a literary career. They knew her, too, outside of the classroom, and loved to visit her in the little house where she lived with her mother.
But among them there was hardly one greater, if the observa- tion of an onlooker counts for anything, than Jenette Lee, who, with her husband Gerald Stanley Lee, had already gained distinc- tion as a writer of that period. Her faculty for making her pupils' minds work was amazing. A small figure in a sober brown gown, she sat relaxed before a crowded classroom, and led them in criticism of a given book or essay with scarcely a word from her own lips; merely a pithy question now and then to draw out opinions, and not a suggestion of her own point of view. It was a course for upper- classmen, and the required work was heavy. Receiving each effort courteously with no more than a twinkle of her brown eyes, and simply calling, when they finished, for someone else's point of view, she achieved astonishing results. I loved to watch her do it, and to hear afterwards the discussions of some of the girls who came to our house, for I had the joy of knowing some especially brilliant seniors that first year.
There were a few men on the faculty, but nothing like the pro- portion of men there today. Professor Gardiner of the Department of Philosophy was one interesting character who was loved by townspeople and college both, for his learning and his social qualities. There were others: scientists like Professor Waterman of the chair of physics, and Professor Stoddard of the Chemistry De- partment. Professor Ganong, a botanist of outstanding repute, was warmly loved by his many pupils. And there was Dr. Irving Wood, the professor of biblical literature, a course which I was told had been established in obedience to a decree in the will of Sophia Smith, but was something of a departure from the Calvinist inter- pretations of Scripture which had been her guide in girlhood.
As a matter of fact, I myself still had enough traces of funda- mentalism in my make-up, to be rather shocked at some of the modernization in the text of the Old Testament particularly. Dr. Wood was giving a course on the prophets, if I remember correctly,
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and the girls brought reports of the ruthlessness with which he de- molished the haloes of those worthies. My image of the great Jewish leaders of thought had been derived from Michael Angelo and Raphael and the Renaissance. I pictured them in flowing robes and thrones and scrolls, with clouds about their heads, and command- ing postures; had heard their utterances reverberate in the tones of Bach and Handel and Mendelssohn. What was my horror, there- fore, at hearing from a flippant freshman that "Proffy" Wood had said Isaiah was a politician! As a matter of fact that word had been used only to convey the idea of statesmanship, but I was overcome with anxiety lest the foundations of Christianity were about to be shattered. Incidentally, I mentioned the fact to my sister Arria, who passed it on to Father. In her next letter she quoted him as saying, ' "Tell Ruth not to worry. There is no danger in truth. I wish we could have a few Isaiahs in Syracuse politics."
There was much plain speaking in the Bible department, and some idols overthrown; however, the girls were indeed getting truth, and no one could accuse Dr. Wood of attacking anyone's theology or of not knowing his subject through and through. His knowledge of the Orient and of ancient history'was unassailable, and I had good reason to be grateful to him later for some invalu- able help which he gave me when I was teaching a Bible class and giving a course on the journeyings of St. Paul. It made me realize how ignorant and presumptuous I had been.
But the dominating figure in that first experience in a woman's college, was President Seelye, the product, it seemed to me, of that which was finest in New England tradition. I had first seen him at one of the famous Ashfield dinners, when, among a group of dis- tinguished colleagues with more or less rationalistic sympathies, he made the inspiration of the Scriptures the subject of an after-dinner speech. It was an eloquent and impassioned defense-a courageous one, in fact, and the audience was impressed by his courage and sincerity. To me it was like Moses reading from the tables of stone. "He might be Amos or Jeremiah," a man behind us whispered. I think it was one of the last pleas of its kind in the aftermath of Higher Criticism.
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Recollecting it, I saw in the college chapel exercises, and in his comprehensive prayers, the same powerful faith. The girls gave him a devotion that was in itself a strong influence and a stabilizer of their moral outlook. His geniality was no less a force in town- and-college relations. I found him from the first a friend and sym- pathetic adviser, and was grateful for his backing. It semed to me that I had always lived in New England, and known its ways; it was the place of all others where I could best rear my children, and fit them for a useful life.
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There was some private limitation of ardor in this settled ex- istence after the activities of the last few years. I missed the discov- eries, the meetings, the progressive plans, the risks of reform work. It did not take long for me to become aware that my chances for moving in an advancing world and keeping in touch with efforts for social betterment were now very slight. There was disquieting news from abroad; the United States was trying to run the Philip- pines for the benefit of vested interests, said rumor. I had already become an anti-imperialist. We heard accounts of American sol- diers torturing Filipinos to subjugate them, and of traffic in native girls and government-owned houses of prostitution-all reports with some truth as their basis.
My resentment was stirred up by these stories, and also by the indignant denials and accusations of disloyalty to our country which were heaped upon those who believed the stories. The press transmitted both. The assassination of President Mckinley revived and aggravated a fear of violence. Theodore Roosevelt, advanced from the vice-presidency and settled in the White House, was faring forth, always courageously if not too wisely, upon a sea of difficulties and embarrassments. In Northampton even organized labor was taboo, and its friends were looked upon as dangerous radicals; the Industrial Workers of the World, the I. W. W., was an organization begun in the mining camps. Its members were suspected of sinister activities, and hunted down; the privileged applauded all vengeful attacks upon them.
The Consumers' League, free from interference by law, but still accomplishing its end with difficulty, was looked upon by certain
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elements as an interfering body. As to votes for women, only the masculine type of female would even want to vote, said the enemies of that movement, in their "torpor of assurance". Why bother?
One amiable lady observed, one morning when I met her down town the morning after addressing our club on the Organized Vice proposition (which, let me say, came to a natural and speedy death of itself), "Dear Mrs. Sessions, when there are such lovely topics for discussion, like Art, and Beanty, and Travel, why not forget the unpleasant things, since we can't prevent their going on?" And one might agree with her, had not one's pesky New England conscience got after one for being a mollusk and paying no heed to the suffer- ings of humanity. It was an old song, perhaps better forgotten, one thought, till there came a sharp little thrust of memory, suggesting moments in one's own experience when one had learned a little about hunger and fear and pain-enough to make one keep on un- derstanding those things.
Toward spring, I realized that the house on Round Hill could not possibly accommodate enough students to be profitable. The problem of finding a larger one, however, looked almost insur- mountable till our kind neighbor, Mr. Oliver Walker, discovered a fine old mansion on the broad street which bordered the college grounds. It was for sale, and could be altered and enlarged to suit my purpose perfectly.
Standing on Elm Street, its gambrel roof shaded by huge elms, it was in a commanding position. It had an interesting history, and I shall quote from Harriet Kneeland, the distinguished chronicler whose little book on Old Houses of Northampton is the best authority of her time.
The first Jonathan Hunt, coming in 1661, built near the corner of Pros- pect and Elm Streets. A son, Captain Jonathan, whose wife was Thank- ful Strong, built a little later where the Burnham School now stands, and still another Lieutenant Jonathan lived in what we have always known as the Bridgman Place.
This was the house which was to be my possession and later that of Smith College. It was built about 1700, Miss Kneeland goes on to
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say, and that date is recorded on the stone tablet set in one of the fireplaces, and was given by will to the Lieutenant's son John in 1738.
So elegant was it then considered, with its big brass knocker and gambrel roof, that that part of the town was called New Boston until the fine elms set ont by this same John Hunt in 1753 gave its present name to the street. Of the large family born under this roof-tree, Rev. John Hunt was pastor of the Old South Church in Boston. . . . . Martha Hunt, a daughter, married Judge Samuel Henshaw, and the name Madam Hen- shaw was associated with all that was stately and elegant and hospitable. The place, reaching from Round Hill Road to Prospect Street, was known far and wide as the Henshaw Place; and the coach and footman were the envy and delight of the town, and a spacious wine-cellar would seem to attest a lavish hospitality. Tradition says Burgoyne passed a night in this house on his retreat to Boston, sleeping in the big south chamber.
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