Читать книгу From Seven to Seventy: Memories of a Painter and a Yankee - Edward Simmons - Страница 4

Table of Contents

When I passed the examination for Harvard I had a French turned-up nose, two spindle legs, and weighed only 114 pounds. Everyone called me a “barrel on straws,” until I cried myself to sleep night after night for fear I was going to be a little runt.

I developed very late and very quickly; I did not shave until I was eighteen years old, yet only one year later I measured six feet in height and weighed 165 pounds.

My mind was as undeveloped as my body, and my proudest brag was that I knew the name of everyone who lived in Concord, Massachusetts, and that I hadn’t an enemy in the world.

I had no taste whatever—if I had been crushed under the tongue, I would have given out nothing. I was proud of the first nicknames they gave me, most of them being “Wimba,” “Wambat,” “Winnie”—all of them being derived from that flattering title, “Wamba, son of Witless.” I was proud, also, of being able to make a louder noise than anyone else, due to my training in the public school, where we were taught to go to the back of the room and shout one another down.

It never occurred to me to refuse to go to college. I went because I was told to, and had no particular desires about it one way or another. My expenses of something under nine hundred dollars each year were furnished me by my family and again I never gave a thought as to where or how they were obtained. Money, I was taught, I should not work for, but gifts were to be freely taken—probably this was due in some measure to the inherited ideas of parsons, who are always supported. I could easily have led my class, but I saw no reason for excelling. I was considered a pretty second-rate person at home; they didn’t expect anything from me, and to win, for my own sake, things I had been surrounded with ad nauseam as a child, held no attraction for me. In fact, I had not really learned to care for books as such, and college opened up nothing new to me except in the line of English and botany. My power of judgment was poor, as I had not been required to use it before. I was conditioned in algebra, in which I was expert, because I devoted nearly all of the time allotted to it in the examination to Greek composition, and could not finish the answers to the questions in algebra on time.

Holworthy Hall, the old Colonial building, was as full of inconveniences then as it is to-day, but the rooms were just as much sought after. The old-fashioned grates; the window seats whose yearly coats of paint formed a covering over an inch thick, of a lovely ivory color; the leaky plumbing and general disrepair—gave an interesting atmosphere, and the traditions hung round about as thick as the cobwebs on the walls. My suite, a sitting room and two bedrooms, was given me by Professor Cutler for my service rendered the parietal committee who governed the private acts of the students. In this capacity I was called the “Last of the Parietals,” as the next year the summonses were sent through the mails. I do not remember much about my duties except that I had to report to the committee every morning to see if there were any papers to be served that day. The freshmen and sophs generally took the summons kindly enough, but the upper classmen were sometimes rather disdainful of the messenger, and I remember only once being treated in an undignified manner. I had to order a senior who had disregarded the rule about snowballing to appear before the committee. He was very rude to me, seemed to blame me personally, and at last tried to kick me down the stairs. I told my chum about it that night.

“Who was the chap?” he asked.

“I think his name is Cabot Lodge,” I replied.

“Oh, you must be mistaken!” he laughed. “I know Cabot Lodge, and he would never have the nerve to kick you downstairs.”

The pranks of those days took the same forms as they do to-day—lawlessness, vandalism, and kicks against authority in general. The Commons, where we boarded for the munificent sum of five dollars a week, was run by the students; and sometimes they showed a surprising lack of originality (or was it extravagance?) in the choice of food. I couldn’t stand the meals from the first; but when we had mutton every day for a week the whole crowd struck and, rising at a signal and holding our plates in our right hands, we deposited the contents on the floor, singing:

“Oh, Lord of love, look from above

Upon this leg of mutton;

Once it was sweet and fit to eat,

But now, good God, it is rotten!”

Any jokes on the authorities were allowed to pass if put over in the right way. Old Doctor Peabody, who was the clergyman in the chapel when the pulpit was not occupied by a visiting preacher, was given a class in ethics to teach. It was considered the thing to worry this large, plain, worthy divine whenever we could, and putting asafetida down the radiator, causing a nauseous stink to permeate the room, was the act of some student’s fertile brain. If the intention was to bother the doctor, however, this act failed of its purpose, as he took pains to announce to all the class that he was entirely lacking in a sense of smell.

The old doctor led prayers each morning, and it was a tradition of the college that if the bell failed to ring we could plead ignorance of the time and not appear. Alas! the man whose duty it was to call chapel was far too reliable for that to happen. He had been ringing the bell for years and had grown old and white in the service—incidentally, he was beloved of all of us, and our friend.

One morning, however, there was great silence. Nobody went to prayers, and as the bell did not even ring for classes, of course we stayed away. It seems that some brave student had climbed up on to the metal rod that joined the roofs of Hollis and Harvard Halls and, managing in some way to haul up a bucket of water, turned the bell over, fastening the clapper to a beam, and filled it with the liquid. When the bell ringer pulled the rope, nothing happened. The water had frozen and it was some four hours before he managed to thaw it out.

Sometimes the pranks took the form of really righteous criticism. Outside the college boundaries, and in the town, was a huge statue of a soldier, a memorial of the Civil War. He was clothed in a uniform and trappings, including an overcoat with cape, but, incongruous to us, he wore no hat. A student passing a shop saw an enormous gold hat—it must have been three feet in width—placed outside as an advertisement. The next morning, to the amusement of the townspeople, the soldier appeared no longer bareheaded, but wore a chapeau that came way down over his ears, completely covering his face. The police tried to get it down, with no result except a great slipping and sliding on the sides of the monument. We boys formed a cordon around it and did all we could to impede the recovery of the trophy. At last the fire department had to be called out with hook and ladder, and amid much good-natured joshing brought down the hat, which we promptly pounced upon and bore away. The police would not be satisfied until we told them how it got there. A student, who was a Texan, threw a lasso over the statue’s head, and one of the boys climbed up hand over hand. We never heard anything from the sculptor, so our criticism must have gone home.

Even President Eliot was not free from gibes and witticisms. He is a tall man and has a large red birthmark on one side of his face which, instead of disfiguring him, really adds much distinction to his looks. Of course, this was the cause of the origin of many nicknames. I remember the visit of Duke Alexis of Russia, the uncle of the late Tsar. Doctor Eliot, in showing him the college, brought him to my room. Of course, I was excited, and after they left I watched them from the window until they disappeared from sight. The duke was the most magnificent male I ever saw—six foot two or three, blond beard, dazzling uniform of white; he represented the ideal type of warrior. Beside him was our president, lean, sharp faced, almost as tall, walking with not quite so military a tread, but holding his own in a remarkable fashion. The students who had come out to watch them drew back—you can always trust them to behave, if necessary—but a crowd of “townies” followed on behind. Then two little “micks” with shirt tails flying, detached themselves from the crowd and one yelled to the other:

“Say, Tommie, which is the juke—the feller in white or the feller with the red face?”

One day a grinning boy presented himself at my door and asked if I would take him for a roommate. I had two bedrooms and was glad to have a companion. We became the heads of the sign-stealing crowd. The police commissioner of Cambridge had announced that he would jail the next offender in this line, and this was enough to set us madly at it. We stole business signs and street signs, tore the name plates off doors, wagons, and horse cars. My roommate’s father was horrified to see on the outside of our door, when he visited us on Class Day, the sign, “H. H. Crocker and Co.,” which had been missing from his place of business for four years. When I came home from Europe in ’91, my mother asked me to throw away some trophies. Among them were eighteen signs of ground glass upon which was printed in black “Harvard Street,” and a policeman’s badge which I had been very proud of getting in a fight.

I always hated to lie; but at that time was content if I kept to the letter of the truth and disregarded the spirit. I was afraid of flunking a certain examination, and knew I could pass if I only had more time to work up the subject. Thinking up every kind of excuse, I finally decided that only a physical disability would let me off. Consequently, I did something that required more courage for one who has always been afraid of physical pain than it is easy to imagine. Making a deep gash in my thumb, I told the professor I couldn’t hold a pen, as I had “cut myself with a razor”—which was perfectly true. Of course, he let me off.

Out of our poverty and desire for a good time grew some interesting things. A crowd of us who cared for cheap vaudeville went in weekly, on Mondays, to the Howard Athenæum, incidentally the smuttiest and most improper show I have ever seen anywhere—and this in Boston! We pledged ourselves to spend only fifty cents on the evening’s entertainment, and this sum was generally divided as follows——ten cents for car fare, thirty-five cents for a standee ticket, and five cents for a beer, making it necessary to walk back if we failed to beat our way on the street car.

Whenever anyone had what we called a “find”—earned something or had a check outside his allowance—we allowed him to treat, never otherwise. The feed generally consisted of a barrel of beer and several dozen oysters which we put in the coals of the fireplace, and, as they popped open, threw in salt and pepper, and then squeezed their noses together when they were ready to serve.

From this we began dining together once a month, and somehow came to be known as “The Ring.” There were James Duane Lowell (nephew of the poet), Ned Higginson, Ned Walker, Frank Childs Faulkner, Waldo Reed, and others I can’t recall; but although many sought to join us, we never increased our number, and I think therein lay our success. We met each time in a different member’s room, the host of the occasion providing two roast chickens and bread and butter. The others contributed something strictly limited to a dollar in price, which usually turned out to be a bottle of whisky. Each one of us could bring in his chum as a guest, and as we sat around the table, our bellies full and the alcohol sending a glow over our beings, the songs and stories that passed around that board would have been epoch making, could we have preserved them.

Indeed, a desire to keep some of them did crop up, and it was here, at one of these dinners, that the Harvard Crimson was born. We called it the Magenta then, as the Civil War was too recent for cochineal to be cheap, and crimson was not to be had. The Advocate was the college paper of those days, and we decided it was much too stuffy and needed a rival.

I was entirely too crazy to be allowed an editorship, so had to be content with sundry contributions. I remember being received at home with freezing looks after publishing my first—and last—“poetry,” a translation of one of the Odes of Anacreon. The family objected to:

When I drink wine, etc.

In my curving arm I hold a maiden.

No one at home referred to it. The art of it had no appeal to them whatsoever, and they were ashamed of me. If I had had any Swinburnean tendency, or like Keats, who gave out eighteen-year-old slush of appalling indecency, I would have been squelched.

Another group of us—August Belmont, Herbert Wadsworth, etc., who cared for paintings—started the Art Club. There was money in this crowd, and I was taken in only because they thought I could draw and could be useful. This was the first indication of a desire for the fine arts in the college. I was much disappointed when I got back from Europe in ’91 to find that all the first books, records, and lists of members that I, as secretary, had started, had been either lost or destroyed. But the club had increased in outward show, even if it had lost its traditions, and had housed itself quite fittingly.

A club to which I did not belong and one of which the membership was kept strictly secret was the Med. Fac. It was supposed to have originated as a take-off on the medical faculty and to it were ascribed all the very foolish pranks that were committed around the yard. The authorities could never get hold of them, and I do not believe any one of them was ever punished, although some of their antics were dangerous to human life and only the pleas of youth could have excused them. One man placed a stick of dynamite down the sewer, fortunately resulting in no harm; and in my own case a skyrocket suddenly went off between my legs one dark night. This made me think my chum was a member of the crowd, but, of course, I never could prove it. It is said that the Med. Fac. once sent a letter to the Tsar of Russia announcing his election to the organization. He, thinking to add one more honor to his already numerous ones, took the invitation au serieux and sent them a present of a very beautiful set of surgical instruments.

There are one or two pleasing incidents or traditions of Harvard that I like to remember—things that help one to a greater appreciation of humanity in general. One was told me by my uncle by marriage. When he was a student in the college he was given fifty dollars by an old “grad” who like him had struggled through poverty to get his education, and told to buy himself an overcoat, the man saying:

“It isn’t I who give it to you, but a former graduate who gave it to me; and when you get out in the world and make good on your own, you are asked to pass it on.”

No one knew the identity of the first donor and only one person will know whether it is going on to-day; but I do hope that some mischance has not occurred to break the chain—the recipient being too unsuccessful, or dying before he could return it.

Another pleasing occurrence of a quite different character happened during Commencement. At this time the authorities chose certain men, who had distinguished themselves during their course, and gave them “parts.” I remember Fenollosa of my class, who afterward became the Imperial Commissioner of Arts for the Japanese government, was one of these selected, and delivered an essay on Leibnitz. The students always held fake Commencement and caricatured the parts. A boy can be disrespectful or irreverent, and a thing is generally no good if he does not make fun of it; but every now and then something hits him and he is serious. One of the students, Frank Low, had made himself so beloved by his fellows that they did not guy him, and I shall never forget how his mock part ran:

Frank to all,

Low in his own esteem.

I wonder if this is not the kind of a mock part that America would write for Theodore Roosevelt?

Arthur Bartlett Maurice, a Princeton graduate, once contradicted my statement that Harvard played the first game of intercollegiate football in America, claiming that honor for his own college. As Mr. Maurice is a much younger man than I, and must have it on hearsay, I am going to doubt his knowledge. Besides, I like my own story better. It was in my sophomore year, in 1872. Previous to this time, my class had started what later developed into the modern college yell. Each class had a cheer, generally ending with the usual, “Hip, hip, hurrah!” But, we being very personal, decided to give ours in a different way. So we would begin the following slowly, gradually increasing the speed and making it staccato at the end:

Whoop her up for ’74

Whoop her up, whoop her up,

Whoop her up for ’74

Whoop her up, whoop her up,

Whoop her up for ’74

Whoop her up, whoop her up,

Whoop her up for ’74—

Rah! Rah! Rah!

Hurrah became “rah,” and in order that the men should keep together, one of us would beat time, which I believe was the origin of the “yell leader.”

Returning from the athletic field one day, Harry Grant, Coe Taylor (captain of the baseball team), a man named Herrick, Harry Morse, myself, and others saw a crowd of Cambridgeport boys—hoodlums—kicking a football about. We took it away from them and started kicking it ourselves. Some one suggested that it would be fun to have a real football—this was a round rubber one—so we all subscribed and sent into Boston for an egg-shaped one made of leather. To our consternation, we found we could not handle it at all. However, we were interested; some one found a book of rules and gradually we learned the game.

Then it was a question of finding a team to play against. No college in America knew the game at the time, so we sent a challenge to McGill in Canada, and to our surprise we beat them to death. They came down for a return match, and we beat them again. Swiftness of foot was of more importance than strength then, and I was allowed to be one of the team, but could not go to Canada, as everyone paid his own expenses and I did not have the money.

I did not realize that our amateur attempts had amounted to anything, and when I came to America in 1891 I asked a young woman I met about the Harvard baseball scores. She seemed rather vague on the subject and, looking at me as if I were an antediluvian, said:

“Oh, baseball is old-fashioned. Football is the thing.”

There is a tradition in Harvard that, although football was not actually born until 1872, the first seeds were planted long before the Civil War. The sophomores and freshmen—always enemies—used to take this round rubber ball out on the field as an excuse for a fight. By 1859 this resulted in so many minor accidents, that finally, when one boy’s leg was broken, the authorities stopped it altogether.

One evening after this rule was enforced, a queer gathering of people proceeded to the Delta (athletic field). It had the air of a mediæval funeral procession with its priests carrying tall candles, chanting solemnly, and preceding a small bier borne by draped figures and followed by mourners of every description, weeping and wailing their sorrow at the departure of a loved one. In this case the dear departed was a football, red in color and looking suspiciously like a large toy balloon, which rested lightly in its casket. With all the ceremony of a real funeral, it was solemnly interred.

Three nights after, a very different procession went forth along the same way. There was a clash of cymbals, bright lights, music, gayly decorated banners, and maidens dancing joyously. Again they proceeded to the burial ground where, after curious incantations had been performed over the grave—to the astonishment of everyone who saw it—the soul of the football detached itself from its resting place and rose grandly and sedately to the heavens!

It seems to me that we cannot overestimate the importance of eating and drinking, for out of these desires of the human body have come most of the clever ideas of the world. Conviviality stimulates the brain, and, while the viands may be of ever so simple a quality, the atmosphere in which they are partaken means everything to sensitive genius. From a general poverty of purse, if not of mind, sprang the Stomach Club of Paris, and likewise, if I may compare them, the Hasty Pudding Club of Harvard. It began when two or three clever men found it necessary to economize, and they made up their minds to live on that delectable New England dish—cornmeal mush. Probably, having only one kind of food to cook, they became proficient in the art, for in my day it was certainly good to eat. The three or four men had developed into a large number, and the meetings came to have a very different purpose from that of the economy of food; but never had they varied in any degree from their first idea, and not a single dish was added to their fare of—hasty pudding.

A certain quality of cohesion is necessary to make a crowd of fellows stick together through so many years, so gradually, a number of tests came into being, and a novice must pass these before becoming a full-fledged member. As these tests vary in every case, but all are based on great principles of truth, honor, and manhood, I am not giving away the secrets of the organization if I tell a few of the amusing incidents of my initiation into the Hasty Pudding Club.

For two weeks before his final acceptance, the candidate is required to run everywhere he goes, and he must not speak a single word to anyone except the member appointed to be his keeper. I had faithfully kept this rule of silence—hard as it was for me—when one night at dinner I tried to attract the waitress’s attention, with no result.

“Speak to her just this once. I won’t tell,” said Ned Higginson, who was my keeper.

I argued I mustn’t, but he assured me it would be all right, so I did. When it came to the final reckoning and he was asked if I had kept the rules, he told on me. I don’t believe I was ever so righteously angry in my life. Disregarding the fact that it was a formal party and I was in evening clothes, I turned and would have knocked him down had they not held me. Then I heard laughs and cries of:

“Yes, he’s the kind of a man we want.”

You must be the type who trusts your friends by doing (while blindfolded) anything that he swears on his honor he has done before you, but if it is proven that that friend has deliberately gone back on you, you must show that you resent it. For example, my anger at Ned was pardoned; but a son of one of the generals in the Civil War went through all the requirements until he refused to put on some article of clothing which seemed to him filthy (his eyes being bandaged), in spite of the fact that all of the others swore they had gone through the same experience without harm. He never became a member of the Hasty Pudding Club.

One of the requirements is an essay which is taken very seriously by the patient neophyte, but is really of no importance. Mine, on the subject of “Public Insane Asylums vs. Private Mad Houses,” was never read, for the reason that it was stolen by a ring within the club who called themselves “Owls of the Night” and thought it very funny to reduce the size of the new man’s head by destroying his work whenever possible. I was sure I had hidden my essay where no one would find it—in the bottom of the spittoon, covered with layers of newspapers, then melted candle grease, and lastly, the remaining space filled with water and cigar butts. But my roommate told; and I had to lie, when asked for it, so as not to go back on the gang.

One of the most interesting possessions of the club was the Crocodile Book, or the record kept by the secretary since the beginning. At the end of one of the chapters was a charming drawing by Washington Allston, of a fat boy gobbling mush from a pot. I used to stare at this and wonder about the man who did it. Alas! when I went back, some twenty years later, there was no trace of the drawing and no one could be found who had ever heard of it.

These acts of vandalism are found more often among the educated classes than otherwise. I often think of the clergyman who was found with a hammer in his hand, having just knocked a piece off a tomb in Westminster Abbey, which dated back to the days of Edward the Confessor—the only one that had never been cracked or harmed! The judge very wisely did not punish him, but left him to the tender mercies of the newspaper reporters. He is still running. We have not the right to destroy the labor of some one else. The beautiful things of Greece, the wisdom of Rome, music of Germany, and the Cathedrals of France and Italy have been inherited from the past, and if we deface them we are defacing our own property.

I have my small triumphs. One occurred in the Hasty Pudding Club. When I went back for a visit after coming home from Europe, I was shown a fine building, positively shaming the rooms we had had in Stoughton Hall. I went in with a somewhat bewildered manner, feeling like a stranger in a strange land. Then something struck my eye. Where had I seen it before? There at the end of a hall was a drawing—a playbill for a performance of “The Rivals”—of two cocks, one black and the other of the yellow barnyard type, fighting over a little white hen. Looking in the corner, I saw it was signed with my name!

It is better than money, family, or friends when a whole generation embraces you. My personality was not there; neither is that of the man who made the Venus di Milo—but she’s there. There are contests as to who wrote the plays we ascribe to Shakespeare, but there are no contests over Hamlet. It’s great to see that what you have tried to do has been kept.

There is a poem by Arthur Macy (probably not published) about a Common Councilman who in walking down the street and, happening to look up at the Boston Public building, sees a shield and upon it the design by Saint-Gaudens, of two little naked boys. It runs something like this:

What nameless horror meets his modest eyes?

· · · · ·

There, reared aloft in perfect equipoise,

Two very small, unexpurgated boys.

Hurrying down to the meeting hall, he has the Council pass a bill that after this “boys shall be born in pants.” The only difference in the opinion of my rival fraternity at college—namely, the Alpha Delta Phis—would have been that they should be born clothed; but after talking it over, they would have decided it should be in “trousers.” This substitution of a good old Anglo-Saxon word for one of Latin slang would have been due to the influence of our beloved Professor Child, whom we all called “Stubby.”

“Stubby” Child represented a natural revolt against Bostonianism—the practice of putting pantalettes on piano legs. To him his language was a faith or a religion, and I know that all America would speak and write much worse English to-day were it not for the disciples that this man scattered throughout the country. The secret of his influence was that he cared, and therefore he produced a result. He was unimportant to look at, had no voice to speak of, and exercised no hypnotism, but he managed to imbue us all with a permanent love of our own language. I am sure he would as soon have thought of using a foreign word in place of an Anglo-Saxon word or its derivative, as he would of dishonoring his own mother. His influence was more powerful, because it was subtle, and although he does not seem to be well known, I have met men in many parts of the world who immediately fell on my neck when I said I had been the the pupil of “Stubby” Child.

My grandmother said, “The law of love is higher than the law of truth,” and I think she was right, for love is unalterable and truth changes. Christ’s statements may not be true to us to-day; Einstein with his “relativity” may have upset Newton’s theory of gravity; but these men remain just as great as they ever were, for in them we see their passionate love for what they thought to be true.

Somehow, I can never think of Harvard that I don’t see “Stubby” Child, with that row of yellow curls around his head like a halo, hurling a copy of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales out of the window and shouting to the class:

“This man is an Oxford graduate and, according to England, is a scholar, and yet he has substituted the nauseating adjectives ‘gay’ and ‘blithesome’ in that immortal description of the Friar in the line which runs:

“As hoot he was and lecherous as a sparwe.”