The Story of Wellesley
by
Florence Converse
Part 2 out of 4
admission to Wellesley were higher in Mathematics than those for
Harvard. Under Miss Shafer also, the work in English Composition
was placed on a new basis; elective courses were offered to seniors
and juniors in the Bible Department; a course in Pedagogy, begun
toward the end of Miss Freeman's residency, was encouraged and
increased; the laboratory of Physiological Psychology, the first
in a woman's college and one of the earliest in any college, was
opened in 1891 with Professor Calkins at its head. In all,
sixty-seven new courses were opened to the students in these five
years. The Academic Council, besides revising the undergraduate
curriculum, also revised its rules governing the work of candidates
for the Master's degree.
But the "new curriculum" is not the only achievement for which
Wellesley honors Miss Shafer. In June, 1892, she recommended
to the trustees that the alumnae be represented upon the board,
and the recommendation was accepted and acted upon by the trustees.
In 1914, about one fifth of the trustees were alumnae.
Professor Burrell, Miss Shafer's student, and later her colleague
in the Department of Mathematics, says:
"From the first she felt a genuine interest in all sides of the
social life of the students, sympathized with their ambitions and
understood the bearing of them on the development of the right
spirit in the college." And the members of the Greek letter
societies bear her in especial remembrance, for it was she who
aided in the reestablishing in 1889 of the societies Phi Sigma
and Zeta Alpha, which had been suppressed in 1880, under Miss Howard.
In 1889 also the Art Society, later known as Tau Zeta Epsilon, was
founded; in 1891, the Agora, the political society, came into
being, and 1892 saw the beginnings of Alpha Kappa Chi, the classical
society. Miss Shafer also approved and fostered the department
clubs which began to be formed at this time. And to her wise and
sympathetic assistance we owe the beginnings of the college
periodicals,--the old Courant, of 1888, the Prelude, which began
in 1889, and the first senior annual, the Legenda of 1889.
The old boarding-school type of discipline which had flourished
under Miss Howard, and lingered fitfully under Miss Freeman, gave
place in Miss Shafer's day to a system of cuts and excuses which
although very far from the self-government of the present day,
still fostered and respected the dignity of the students. At the
beginning of the academic year 1890-1891, attendance at prayers
in chapel on Sunday evening and Monday morning was made optional.
In this year also, seniors were given "with necessary restrictions,
the privilege of leaving college, or the town, at their own
discretion, whenever such absence did not take them from their
college duties." On September 12, 1893, the seniors began to
wear the cap and gown throughout the year.
Other notable events of these five years were the opening of the
Faculty Parlor on Monday, September 24, 1888, another of the gifts
of Professor Horsford, its gold and garlands now vanished never
to return; the dedication of the Farnsworth Art Building on
October 3, 1889, the gift of Mr. Isaac D. Farnsworth, a friend of
Mr. Durant; the presentation in this same year, by Mr. Stetson,
of the Amos W. Stetson collection of paintings; the opening, also
in 1889, of Wood Cottage, a dormitory built by Mrs. Caroline A. Wood;
the gift of a boathouse from the students, in 1893; and on Saturday,
January 28, 1893, the opening of the college post office. We
learn, through the president's report for 1892-1893, that during
this year four professors and one instructor were called to fill
professorships in other colleges and universities, with double the
salary which they were then receiving, but all preferred to remain
at Wellesley.
This custom of printing an annual report to the trustees may also
be said to have been inaugurated by Miss Shafer. It is true that
Miss Freeman had printed one such report at the close of her first
year, but not again. Miss Shafer's clear and dignified presentations
of events and conditions are models of their kind; they set the
standard which her successors have followed.
Of Miss Shafer's early preparation for her work we have but few
details. She was born in Newark, New Jersey, on September 23, 1839,
and her father was a clergyman of the Congregational church, of
mingled Scotch and German descent. Her parents moved out to
Oberlin when she was still a young girl, and she entered the college
and was graduated in 1863. The Reverend Frederick D. Allen of
Boston, who was a classmate of Miss Shafer's, tells us that there
were two courses at Oberlin in that day, the regular college course
and a parallel, four years' course for young women. It seems that
women were also admitted to the college course, but only a few
availed themselves of the privilege, and Miss Shafer was not one
of these. But Mr. Allen remembers her as "an excellent student,
certainly the best among the women of her class."
After graduating from Oberlin, she taught two years in New Jersey,
and then in the Olive Street High School in St. Louis for ten years,
"laying the foundation of her distinguished reputation as a teacher
of higher mathematics." Doctor William T. Harris, then superintendent
of public schools in St. Louis, and afterwards United States
Commissioner of Education, commended her very highly; and her
old students at Wellesley witness with enthusiasm to her remarkable
powers as a teacher. President Pendleton, who was one of those
old students, says:
"Doubtless there was no one of these who did not receive the news
of her appointment as president with something of regret. No one
probably doubted the wisdom of the choice, but all were unwilling
that the inspiration of Miss Shafer's teaching should be lost to
the future Wellesley students. Her record as president leaves
unquestioned her power in administrative work, yet all her students,
I believe, would say that Miss Shafer was preeminently a teacher.
"It was my privilege to be one of a class of ten or more students
who, during the last two years of their college life (1884-1886)
elected Miss Shafer's course in Mathematics. It is difficult to
give adequate expression to the impression which Miss Shafer made
as a teacher. There was a friendly graciousness in her manner of
meeting a class which established at once a feeling of sympathy
between student and teacher.... She taught us to aim at clearness
of thought and elegance of method; in short, to attempt to give
to our work a certain finish which belongs only to the scholar....
I believe that it has often been the experience of a Wellesley
girl, that once on her feet in Miss Shafer's classroom, she has
surprised herself by treating a subject more clearly than she
would have thought possible before the recitation. The explanation
of this, I think, lay in the fact that Miss Shafer inspired her
students with her own confidence in their intellectual powers."
When we realize that during the last ten years of her life she
was fighting tuberculosis, and in a state of health which, for
the ordinary woman, would have justified an invalid existence,
we appreciate more fully her indomitable will and selflessness.
During the winter of 1890-1891, she was obliged to spend some
months in Thomasville, Georgia, and in her absence the duties of
her office devolved upon Professor Frances E. Lord, the head
of the Department of Latin, whose sympathetic understanding of
Miss Shafer's ideals enabled her to carry through the difficult
year with signal success. Miss Shafer rallied in the mild climate,
and probably her life would have been prolonged if she had chosen
to retire from the college; but her whole heart was in her work,
and undoubtedly if she had known that her coming back to Wellesley
meant only two more years of life on earth, she would still have
chosen to return.
Miss Shafer had no surface qualities, although her friends knew
well the keen sense of humor which hid beneath that grave and
rather awkward exterior. But when the alumnae who knew her speak
of her, the words that rise to their lips are justice, integrity,
sympathy. She was an honorary member of the class of 1891, and
on December 8, 1902, her portrait, painted by Kenyon Cox, was
presented to the college by the Alumnae Association.
Miss Shafer's academic degrees were from Oberlin, the M.A. in 1877
and the LL.D. in 1893.
Mrs. Caroline Williamson Montgomery (Wellesley, '89), in a memorial
sketch written for the '94 Legenda says: "I have yet to find the
Wellesley student who could not and would not say, 'I can always
feel sure of the fairness of Miss Shafer's decision.' Again and
again have Wellesley students said, 'She treats us like women,
and knows that we are reasoning beings.' Often she has said,
'I feel that one of Wellesley's strongest points is in her alumnae.'
And once more, because of this confidence, the alumnae, as when
students, were spurred to do their best, were filled with loyalty
for their alma mater.... If I should try to formulate an expression
of that life in brief, I should say that in her relation to the
students there was perfect justness; as regards her own position,
a passion for duty; as regards her character, simplicity, sincerity,
and selflessness."
For more than sixteen years, from 1877, when she came to the
college as head of the Department of Mathematics, to January 20,
1894, when she died, its president, she served Wellesley with all
her strength, and the college remains forever indebted to her
high standards and wise leadership.
IV.
In choosing Mrs. Irvine to succeed Miss Shafer as president of
Wellesley, the trustees abandoned the policy which had governed
their earlier choices. Miss Freeman and Miss Shafer had been
connected with the college almost from the beginning. They had
known its problems only from the inside. Mrs. Irvine was, by
comparison, a newcomer; she had entered the Department of Greek
as junior professor in 1890. But almost at once her unusual
personality made its impression, and in the four years preceding
her election to the presidency, she had arisen, as it were in spite
of herself, to a position of power both in the classroom and in
the Academic Council. As an outsider, her criticism, both constructive
and destructive, was peculiarly stimulating and valuable; and even
those who resented her intrusion could not but recognize the noble
disinterestedness of her ideal for Wellesley.
The trustees were quick to perceive the value to the college of
this unusual combination of devotion and clearsightedness, detachment
and loving service. They also realized that the junior professor
of Greek was especially well fitted to complete and perfect the
curriculum which Miss Shafer had so ably inaugurated. For Mrs. Irvine
was before all else a scholar, with a scholar's passion for
rectitude and high excellence in intellectual standards.
Julia Josephine (Thomas) Irvine, the daughter of Owen Thomas and
Mary Frame (Myers) Thomas, was born at Salem, Ohio, November 9,
1848. Her grandparents, strong abolitionists, are said to have
moved to the middle west from the south because they became
unwilling to live in a slave state. Mrs. Irvine's mother was the
first woman physician west of the Alleghenies, and her mother's
sister also studied medicine. Mrs. Irvine's student life began at
Antioch College, Ohio, but later she entered Cornell University,
receiving her bachelor's degree in 1875. In the same rear she
was married to Charles James Irvine. In 1876, Cornell gave her
the degree of Master of Arts. After her husband's death in 1886,
Mrs. Irvine entered upon her career as a teacher, and in 1890 came
to Wellesley, where her success in the classroom was immediate.
Students of those days will never forget the vitality of her
teaching, the enthusiasm for study which pervaded her classes.
Wellesley has had her share of inspiring teachers, and among these
Mrs. Irvine was undoubtedly one of the most brilliant.
The new president assumed her office reluctantly, and with the
understanding that she should be allowed to retire after a brief
term of years, when "the exigencies which suggested her appointment
had ceased to exist." She knew the college, and she knew herself.
With certain aspects of the Wellesley life she could never be
entirely in accord. She was a Hicksite Quaker. The Wellesley
of the decade 1890-1900 had moved a long way from the evangelical
revivalism which had been Mr. Durant's idea of religion, but it was
not until 1912 that the Quaker students first began to hold their
weekly meetings in the Observatory. About this time also, through
the kind offices of the Wellesley College Christian Association,
a list of the Roman Catholic students then in college was given
to the Roman Catholic parish priest. That the trustees in 1895
were willing to trust the leadership of the college to a woman
whose religious convictions differed so widely from those of the
founder indicates that even then Wellesley was beginning to outgrow
her religious provincialism, and to recognize that a wise tolerance
is not incompatible with steadfast Christian witness.
The religious services which Mrs. Irvine, in her official capacity,
conducted for the college were impressive by their simplicity and
distinction. An alumna of 1897 writes: "That commanding figure
behind the reading-desk of the old chapel in College Hall made
every one, in those days, rejoice when she was to lead the morning
service." But the trustees, anxious to set her free for the academic
side of her work, which now demanded the whole of her time,
appointed a dean to relieve her of such other duties as she desired
to delegate to another. This action was made possible by amendment
of the statutes, adopted November 1, 1894, and in 1895, Miss
Margaret E. Stratton, professor of the Department of Rhetoric, as
it was then called, was appointed the first dean of the college.
The trustees did not define the precise nature of the relation
between the president and the dean, but left these officers to
make such division of work as should seem to them best, and we
read in Mrs. Irvine's report for 1895 that, "For the present the
Dean remains in charge of all that relates to the public devotional
exercises of the college, and is chairman of the committee in
charge of stated religious services. She is the authority referred
to in all cases of ordinary discipline, and is the chairman of
the committee which includes heads of houses and permission
officers, all these officers are directly responsible to her."
Regarded from an intellectual and academic point of view, the
administrations of Miss Shafer and Mrs. Irvine are a unit.
Mrs. Irvine developed and perfected the policy which Miss Shafer
had initiated and outlined. By 1895, all students were working
under the new curriculum, and in the succeeding years the details
of readjustment were finally completed. To carry out the necessary
changes in the courses of study, certain other changes were also
necessary; methods of teaching which were advanced for the '70's
and '80's had been superseded in the '90's, and must be modified
or abandoned for Wellesley's best good. To all that was involved
in this ungrateful task, Mrs. Irvine addressed herself with a
courage and determination not fully appreciated at the time. She
had not Mrs. Palmer's skill in conveying unwelcome fact into a
resisting mind without irritation; neither had she Miss Shafer's
self-effacing, sympathetic patience. Her handling of situations
and individuals was what we are accustomed to call masculine; it
had, as the French say, the defects of its qualities; but the
general result was tonic, and Wellesley's gratitude to this firm
and far-seeing administrator increases with the passing of years.
In November, 1895, the Board of Trustees appointed a special
committee on the schools of Music and Art, in order to reorganize
the instruction in these subjects, and as a result the fine arts
and music were put upon the same footing and made regular electives
in the academic course, counting for a degree. The heads of these
departments were made members of the Academic Council and the terms
School of Music and School of Art were dropped from the calendar.
In 1896, the title Director of School of Music was changed to
Professor of Music. These changes are the more significant, coming
at this time, in the witness which they bear to the breadth and
elasticity of Mrs. lrvine's academic ideal. A narrower scholasticism
would not have tolerated them, much less pressed for their adoption.
Wellesley is one of the earliest of the colleges to place the fine arts
and music on her list of electives counting for an academic degree.
During the year 1895-1896, the Academic Council reviewed its rules
of procedure relating to the maintenance of scholarship throughout
the course, with the result that, "In order to be recommended
for the degree of B.A. a student must pass with credit in at least
one half of her college work and in at least one half of the
work of the senior year." This did not involve raising the actual
standard of graduation as reached by the majority of recent
graduates, but relieved the college of the obligation of giving
its degree to a student whose work throughout a large part of
her course did not rise above a mere passing grade.
In Mrs. Irvine's report for 1894-1895, we read that, "Modifications
have been made in the general regulations of the college by which
the observation of a set period of silent time for all persons is no
longer required." In the beginning, Mr. Durant had established
two daily periods of twenty minutes each, during which students
were required to be in their rooms, silent, in order that those
who so desired might give themselves to meditation, prayer, and
the reading of the Scriptures. Morning and evening, for fifteen
years, the "Silent Bell" rang, and the college houses were hushed
in literal silence. In 189 or 1890, the morning interval was
discontinued, but evening "silent time" was not done away with
until 1894, nineteen years after its establishment, and there are
many who regret its passing, and who realize that it was one of
the wisest and, in a certain sense, most advanced measures
instituted by Mr. Durant. But it was a despotic measure, and
therefore better allowed to lapse; for to the student mind,
especially of the late '80's and early '90's it was an attempt
to fetter thought, to force religion upon free individuals, to
prescribe times and seasons for spiritual exercises in which the
founder of the college had no right to concern himself. As
Wellesley's understanding of democracy developed, the faculty
realized that a rule of this kind, however wise in itself, cannot
be impressed from without; the demand for it must come from the
students themselves. Whether that demand will ever be made is
a question; but undoubtedly there is an increasing realization in
the college world of the need of systematized daily respite of
some sort from the pressure of unmitigated external activity; the
need of freedom for spiritual recollection in the midst of academic
and social business. It is a matter in which the Student Government
Association would have entire freedom of jurisdiction.
In 1896, Domestic Work was discontinued. This was a revolutionary
change, for Mr. Durant had believed strongly in the value of this
one hour a day of housework to promote democratic feeling among
students of differing grades of wealth; and he had also felt that
it made the college course cheaper, and therefore put its advantages
within the reach of the "calico girls" as he was so fond of calling
the students who had little money to spend. But domestic work,
even in the early days, as we see from Miss Stilwell's letters,
soon included more than the washing of dishes and sweeping of
corridors. Every department had its domestic girls, whose duties
ranged from those of incipient secretary to general chore girl.
The experience in setting college dinner tables or sweeping college
recitation rooms counted for next to nothing in equipping a student
to care for her own home; and the benefit to the "calico girls"
was no longer obvious, as the price of tuition had now been raised
several times. In May, 1894, the Academic Council voted "that
the council respectfully make known to the trustees that in their
opinion domestic work is a serious hindrance to the progress of
the college, and should as soon as possible be done away." But
it was not until the trustees found that the fees for 1896-1897
must be raised, that they decided to abolish domestic work.
Miss Shackford, in her pamphlet on College Hall, describes, "for
the benefit of those unfamiliar with the old regime," the system
of domestic work as it obtained during the first twenty years of
Wellesley's life. She tells us that it "brought all students into
close relation with kitchens, pantries and dining-room, with brooms,
dusters and other household utensils. Sweeping, dusting,
distributing the mail at the various rooms, and clerical work were
the favorite employments, although it is said the students always
showed great generosity in allowing the girls less strong to have
the lighter tasks. Sweeping the matting in the center of the
corridor before breakfast, or sweeping the bare 'sides' of this
matting after breakfast, were tasks that developed into sinecures.
The girl who went with long-handled feather duster to dust the
statuary enjoyed a distinction equal to Don Quixote's in tilting
at windmills. Filling the student-lamps, serving in a department
where clerical work was to be done, or, as in science, where
materials and specimens had to be prepared, were on the list
of possibilities. Sophomores in long aprons washed beakers and
slides, seniors in cap and gown acted as guides to guests. A
group of girls from each table changed the courses at meals.
Upon one devolved the task of washing whatever silver was required
for the next course. Another went out through the passage into the
room where heaters kept the meat and vegetables warm in their
several dishes. Perhaps another went further on to the bread-room,
where she might even be permitted to cut bread with the bread-cutting
machine. Dessert was always kept in the remote apartment where
Dominick Duckett presided, strumming a guitar, while his black
face had a portentous gravity as he assigned the desserts for
each table. What an ordeal it was for shy freshmen to rise and
walk the length of the dining-room! How many tables were kept
waiting for the next course while errant students surveyed the
sunset through the kitchen windows! Some of us remember the
tragic moments when, coming in hot and tired from crew practice,
we found on the bulletin-board by the dining-room the fateful words,
'strawberries for dinner', and we knew it was our lot to prepare
them for the table."
Other important changes in the college regulations were the opening
of the college library on Sunday as a reading-room, and the removal
of the ban upon the theater and the opera; both these changes took
place in 1895. On February 6, 1896, the clause of the statutes
concerning attendance at Sunday service in chapel was amended
to read, "All students are expected to attend this or some other
public religious service."
In 1896-1897, Bible Study was organized into a definite Department
of Biblical History, Literature, and Interpretation; and in the
same year voluntary classes for Bible Study were inaugurated by
the Christian Association and taught by the students.
The first step toward informing the students concerning their marks
and academic standing was taken in 1897, when the so-called
"credit-notes" were instituted, in which students were told whether
or not they had achieved Credit, grade C, in their individual
studies. Mr. Durant had feared that a knowledge of the marks
would arouse unworthy competition, but his fears have proved
unfounded.
In this administration also the financial methods of the college
were revised. Mrs. Irvine, we are reminded by Florence S. Marcy
Crofut, of the class of 1897, "established a system of management
and purchasing into which all the halls of residence were brought,
and this remains almost without change to the present day." On
March 27, 1895, Mrs. Durant resigned the treasurership of the
college, which she had held since her husband's death, and upon
her nomination, Mr. Alpheus H. Hardy was elected to the office.
In 1896, the trustees issued a report in which they informed the
friends of Wellesley that although Mr. Durant, in his will, had
made the college his residuary legatee, subject to a life tenancy,
the personal estate had suffered such depreciation and loss "as to
render this prospective endowment of too slight consequence to be
reckoned on in any plans for the development and maintenance of
the college." At this time, Wellesley was in debt to the amount
of $103,048.14. During the next nineteen years, trustees and
alumnae were to labor incessantly to pay the expenses of the
college and to secure an endowment fund. What Wellesley owes
to the unstinted devotion of Mr. Hardy during these lean years
can never be adequately expressed.
The buildings erected during Mrs. Irvine's tenure of office were
few. Fiske Cottage was opened in September, 1894, for the use
of students who wished to work their way through college. The
"cottage" had been originally the village grammar school, but when
Mr. Hunnewell gave a new schoolhouse to the village, the college
was able, through the generosity of Mrs. Joseph M. Fiske,
Mr. William S. Houghton, Mr. Elisha S. Converse, and a few other
friends, to move the old schoolhouse to the campus and remodel it
as a dormitory. In February, 1894, a chemical laboratory was built
under Norumbega hill,--an ugly wooden building, a distress to
all who care for Wellesley's beauty, and an unmistakable witness
to her poverty.
On November 22, 1897, the corner stone of the Houghton Memorial
Chapel was laid, a building destined to be one of the most
satisfactory and beautiful on the campus. It was given by
Miss Elizabeth G. Houghton and Mr. Clement S. Houghton of Cambridge
as a memorial of their father, Mr. William S. Houghton, for many
years a trustee of the college.
In 1898 Mrs. John C. Whitin, a trustee, gave to the college an
astronomical observatory and telescope. The building was completed
in 1900. Another gift of 1898, fifty thousand dollars, came from
the estate of the late Charles T. Wilder, and was used to build
Wilder Hall, the fourth dormitory in the group on Norumbega hill.
In 1898, the first of the Society houses, the Shakespeare House,
was opened.
On November 4, 1897, Mrs. Irvine presented before the Board of
Trustees a review of the history of the college under the new
curriculum, and a statement of urgent needs which had arisen.
She closed with a recommendation that her term of office should
end in June, 1898, as she believed that the necessities which had
led to her appointment no longer existed, and she recognized that
new demands pressed, which she was not fitted to meet. As Mrs. Irvine
had stated verbally, both to the Board of Trustees and to a committee
appointed by them to consider her recommendation, that she would
not serve under a permanent appointment, the committee "was limited
to the consideration of the time at which that recommendation
should become operative." They asked the president to change her
time of withdrawal to June, 1899, and she consented to do this,
with the provision that she was to be released from her duties
before the end of the year, if her successor were ready to assume
the duties of the office before June, 1899.
After her retirement from Wellesley, Mrs. Irvine made her home in
the south of France, but she returned to America in 1912 to be
present at the inauguration of President Pendleton. And in the
year 1913-1914, after the death of Madame Colin, she performed
a signal service for the college in temporarily assuming the
direction of the Department of French. Through her good offices,
the department was reorganized, but the New England winter had
proved too severe for her after her long sojourn in a milder
climate, and in 1914, Mrs. Irvine returned again to her home in
Southern France, bearing with her the love and gratitude of
Wellesley for her years of efficient and unselfish service.
During the war of 1914-1915, she had charge of the linen room
in the military hospital at Aix-les-Bains.
V.
On March 8, 1899, the trustees announced their election of Wellesley's
fifth president, Caroline Hazard. In June, Mrs. Irvine retired,
and the new administration dates from July 1, 1899.
Unlike her predecessors, Miss Hazard brought to her office no
technical academic training, and no experience as a teacher. Born
at Peacedale, Rhode Island, June 10, 1856, the daughter of Rowland
and Margaret (Rood) Hazard, and the descendant of Thomas Hazard,
the founder of Rhode Island, she had been educated by tutors and
in a private school in Providence, and later had carried on her
studies abroad. Before coming to Wellesley, she had already won
her own place in the annals of Rhode Island, as editor, by her
edition of the philosophical and economic writings of her grandfather,
Rowland G. Hazard, the wealthy woolen manufacturer of Peacedale,
as author, through a study of life in Narragansett in the eighteenth
century, entitled "Thomas Hazard, Son of Robert, called College Tom",
and as poet, in a volume of Narragansett ballads and a number of
religious sonnets, followed during her Wellesley years by "A Scallop
Shell of Quiet", verses of delicate charm and dignity.
Mrs. Guild has said that Miss Hazard came, "bringing the ease and
breadth of the cultivated woman of the world, who is yet an idealist
and a Christian, into an atmosphere perhaps too strictly scholastic."
But she also brought unusual executive ability and training in
administrative affairs, both academic and commercial, for her
father, aside from his manufacturing interests, was a member of
the corporation of Brown University. Hers is the type of intelligence
and power seen often in England, where women of her social position
have an interest in large issues and an instinct for affairs,
which American women of the same class have not evinced in
any arresting degree.
Miss Hazard's inauguration took place on October 3, 1899, in the
new Houghton Memorial Chapel, which had been dedicated on June 1
of that year. This was Wellesley's first formal ceremony of
inauguration, and the brilliant academic procession, moving among
the autumn trees between old College Hall and the Chapel, marked
the beginning of a new era of dignity and beauty for the college.
In the next ten years, under the winning encouragement of her
new president, Wellesley blossomed in courtesy and in all those
social graces and pleasant amenities of life which in earlier years
she had not always cultivated with sufficient zest. All of
Miss Hazard's influence went out to the dignifying and beautifying
of the life in which she had come to bear a part.
It is to her that Wellesley owes the tranquil beauty of the morning
chapel service. The vested choir of students, the order of
service, are her ideas, as are the musical vesper services and
festival vespers of Christmas, Easter, and Baccalaureate Sunday,
which Professor Macdougall developed so ably at her instigation.
By her efforts, the Chair of Music was endowed from the Billings
estate, and in December, 1903, Mr. Thomas Minns, the surviving
executor of the estate, presented the college with an additional
fifteen thousand dollars, of which two thousand dollars were set
aside as a permanent fund for the establishment of the Billings
prize, to be awarded by the president for excellence in music,
--including its theory and practice,--and the remainder was used
toward the erection of Billings Hall, a second music building
containing a much-needed concert hall and classrooms, completed
in 1904.
Miss Hazard's love of simple, poetical ceremonial did much to
increase the charm of the Wellesley life. Of the several hearth
fires which she kindled during the years when she kept Wellesley's
fires alight, the Observatory hearth-warming was perhaps the
most charming. The beautiful little building, given and equipped
by Mrs. Whitin, a trustee of the college, was formally opened
October 8, 1900, with addresses by Miss Hazard, Professor Pickering
of Harvard, and Professor Todd of Amherst. In the morning,
Miss Hazard had gone out into the college woods and plucked bright
autumn leaves to bind into a torch of life to light the fire on the
new hearth. Digitalis, sarsaparilla, eupatorium, she had chosen,
for the health of the body; a fern leaf for grace and beauty; the
oak and the elm for peace and the civic virtues; evergreen, pine,
and hemlock for the aspiring life of the mind and the eternity
of thought; rosemary for remembrance, and pansies for thoughts.
Firing the torch, she said, "With these holy associations we light
this fire, that from this building in which the sun and stars are
to be observed, true life may ever aspire with the flame to the
Author of all light."
Mrs. Whitin then took the lighted torch and kindled the hearth fire,
and as the pleasant, aromatic odor spread through the room,
the college choir sang the hearth song which Miss Hazard had
written for the occasion, and which was later burned in the wooden
panel above the hearth:
"Stars above that shine and glow,
Have their image here below;
Flames that from the earth arise,
Still aspiring seek the skies.
Upward with the flames we soar,
Learning ever more and more;
Light and love descend till we
Heaven reflected here shall see."
At the beginning of her term of office, Miss Hazard had requested
the trustees to make "a division of administrative duties somewhat
different from that before existing," as the technical knowledge
of courses of study and the wisdom to advise students as to such
courses required a special training and preparation which she did
not possess. It was therefore arranged that the dean should take
in charge the more strictly academic work, leaving Miss Hazard
free for "the general supervision of affairs, the external relations
of the college, and the home administration," and Professor Coman
of the Department of History and Economics consented to assume
the duties of dean for a year. At the end of the year, however,
Miss Hazard having now become thoroughly familiar with the financial
condition of the college, felt that retrenchments were necessary,
and asked the trustees to omit the appointment of a dean for the
year 1900-1901. The academic duties of the dean were temporarily
assumed in the president's office by the secretary of the college,
Miss Ellen F. Pendleton, and Professor Coman returned to her
teaching as head of the new Department of Economics, an office
which she held with distinction until her retirement as Professor
Emeritus in 1913.
Mrs. Guild reminds us that "the pressing problem which confronted
Miss Hazard was monetary. The financial history of Wellesley
College would be a volume in itself, as those familiar with the
struggles of unendowed institutions of like order can well realize....
The appointment during Mrs. Irvine's administration of a professional
treasurer, and the gradual accumulation of small endowments, were
helps in the right direction. The alumnae had early begun a series
of concerted efforts to aid their Alma Mater in solving her ever
present financial problem. Miss Hazard, in generous cooperation
with them and with the trustees, did especially valiant work in
clearing the college from its burden of debt; and during her
administration the treasurer's report shows an increase in the
college funds of $830,000." In round numbers, the gifts for
endowments and buildings during the period amounted to one million
three hundred six thousand dollars. Eleven buildings were erected
between 1900 and 1909: Wilder Hall and the Observatory were
completed in 1900; the President's House, Miss Hazard's gift, in
1902; Pomeroy and Billings Hall in 1904; Cazenove in 1905; the
Observatory House, another gift from Mrs. Whitin, 1906; Beebe, 1908;
Shafer, the Gymnasium, and the Library, in 1909.
During these years also, five professorial chairs were partially
endowed. The Chair of Economics in 1903; the Chair of Biblical
History, by Helen Miller Gould, in December, 1900, to be called
after her mother, the Helen Day Gould Professorship; the Chair of
Art, under the name of the Clara Bertram Kimball Professorship
of Art; the Chair of Music, from the Billings estate; the Chair
of Botany, by Mr. H.H. Hunnewell, January, 1901. And in 1908
and 1909, the arrangements with the Boston Normal School of
Gymnastics were completed, by which that school,--with an endowment
of one hundred thousand dollars and a gymnasium erected on the
Wellesley campus through the efforts of Miss Amy Morris Homans,
the director, and Wellesley friends,--became a part of Wellesley
College: the Department of Hygiene and Physical Education.
Among the notable gifts were the Alexandra Garden in the West
Quadrangle, given by an alumna in memory of her little daughter;
the beautiful antique marbles, presented by Miss Hannah Parker
Kimball to the Department of Art, in memory of her brother, M. Day
Kimball; and the Plimpton collection of Italian manuscripts and
early editions, given by George A. Plimpton in memory of his wife,
Frances Taylor Pearsons Plimpton, of the class of '84. Of romances
of chivalry, "those poems of adventure, the sources from which
Boiardo and Ariosto borrowed character and episodes for their real
poems," we have, according to Professor Margaret Jackson, their
curator, perhaps the largest collection in this country, and one of
the largest in the world. Many of these books are in rare or
unique editions. Of the editions of 1543, of Boiardo's "Innamorato"
only one other copy is known, that in the Royal Library at Stuttgart.
The 1527 edition of the "Orlando Furioso" was unknown until 1821,
when Count Nilzi described the copy in his collection. Of the
"Gigante Moronte", Wellesley has an absolutely unique copy.
A thirteenth-century commentary on Peter Lombard's "Sentences"
has marginal notes by Tasso, and a contemporary copy of Savonarola's
"Triumph of the Cross" shows on the title page a woodcut of the
frate writing in his cell. Bembo's "Asolini" a first edition,
contains autograph corrections. In 1912, Wellesley had the unusual
opportunity, which she unselfishly embraced, to return to the
National Library at Florence, Italy, a very precious Florentine
manuscript of the fourteenth century, containing the only known
copy of the Sirventes and other important historical verses of
Antonio Pucci.
The most important change in the college life at this time was
undoubtedly the establishment of the System of Student Government,
in 1901. As a student movement, this is discussed at length in
a later chapter, but Miss Hazard's cordial sympathy with all that
the change implied should be recorded here.
Among academic changes, the institution of the Honor Scholarships
is the most noteworthy. In 1901, two classes of honors for juniors
and seniors were established, the Durant Scholarship and the
Wellesley College Scholarship,--the Durant being the higher.
The names of those students attaining a certain degree of excellence,
according to these standards, are annually published; the honors
are non-competitive, and depend upon an absolute standard of
scholarship. At about the same time, honorary mention for freshmen
was also instituted.
On June 30, 1906, Miss Hazard sailed for Genoa, to take a well-earned
vacation. This was the first time that a president of Wellesley
had taken a Sabbatical year; the first time that any presidential
term had extended beyond six years. During Miss Hazard's absence,
Miss Pendleton, who had been appointed dean in 1901, conducted the
affairs of the college. On her return, May 20, 1907, Miss Hazard
was met at the Wellesley station by the dean and the senior class,
about two hundred and fifty students, and was escorted to the
campus by the presidents of the Student Government Association
and the senior class. The whole college had assembled to welcome
her, lining the avenue from the East Lodge to Simpson, and waving
their loving and loyal greetings. It was a touching little ceremony,
witnessing as it did to the place she held, and will always hold,
in the heart of the college.
In the spring of 1908 and the winter of 1909, Miss Hazard was
obliged to be absent, because of ill health, and again for a part
of 1910. In July, 1910, the trustees announced her resignation to
the faculty. No one has expressed more happily Miss Hazard's
service to the college than her successor in office, the friend
who was her dean and comrade in work during almost her entire
administration. In the dean's report for 1910 are these very
human and loving words:
"President Hazard's great service to the college during her eleven
years of office are evident to all in the way of increased endowment,
new buildings, additional departments and officers, advanced
salaries, improved organization and equipment; but those who have
had the privilege of working with her know that even these gains,
to which her personal generosity so largely contributed, are less
than the gifts of character which have brought into the midst of
our busy routine the graces of home and a far-pervading spirit of
loving kindness.
"Miss Hazard came to us a stranger, but by her gracious bearing
and charming hospitality, by her sympathetic interest and eagerness
to aid in the work of every department, together with a scrupulous
respect for what she was pleased to call the expert judgment of
those in charge, by the touches of beauty and gentleness accompanying
all that she did, from the enrichment of our chapel service to the
planting of our campus with daffodils, and by the essential
consecration of her life, she has so endeared herself to her faculty
that her resignation means to us not only the loss of an honored
president, but the absence of a friend."
Miss Hazard's honorary degrees are the A.M. from Michigan and
the Litt.D. from Brown University. She is also an honorary member
of the Eta chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, which was installed at
Wellesley on January 17, 1905.
VI.
On Thursday, October 19, 1911, Ellen Fitz Pendleton was inaugurated
president of Wellesley College in Houghton Memorial Chapel.
Professor Calkins, writing in the College News in regard to this
wise choice of the trustees, says: "There has been some discussion
of the wisdom of appointing a woman as college president. I may
frankly avow myself as one of those who have been little concerned
for the appointment of a woman as such. On general principles,
I would welcome the appointment of a man as the next president of
Bryn Mawr or Wellesley; and, similarly, I would as soon see a woman
at the head of Vassar or of Smith. But if our trustees, when
looking last year for a successor to Miss Hazard in her eminently
successful administration, had rejected the ideally endowed
candidate, solely because she was a woman, they would have indicated
their belief that a woman is unfitted for high administrative work.
The recent history of our colleges is a refutation of this conclusion.
The responsible corporation of a woman's college cannot possibly
take the ground that 'any man' is to be preferred to the rightly
equipped woman; to quote from The Nation, in its issue of June 22,
1911, 'lf Wellesley, after its long tradition of women presidents,
and able women presidents, had turned from the appointment of a
woman, especially when a highly capable successor was at hand,
the decision would have meant... the adoption of the principle
of the ineligibility of women for the college presidency.... It is
an anomaly that women should be permitted to enter upon an
intellectual career and should not be permitted to look forward
to the natural rewards of successful labor.'"
Professor Calkins's personal tribute to Miss Pendleton's power
and personality is especially gracious and deserving of quotation,
coming as it does from a distinguished alumna of a sister college.
She writes:
"Miss Pendleton unites a detailed and thorough knowledge of the
history, the specific excellences, and the definite needs of
Wellesley College, with openness of mind, breadth of outlook and
the endowment for constructive leadership. No college procedure
seems to her to be justified by precedent merely; no curriculum
or legislation is, in her view, too sacred to be subject to revision.
Her wide acquaintance with the policies of other colleges and
with modern tendencies in education prompts her to constant
enlargement and modification, while her accurate knowledge of
Wellesley's conditions and her large patience are a check on the
too exuberant spirit of innovation. With Miss Pendleton as
president, the college is sure to advance with dignity and with
safety. She will do better than 'build up' the college, for she
will quicken and guide its growth from within.
"Fundamental to the professional is the personal equipment for
office. Miss Pendleton is unswervingly just, undauntedly generous,
and completely devoted to the college. Not every one realizes
that her reserve hides a sympathy as keen as it is deep, though
no one doubts this who has ever appealed to her for help. Finally,
all those who really know her are well aware that she is utterly
self-forgetful, or rather, that it does not occur to her to consider
any decision in its bearing on her own position or popularity.
This inability to take the narrowly personal point of view is,
perhaps, her most distinguishing characteristic....
"Miss Pendleton unquestionably conceives the office of college
president not as that of absolute monarch but as that of constitutional
ruler; not as that of master, but as that of leader. Readers of
the dean's report for the Sabbatical year of Miss Hazard's absence,
in which Miss Pendleton was acting president, will not have failed
to notice the spontaneous expression of this sense of comradeship
in Miss Pendleton's reference to the faculty."
Rhode Island has twice given a president to Wellesley, for Ellen
Fitz Pendleton was born at Westerly, on August 7, 1864, the daughter
of Enoch Burrowes Pendleton and Mary Ette (Chapman) Pendleton.
In 1882, she entered Wellesley College as a freshman, and since
that date, her connection with her Alma Mater has been unbroken.
Her classmates seem to have recognized her power almost at once,
for in June, 1883, at the end of her freshman year, we find her on
the Tree Day program as delivering an essay on the fern beech;
and she was later invited into the Shakespeare Society, at that
time Wellesley's one and only literary society. In 1886, Miss
Pendleton was graduated with the degree of B.A., and entered the
Department of Mathematics in the autumn of that year as tutor;
in 1888, she was promoted to an instructorship which she held
until 1901, with a leave of absence in 1889 and 1890 for study
at Newnham College, Cambridge, England. In 1891, she received
the degree of M.A. from Wellesley. Her honorary degrees are the
Litt.D. from Brown University in 1911, and the LL.D. from Mt. Holyoke
in 1912. In 1895, she was made Schedule Officer, in charge of
the intricate work involved in arranging and simplifying the
complicated yearly schedule of college class appointments. In
1897, she became secretary of the college and held this position
until 1901, when she was made dean and associate professor of
Mathematics. During Miss Hazard's absences and after Miss Hazard's
resignation in 1910, she served the college as acting president.
The announcement of her election to the presidency was made to
the college on June 9, 1911, by the president of the Board of
Trustees, and the joy with which it was received by faculty, alumna,
and students was as outspoken as it was genuine. And at her
inauguration, many who listened to her clear and simple exposition
of her conception of the function of a college must have rejoiced
anew to feel that Wellesley's ideals of scholarship were committed
to so safe and wise a guardian. Miss Pendleton's ideal cannot
be better expressed than in her own straightforward phrases:
"Happily for both, men and women must work together in the world,
and I venture to say that the function of a college for men is not
essentially different from that of a college for women."
Of the twofold function of the college, the training for citizenship
and the preparation of the scholar, she says: "What are the
characteristics of the ideal citizen, and how may they be developed?
He must have learned the important lesson of viewing every question
not only from his own standpoint but from that of the community; he
must be willing to pay his share of the public tax not only in
money but also in time and thought for the service of his town and
state; he must have, above all, enthusiasm and capacity for working
hard in whatever kind of endeavor his lot may be cast. It is
evident, therefore, that the college must furnish him opportunity
for acquiring a knowledge of history, of the theory of government,
of the relations between capital and labor, of the laws of
mathematics, chemistry, physics, which underlie our great industries,
and if he is to have an intelligent and sympathetic interest in
his neighbors, and be able to get another's point of view, this
college-trained citizen must know something of psychology and
the laws of the mind. Nor can he do all this to his own satisfaction
without access to other languages and literatures besides his own.
Moreover, the ideal citizen must have some power of initiative,
and he must have acquired the ability to think clearly and
independently. But it will be urged that a college course of four
years is entirely too short for such a task. Perhaps, but what
the college cannot actually give, it can furnish the stimulus and
the power for obtaining later."
But although Miss Pendleton's attitude toward college education
is characteristically practical, she is careful to make it clear
that the practical educator does not necessarily approve of
including vocational training in a college course. "I do not
propose to discuss the question in detail, but is it not fair to
ask why vocational subjects should be recognized in preparation
when the aim of the college is not to prepare for a vocation but
to develop personal efficiency?"
And her vision includes the scholar, or the genius, as well as
the commonplace student. "The college is essentially a democratic
institution designed for the rank and file of youth qualified to
make use of the opportunities it offers. But the material equipment,
the curriculum, and the teaching force which are necessary to
develop personal efficiency in the ordinary student will have
failed in a part of their purpose if they do not produce a few
students with the ability and the desire to extend the field of
human knowledge. There will be but few, but fortunate the college,
and happy the instructor, that has these few. Such students have
claims, and the college is bound to satisfy them without losing
sight of its first great aim.... It is the task of the college to
give such a student as broad a foundation as possible, while
allowing him a more specialized course than is deemed wise for
the ordinary student. The college will have failed in part of
its function if it does not furnish such a student with the power
and the stimulus to continue his search for truth after graduation....
"Training for citizenship and the preparation of the scholar are
then the twofold function of the college. To furnish professional
training for lawyers, doctors, ministers, engineers, librarians,
is manifestly the work of the university or the technical school,
and not the function of the college. Neither is it, in my opinion,
the work of the college to prepare its students specifically to
be teachers or even wives and husbands, mothers and fathers. It
is rather its part to produce men and women with the power to think
clearly and independently, who recognize that teaching and
home-making are both fine arts worthy of careful and patient
cultivation, and not the necessary accompaniment of a college
diploma. College graduates ought to make, and I believe do make,
better teachers, more considerate husbands and wives, wiser fathers
and mothers, but the chief function of the college is larger than
this. The aim of the university and the great technical school is
to furnish preparation for some specific profession. The college
must produce men and women capable of using the opportunities
offered by the university, men and women with sound bodies, pure
hearts and clear minds, who are ready to obey the commandment,
'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all
thy soul and with all thy strength and with all thy mind, and thy
neighbor as thyself.'"
In this day of diverse and confused educational theories and ideals
it is refreshing to read words so discriminating and definite.
The earliest events of importance in President Pendleton's
administration are connected, as might be expected, with the alumnae,
who were quickened to a more active and objective expression
of loyalty by this first election of a Wellesley alumna to the
presidential office. On June 21, 1911, the Graduate Council, to
be discussed in a later chapter, was established by the Alumnae
Association; and on October 5, 1911, the first number of the alumnae
edition of the College News was issued. In the academic year
1912-1913, the Monday holiday was abolished and the new schedule
with recitations from Monday morning until Saturday noon was
established. After the mid-year examinations in 1912, the students
were for the first time told their marks. In 1913, the Village
Improvement Association built and equipped, on the college grounds,
a kindergarten to be under the joint supervision of the Association
and the Department of Education. The building is used as a free
kindergarten for Wellesley children, and also as a practice school
for graduate students in the department. A campaign for an
endowment fund of one million dollars was also started by the
trustees and alumnae under the leadership and with the advice
of the new president. A committee of alumnae was appointed, with
Miss Candace C. Stimson, of the class of '92 as chairman, to
cooperate with the trustees in raising the money, and more than
four hundred thousand dollars had been promised when, in March, 1914,
occurred Wellesley's great catastrophe--which she was to translate
immediately into her great opportunity--the burning of old
College Hall.
If, in the years to come, Wellesley fulfills that great opportunity,
and becomes in spirit and in truth, as well as in outward seeming,
the College Beautiful which her daughters see in their visions
and dream in their dreams, it will be by the soaring, unconquerable
faith--and the prompt and selfless works--of the daughter who said
to a college in ruins, on that March morning, "The members of the
college will report for duty on the appointed date after the spring
vacation," and sent her flock away, comforted, high-hearted,
expectant of miracles.
CHAPTER III
THE FACULTY AND THEIR METHODS
I.
At Wellesley, to a degree unusual in American colleges, whether
for men or women, the faculty determine the general policy of the
college. The president, as chairman of the Academic Council,
is in a very real and democratic sense the representative of the
faculty, not the ruler. In Miss Freeman's day, the excellent
presidential habit of consulting with the heads of departments
was formed, and many of the changes instituted by the young president
were suggested and formulated by her older colleagues. In
Miss Shafer's day, habit had become precedent, and she would be
the first to point out that the "new curriculum" which will always
be associated with her name, was really the achievement of the
Academic Council and the departments, working through patient years
to adjust, develop, and balance the minutest details in their
composite plan.
The initiative on the part of the faculty has been exerted chiefly
along academic lines, but in some instances it has necessitated
important emendations of the statutes; and that the trustees were
willing to alter the statutes on the request of the faculty would
indicate the friendly confidence felt toward the innovators.
In the statutes of Wellesley College, as printed in 1885, we read
that "The College was founded for the glory of God and the service
of the Lord Jesus Christ, in and by the education and culture of women.
"In order to the attainment of these ends, it is required that every
Trustee, Teacher, and Officer, shall be a member of an Evangelical
church, and that the study of the Holy Scriptures shall be pursued
by every student throughout the entire College course under the
direction of the Faculty."
In the early nineties, pressure from members of the faculty,
themselves members of Evangelical churches, induced the trustees
to alter the religious requirement for teachers; and the reorganization
of the Department of Bible Study a few years later resulted in
a drastic change in the requirements for students.
As printed in 1898, the statutes read, "To realize this design it
is required that every Trustee shall be a member in good standing
of some Evangelical Church; that every teacher shall be of decided
Christian character and influence, and in manifest sympathy with
the religious spirit and aim with which the College was founded;
and that the study of the Sacred Scriptures by every student shall
extend over the first three years, with opportunities for elective
studies in the same during the fourth year."
But it was found that freshmen were not mature enough to study
to the best advantage the new courses in Biblical Criticism, and
the statutes as printed in 1912 record still another amendment:
"And that the study of the Sacred Scriptures by every student
shall extend over the second and third years, with opportunities
for elective studies in the same during the fourth year."
These changes are the more pleasantly significant, since all actual
power, at Wellesley as at most other colleges, resides with the
trustees if they choose to use it. They "have control of the college
and all its property, and of the investment and appropriation of
its funds, in conformity with the design of its establishment and
with the act of incorporation." They have "power to make and
execute such statutes and rules as they may consider needful for
the best administration of their trust, to appoint committees from
their own number, or of those not otherwise connected with the
college, and to prescribe their duties and powers." It is theirs
to appoint "all officers of government or instruction and all
employees needed for the administration of the institution whose
appointment is not otherwise provided for." They determine the
duties and salaries of officers and employees and may remove,
either with or without notice, any person whom they have appointed.
In being governed undemocratically from without by a self-perpetuating
body of directors, Wellesley is of course no worse off than the
majority of American colleges. But that a form of college government
so patently and unreasonably autocratic should have generated so
little friction during forty years, speaks volumes for the
broadmindedness, the generous tolerance, and the Christian
self-control of both faculty and trustees. If, in matters financial,
the trustees have been sometimes unwilling to consider the scruples
of groups of individuals on the faculty, along lines of economic
morals, they have nevertheless taken no official steps to suppress
the expression of such scruples. They have withstood any reactionary
pressure from individuals of their board, and have always allowed
the faculty entire academic freedom. In matters pertaining to
the college classes, they are usually content to ratify the
appointments on the faculty, and approve the alterations in the
curriculum presented to them by the president of the college; and
the president, in turn, leaves the professors and their associates
remarkably free to choose and regulate the personnel and the
courses in the departments.
In this happy condition of affairs, the alumnae trustees undoubtedly
play a mediating part, for they understand the college from within
as no clergyman, financier, philanthropist,--no graduate of a
man's college--can hope to, be he never so enthusiastic and
well-meaning in the cause of woman's education. But so long as
the faculty are excluded from direct representation on the board,
the situation will continue to be anomalous. For it is not too
sweeping to assert that Wellesley's development and academic
standing are due to the cooperative wisdom and devoted scholarship
of her faculty. The initiative has been theirs. They have proved
that a college for women can be successfully taught and administered
by women. To them Wellesley owes her academic status.
From the beginning, women have predominated on the Wellesley
faculty. The head of the Department of Music has always been a
man, but he had no seat upon the Academic Council until 1896.
In 1914-1915, of the twenty-eight heads of departments, three
were men, the professors of Music, of Education, and of French.
Of the thirty-nine professors and associate professors, not heads
of departments, five were men; of the fifty-nine instructors, ten
were men. It is interesting to note that there were no men in the
departments of Greek, Latin, Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry,
Astronomy, Biblical History, Italian, Spanish, Reading and Speaking,
Art, and Archaeology, during the academic year 1914-1915.
Critics sometimes complain of the preponderance of women upon
Wellesley's faculty, but her policy in this respect has been
deliberate. Every woman's college is making its own experiments,
and the results achieved at Wellesley indicate that a faculty made
up largely of women, with a woman at its head, in no way militates
against high academic standards, sound scholarship, and efficient
administration. That a more masculine faculty would also have
peculiar advantages, she does not deny.
From the collegiate point of view, this feminine faculty is a very
well mixed body, for it includes representative graduates from the
other women's colleges, and from the more important coeducational
colleges and state universities, as well as men from Harvard and
Brown. The Wellesley women on the faculty are an able minority;
but it is the policy of the college to avoid academic in-breeding
and to keep the Wellesley influence a minority influence. Of the
twenty-eight heads of departments, five--the professors of English
Literature, Chemistry, Pure Mathematics, Biblical History, and
Physics--are Wellesley graduates, three of them from the celebrated
class of '80. Of the thirty-nine professors and associate professors,
in 1914-1915, ten were alumnae of Wellesley, and of the fifty-nine
instructors, seventeen. Since 1895, when Professor Stratton was
appointed dean to assist Mrs. Irvine, Wellesley has had five deans,
but only Miss Pendleton, who held the office under Miss Hazard
from 1901 to 1911, has been a graduate of Wellesley. Miss Coman,
who assisted Miss Hazard for one year only, and Miss Chapin, who
consented to fill the office after Miss Pendleton's appointment to
the presidency until a permanent dean could be chosen, were both
graduates of the University of Michigan. Dean Waite, who succeeded
to the office in 1913, is an alumna of Smith College, and has been
a member of the Department of English at Wellesley since 1896.
II.
Only the women who have helped to promote and establish the higher
education of women can know how exciting and romantic it was to be
a professor in a woman's college during the last half-century.
To be a teacher was no new thing for a woman; the dame school
is an ancient institution; all down the centuries, in classic
villas, in the convents of the Middle Ages, in the salons of the
eighteenth century, learned ladies with a pedagogic instinct have
left their impress upon the intellectual life of their times. But
the possibility that women might be intellectually and physically
capable of sharing equally with men the burdens and the joys of
developing and directing the scholarship of the race had never been
seriously considered until the nineteenth century. The women who
came to teach in the women's colleges in the '70's and '80's and
'90's knew themselves on trial in the eyes of the world as never
women had been before. And they brought to that trial the heady
enthusiasm and radiant exhilaration and fiery persistence which
possess all those who rediscover learning and drink deep. They
knew the kind of selfless inspiration Wyclif knew when he was
translating the Bible into the language of England's common people.
They shared the elation and devotion of Erasmus and his fellows.
To plan a curriculum in which the humanities and the sciences
should every one be given a fair chance; to distinguish intelligently
between the advantages of the elective system and its disadvantages;
to decide, without prejudice, at what points the education of the
girl should differ or diverge from the education of the boy; to
try out the pedagogic methods of the men's colleges and discover
which were antiquated and should be abolished, which were susceptible
of reform, which were sound; to invent new methods,--these were
the romantic quests to which these enamored devotees were vowed, and
to which, through more than half a century, they have been faithful.
Wellesley's student laboratory for experimental work in physics,
established 1878, was preceded in New England only by the student
laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her
laboratory for work in experimental psychology, established by
Professor Calkins in 1891, was the first in any women's college
in the country, and one of the first in any college. In 1886, the
American School of Classical Studies at Athens invited Wellesley
to become one of the cooperating colleges to sustain this school
and to enjoy its advantages. The invitation came quite unsolicited,
and was the first extended to a woman's college.
The schoolmen developing and expanding their Trivium and Quadrivium
at Oxford, Paris, Bologna, experienced no keener intellectual delights
than did their belated sisters of Vassar, Smith, Bryn Mawr, Wellesley.
But in order to understand the passion of their point of view,
we must remember that the higher education for which the women
of the nineteenth century were enthusiastic was distinctly an
education along scholarly and intellectual lines; this early and
original meaning of the term "higher education", this original and
distinguishing function of the woman's college, are in danger of
being blurred and lost sight of to-day by a generation that knew
not Joseph. The zeal with which the advocates of educational
and domestic training are trying to force into the curricula of
women's colleges courses on housekeeping, home-making, dressmaking,
dairy farming, to say nothing of stenography, typewriting, double
entry, and the musical glasses minus Shakespeare, is for the most
part unintelligible to the women who have given their lives to the
upbuilding of such colleges as Bryn Mawr, Smith, Mt. Holyoke,
Vassar, and Wellesley,--not because they minimize the civilizing
value of either homemakers or business women in a community, or
fail to recognize their needs, but simply because women's colleges
were never intended to meet those needs.
When we go to the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Arts, we do not
complain because it lacks the characteristics of the Smithsonian
Institute, or of the Boston Horticultural Show. We are content
that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology should differ in
scope from Harvard University; yet some of us, college graduates
even, seem to have an uneasy feeling that Wellesley and Bryn Mawr
may not be ministering adequately to life, because they do not
add to their curricular activities the varied aims of an
Agricultural College, a Business College, a School of Philanthropy,
and a Cooking School, with required courses on the modifying of
milk for infants. Great institutions for vocational training, such
as Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and Simmons College in Boston,
have a dignity and a usefulness which no one disputes. Undoubtedly
America needs more of their kind. But to impair the dignity and
usefulness of the colleges dedicated to the higher education of
women by diluting their academic programs with courses on business
or domesticity will not meet that need. The unwillingness of
college faculties to admit vocational courses to the curriculum is
not due to academic conservatism and inability to march with
the times, but to an unclouded and accurate conception of the
meaning of the term "higher education."
But definiteness of aim does not necessarily imply narrowness
of scope. The Wellesley Calendar for 1914-1915 contains a list
of three hundred and twelve courses on thirty-two subjects, exclusive
of the gymnasium practice, dancing, swimming, and games required
by the Department of Hygiene. Of these subjects, four are ancient
languages and their literatures, Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Sanskrit.
Seven are modern languages and their literatures, German, French,
Italian, Spanish, and English Literature, Composition, and Language.
Ten are sciences, Mathematics, pure and applied, Astronomy, Physics,
Chemistry, Geology, Geography, Botany, Zoology and Physiology,
Hygiene. Seven are scientifically concerned with the mental and
spiritual evolution of the human race, Biblical and Secular History,
Economics, Education, Logic, Psychology, and Philosophy. Four
may be classified as arts: Archaeology, Art, including its history,
Music, and Reading and Speaking, which old-fashioned people still
call Elocution.
From this wide range of subjects, the candidates for the B.A.
degree are required to take one course in Mathematics, the prescribed
freshman course; one course in English Composition, prescribed for
freshmen; courses in Biblical History and Hygiene; a modern
language, unless two modern languages have been presented for
admission; two natural sciences before the junior year, unless
one has already been offered for admission, in which case one is
required, and a course in Philosophy, which the student should
ordinarily take before her senior year.
These required studies cover about twenty of the fifty-nine hours
prescribed for the degree; the remaining hours are elective; but
the student must group her electives intelligently, and to this end
she must complete either nine hours of work in each of two
departments, or twelve hours in one department and six in a
second; she must specialize within limits.
It will be evident on examining this program that no work is
required in History, Economics, English Literature and Language,
Comparative Philology, Education, Archaeology, Art, Reading and
Speaking, and Music. All the courses in these departments are
free electives. Just what led to this legislation, only those who
were present at the decisive discussions of the Academic Council
can know. Possibly they have discovered by experience that young
women do not need to be coaxed or coerced into studying the arts;
that they gravitate naturally to those subjects which deal with
human society, such as History, Economics, and English Literature;
and that the specialist can be depended upon to elect, without
pressure, courses in Philology or Pedagogy.
But little effort has been made at Wellesley, so far, to attract
graduate students. In this respect she differs from Bryn Mawr.
She offers very few courses planned exclusively for college
graduates, but opens her advanced courses in most departments to
both seniors and graduates. This does not mean, however, that
the graduate work is not on a sound basis. Wellesley has not yet
exercised her right to give the Doctor's degree, but expert
testimony, outside the college, has declared that some of the
Master's theses are of the doctorial grade in quality, if not in
quantity; and the work for the Master's degree is said to be more
difficult and more severely scrutinized than in some other colleges
where the Doctor's degree is made the chief goal of the graduate student.
The college has in its gift the Alice Freeman Palmer Fellowship,
founded in 1903 by Mrs. David P. Kimball of Boston, and yielding
an income of about one thousand dollars. The holder must be a
woman, a graduate of Wellesley or some other American college of
approved standing; she must be "not more than twenty-six years of
age at the time of her appointment, unmarried throughout the whole
of her tenure, and as free as possible from other responsibilities."
She may hold the fellowship for one year only, but "within three
years from entrance on the fellowship she must present to the
faculty a thesis embodying the results of the research carried on
during the period of tenure."
Wellesley is proud of her Alice Freeman Palmer Fellows. Of the
eleven who have held the Fellowship between 1904 and 1915, four
are Wellesley graduates, Helen Dodd Cook, whose subject was
Philosophy; Isabelle Stone, working in Greek; Gertrude Schopperle,
in Comparative Literature; Laura Alandis Hibbard, in English
Literature. Two are from Radcliffe, and one each from Cornell,
Vassar, the University of Dakota, Ripon, and Goucher. The Fellow
is left free to study abroad, in an American college or university,
or to use the income for independent research. The list of
universities at which these young women have studied is as impressive
as it is long. It includes the American Schools for Classical
Studies at Athens and Rome; the universities of Gottingen, Wurzburg,
Munich, Paris, and Cambridge, England; and Yale, Johns Hopkins,
and the University of Chicago.
This is not the place in which to give a detailed account of the
work of each one of Wellesley's academic departments. Any intelligent
person who turns the pages of the official calendar may easily
discover that the standard of admission and the requirements for
the degree of Bachelor of Arts place Wellesley in the first rank
among American colleges, whether for men or for women. But every
woman's college, besides conforming to the general standard, is
making its own contribution to the higher education of women.
At Wellesley, the methods in certain departments have gained a
deservedly high reputation.
The Department of Art, under Professor Alice V.V. Brown, formerly
of the Slater Museum of Norwich, Connecticut, is doing a work in
the proper interpretation and history of art as unique as it is
valuable. The laboratory method is used, and all students are
required to recognize and indicate the characteristic qualities
and attributes of the great masters and the different schools of
paintings by sketching from photographs of the pictures studied.
These five and ten minute sketches by young girls, the majority of
whom have had no training in drawing, are remarkable for the
vivacity and accuracy with which they reproduce the salient
features of the great paintings. The students are of course given
the latest results of the modern school of art criticism. In
addition to the work with undergraduates, the department offers
courses to graduate students who wish to prepare themselves for
curatorships, or lectureships in art museums, and Wellesley women
occupy positions of trust in the Metropolitan Museum in New York,
in the Boston Art Museum, in museums in Chicago, Worcester, and
elsewhere. The "Short History of Italian Painting" by Professor
Brown and Mr. William Rankin is a standard authority.
The Department of Music, working quite independently of the
Department of Art, has also adapted laboratory methods to its own
ends with unusual results. Under Professor Hamilton C. Macdougall,
the head of the department, and Associate Professor Clarence G.
Hamilton, courses in musical interpretation have been developed
in connection with the courses in practical music. The first-year
class, meeting once a week, listens to an anonymous musical
selection played by one of its members, and must decide by internal
evidence--such as simple cadences, harmonic figuration as applied
to the accompaniment and other characteristics--upon the school
of the composer, and biographical data. The analysis of the
musical selection and the reasons for her decision are set down
in her notebook by the listening student. The second-year class
concerns itself with "the thematic and polyphonic melody, the
larger forms, harmony in its aesthetic bearings, the aesthetic
effects of the more complicated rhythms, comparative criticism
and the various schools of composition."
These valuable contributions to method and scope in the study of
the History of Art and the History of Music are original with
Wellesley, and are distinctly a part of her history.
Among the departments which carry prestige outside the college
walls are those of Philosophy and Psychology, English Literature,
and German. Wellesley's Department of English Literature is
unusually fortunate in having as interpreters of the great literature
of England a group of women of letters of established reputation.
What Longfellow, Lowell, Norton, were to the Harvard of their day,
Katharine Lee Bates, Vida D. Scudder, Sophie Jewett, and Margaret
Sherwood are to the Wellesley of their day and ours. Working
together, with unfailing enthusiasm for their subjects, and keen
insight into the cultural needs of American girls, they have built
up their department on a sure foundation of accurate scholarship
and tested pedagogic method. At a time when the study of literature
threatened to become, almost universally, an exercise in the dry
rot of philological terms, in the cataloguing of sources, or the
analyzing of literary forms, the department at Wellesley continued
unswervingly to make use of philology, sources, and even art forms,
as means to an end; that end the interpretation of literary epochs,
the illumination of intellectual and spiritual values in literary
masterpieces, the revelation of the soul of poet, dramatist,
essayist, novelist. No teaching of literature is less sentimental
than the teaching at Wellesley, and no teaching is more quickening
to the imagination. Now that the method of accumulated detail
"about it and about it", is being defeated by its own aridity,
Wellesley's firm insistence upon listening to literature as to
a living voice is justified of her teachers and her students.
Indications of the reputation achieved by Wellesley's methods
of teaching German are found in the increasing numbers of students
who come to the college for the sake of the work in the German
Department, and in the fact that teachers' agencies not infrequently
ask candidates for positions if they are familiar with the Wellesley
methods. In an address before the New Hampshire State Teachers'
Association, in 1913, Professor Muller describes the aims and
ideals of her department as they took shape under the constructive
leadership of her predecessor, Professor Wenckebach, and as they
have been modified and developed in later years to meet the needs
of American students.
"Cinderella became a princess and a ruler over night," says Professor
Muller, "that is, German suddenly took the position in our college
that it has held ever since. Such a result was due not merely to
methods, of course, but first of all to the strong and enthusiastic
personality that was identified with them, and that was the main
secret of the unusual effectiveness of Fraulein Wenckebach's teaching.
"But this German professor had not only live methods and virile
personal qualities to help her along; she also had what a great
many of the foreign language teachers in this country must as yet
do without, that is, the absolute confidence, warm appreciation,
and financial support of an enlightened administration. President
Freeman and the trustees seem to have done practically everything
that their intrepid professor of German asked for. They not only
saw that all equipments needed... were provided, but they also
generously stipulated, at Fraulein Wenckebach's urgent request,
that all the elementary and intermediate classes in the foreign
language departments should be kept small, that is, that they
should not exceed fifteen. If Fraulein Wenckebach had been
obliged, as many modern language teachers still are, to teach
German to classes of from thirty to forty students; if she had
met in the administration of Wellesley College with as little
appreciation and understanding of the fine art and extreme difficulty
of foreign language work as high school teachers, for instance,
often encounter, her efforts could not possibly have been crowned
with success.
"Another agent in enabling Fraulein Wenckebach to do such fine
constructive work with her Department was the general Wellesley
policy, still followed, I am happy to say, of centralizing all
power and responsibility regarding department affairs in the person
of the head of the Department. Centralization may not work well
in politics, but a foreign language department working with the
reformed methods could not develop the highest efficiency under
any other form of government. With a living organism, such as
a foreign language department should be, there ought to be one,
and only one, responsible person to keep her finger on the pulse
of things--otherwise disintegration and ineffectiveness of the
work as a whole is sure to follow."
Professor Muller goes on to say, "Now JOY, genuine joy, in their
work, based on good, strong, mental exercise, is what we want
and what on the whole we get from our students. It was so in the
days of Fraulein Wenckebach and is so now, I am happy to say--and
not in the literature courses only, but in our elementary drill
work as well.
"It may be of interest to note that our elementary work and also
the advanced work in grammar and idiom are at present taught by
Americans wholly. I have come to the conclusion that well-trained
Americans gifted with vivid personalities get better results along
those lines than the average teacher of foreign birth and breeding."
Even in the elementary courses, only those texts are used which
illustrate German life, literature, and history; and the advanced
electives are carefully guarded, so that no student may elect
courses in modern German, the novel and the drama, who has not
already been well grounded in Goethe, Schiller, and Lessing. The
drastic thoroughness with which unpromising students are weeded
out of the courses in German enhances rather than defeats their
popularity among undergraduates.
The learned women who direct Wellesley's work in Philosophy and
Psychology lend their own distinction to this department. Professor
Case, a graduate of the University of Michigan, has been connected
with the college since 1884, and her courses in Greek Philosophy
and the Philosophy of Religion make an appeal to thoughtful students
which does not lessen as the years pass. Professor Gamble,
Wellesley's own daughter, is the foremost authority on smell,
among psychologists. In her chosen field of experimental psychology
she has achieved results attained by no one else, and her work
has a Continental reputation. Professor Calkins, the head of the
Department, is one of the distinguished alumnae of Smith College.
She has also passed Harvard's examination for the Doctor's degree;
but Harvard does not yet confer its degree upon women. She was
the first woman to receive the degree of Litt.D. from Columbia
University, and the first woman to be elected to the presidency
of the American Psychological Association, succeeding William James
in that office.
In the Department of Economics and Sociology, organized under
the leadership of Professor Katharine Coman, in 1901, Wellesley
has been fortunate in having as teachers two women of national
reputation whose interest in the human side of economic problems
has vitalized for their eager classes a subject which unless
sympathetically handled, lends itself all too easily to mechanical
interpretations of theory. Professor Coman's wide and intimate
knowledge of American economic conditions, as evidenced in her
books, the "Industrial History of the United States", and "Economic
Beginnings of the Far West", in her studies in Social Insurance
published in The Survey, and in her practical work for the College
Settlements Association and the Consumers' League, and as an
active member of the Strike Committee during the strike of the
Chicago Garment Workers in 1910-1911, lent to her teaching an
appeal which more cloistered theorists can never achieve. The
letters which came to her from alumnae, after her resignation
from the department in 1913, were of the sort that every teacher
cherishes. Since her death in January, 1915, some of these letters
have been printed in a memorial number of the Wellesley College
News. Nothing could better illustrate her influence as an intellectual
force in the college to which she came as an instructor in 1880.
One of her oldest students writes:
"I am too late for the thirtieth anniversary, but still it is
never too late to say how much I enjoyed my work with you in
college. It always seemed such grown-up work. Partly, l suppose,
because it was closely related to the things of life, and partly
because you demanded a more grown-up and thoughtful point of view.
It was a great privilege to have your Economics as a sophomore.
I have always meant to tell you, too, of what great practical value
your seminar in Statistics was to me; it gave me enough insight
into the principles and practice to encourage me to present my
work the first year out of college in statistical form. It was
approved. Without the incentive and the little experience I had
gained from you I might not have tried to do this. Since then,
in whatever field of social work I have been I have found this
ability valuable, and I developed enough skill at it to handle
the investigation into wages of the Massachusetts Minimum Wage
Commission without other training. I am very grateful to you for
this bit of technical training for which I would never have taken
the time later."
Another says: "It is a pleasure to have an opportunity, after so
many years, to make some expression of the gratitude I owe you.
The course in Political Economy which I was so wise as to take
with you has proved of vital importance to me. That was in 1887-1888,
but as I look back l see that in your teaching then, you presented
to us the ideas, the concepts, which are now accepted principles
of men's thought as to the relation of class to class, of man to
man. And so I feel that it was to your enthusiasm, your power of
inspiring your pupils that I owe my own interest in economic and
sociological affairs."
And still another: "I have had more real pleasure from my Economics
courses and Sociology courses than from any others of my college
course. Had it not been for yourself and Miss Balch, that work
would not have stood for so much. For your guidance and your
inspiration l am most grateful. l have tried to carry out your
ideals as far as possible in the Visiting Nurse work and the
Social Settlement in Omaha ever since leaving Wellesley."
Professor Emily Greene Balch, who succeeded Miss Coman as head
of the Department of Economics, is herself an authority on questions
of immigration; her book, "Our Slavic Fellow Citizens", is an
important contribution to the history of the subject, and has been
cited in the German Reichstag as authoritative on Slavic immigration.
She has also served on more than one State commission in
Massachusetts,--among them the disinterested and competent City
Planning Board,--and the sanity and judicial balance of her opinions
are recognized and valued by conservatives and radicals alike.
Besides the traditional courses in Economic History and Theory,
Wellesley offers under Miss Balch a course in Socialism, a critical
study of its main theories and political movements, open to juniors
and seniors who have already completed two other courses in
Economics; a course entitled "The Modern Labor Movement", in which
special attention is given to labor legislation, factory inspection,
and the organization of labor, with a study of methods of meeting
the difficulties of the modern industrial situation; and a course
in Immigration and the problems to which it gives rise in the
United States.
The Wellesley fire did the college one good turn by bringing to
the notice of the general public the departments of Science. When
so many of the laboratories and so much of the equipment were
swept away, outsiders became aware of the excellent work which
was being done in those laboratories; of the modern work in Geology
and Geography carried on not only in Wellesley but for the teachers
of Boston by Professor Fisher who is so wisely developing the
department which Professor Niles set on its firm foundation; of
the work of Professor Robertson who is an authority on the bryozoa
fauna of the Pacific coast of North America and Japan; of the
authoritative work on the life history of Pinus, by Professor
Ferguson of the Department of Botany; of the quiet, thorough,
modern work for students in Physics and Chemistry and Astronomy.
An evidence of the excellent organization of departmental work
at Wellesley is found in the ease and smoothness with which the
Department of Hygiene, formerly the Boston Normal School of
Gymnastics, has become a force in the Wellesley curriculum under
the direction of Miss Amy Morris Homans, who was also the head
of the school in Boston. By a gradual process of adjustment,
admission to the two years' course leading to a certificate in
the Department of Hygiene "will be limited to applicants who are
candidates for the B.A. degree at Wellesley College and to those
who already hold the Bachelor's degree either from Wellesley College
or from some other college." A five years' course is also offered,
by which students may obtain both the B.A. degree and the certificate
of the department. But all students, whether working for the
certificate or not, must take a one-hour course in Hygiene in
the freshman year, and two periods a week of practical gymnastic
work in the freshman and sophomore years.
Like all American colleges, Wellesley makes heavy and constant
demands on the mere pedagogic power of its teachers. Their days
are pretty well filled with the classroom routine and the necessary
and incessant social intercourse with the eager crowd of youth.
It may be years before an American college for women can sustain
and foster creative scholarship for its own sake, after the example
of the European universities; but Wellesley is not ungenerous;
the Sabbatical Grant gives certain heads of departments an opportunity
for refreshment and personal work every seven years; and even those
who do not profit by this privilege manage to keep their minds
alive by outside work and contacts.
Every two years the secretary to the president issues a list of
faculty publications, ranging from verse and short stories in the
best magazines to papers in learned reviews for esoteric consumption
only; from idyllic novels, such as Margaret Sherwood's "Daphne",
and sympathetic travel sketches like Katharine Lee Bates's "Spanish
Highways and Byways", to scholarly translations, such as Sophie
Jewett's "Pearl" and Vida D. Scudder's "Letters of St. Catherine of
Siena", and philosophical treatises, of which Mary Whiton Calkins's
"Persistent Problems of Philosophy", translated into several
languages, is a notable example.
But the Wellesley faculty is a public-spirited body; its contribution
to the general life is not only abstract and literary; for many of
its members are identified with modern movements toward better
citizenship. Miss Balch, besides her work on municipal committees,
is connected with the Woman's Trade Union League, and is interested
in the great movement for peace. In the spring of 1915, she was
one of those who sailed with Miss Jane Addams to attend the Woman's
Peace Congress at the Hague, and she afterwards visited other
European countries on a mission of peace. Miss Bates is active
in promoting the interests of the International Institute in Spain.
The American College for Girls in Constantinople often looks to
Wellesley for teachers, and more than one Wellesley professor
has given a Sabbatical year to the schoolgirls in Constantinople.
During the absence of President Patrick, Professor Roxana Vivian
of Wellesley was acting president, and had the honor of bringing
the college safely through the perplexities and terrors of the
Young Turks' Revolution in 1908 and 1909. Professor Kendall,
of the Department of History, is Wellesley's most distinguished
traveler. Her book, "A Wayfarer in China", tells the story of
some of her travels, and she has received the rare honor, for
a woman, of being made a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.
Miss Calkins is an officer of the Consumers' League. Miss Scudder
has been identified from its outset with the College Settlements
Movement, and of late years with the new service to Italian
immigrants inaugurated by Denison House.
As a result of these varied interests, the intellectual fellowship
among the older women in the college community is of a peculiarly
stimulating quality, and the fact that it is almost exclusively a
feminine fellowship does not affect its intellectuality. The
Wellesley faculty, like the faculty of Harvard, is not a cloistered
body, and contact with the minds of "a world of men" through books
and the visitations of itinerant scholars is about as easy in the
one case as in the other. Every year Wellesley has her share of
distinguished visitors, American, European, and Oriental, scholars,
poets, scientists, statesmen, who enrich her life and enlarge
her spiritual vision.
III.
One chapter of Wellesley's history it is too soon to write: the
story of the great names and great personalities, the spiritual
stuff of which every college is built. This is the chapter on
which the historians of men's colleges love best to dwell. But
the women's lips and pens are fountains sealed, for a reticent
hundred years--or possibly less, under pressure--with the seals
of academic reserve, and historic perspective, and traditional
modesty. Most of the women who had a hand in the making of
Wellesley's first forty years are still alive. There's the rub.
It would not hamper the journalist. But the historian has his
conventions. One hundred years from now, what names, living
to-day, will be written in Wellesley's golden book? Already they
are written in many prophetic hearts. However, women can keep
a secret.
Even of those who have already finished their work on earth, it is
too soon to speak authoritatively; but gratitude and love will not
be silent, and no story of Wellesley's first half-century would
be complete that held no records of their devotion and continuing
influence.
Among the pioneers, there was no more interesting and forceful
personality than Susan Maria Hallowell, who came to Wellesley as
Professor of Natural History in 1875, the friend of Agassiz and
Asa Gray. She was a Maine woman, and she had been teaching
twenty-two years, in Bangor and Portland, before she was called
to Wellesley. Her successor in the Department of Botany writes
in a memorial sketch of her life:
"With that indefatigable zeal so characteristic of her whole life,
she began the work in preparation for the new position. She went
from college to college, from university to university, studying
the scientific libraries and laboratories. At the close of this
investigation she announced to the founders of the college that
the task which they had assigned to her was too great for any
one individual to undertake. There must be several professorships
rather than one. Of those named she was given first choice, and
when, in 1876, she opened her laboratories and actually began her
teaching in Wellesley College, she did so as professor of Botany,
although her title was not formally changed until 1878.
"The foundations which she laid were so broad and sure, the several
courses which she organized were so carefully outlined, that,
except where necessitated by more recent developments in science,
only very slight changes in the arrangement and distribution of
the work in her department have since been necessary.... She
organized and built up a botanical library which from the first
was second to that of no other college in the country, and is
to-day only surpassed by the botanical libraries of a few of our
great universities."
Fortunately the botanical library and the laboratories were housed
in Stone Hall, and escaped devastation by the fire.
Professor Hallowell was the first woman to be admitted to the
botanical lectures and laboratories of the University of Berlin.
She "was not a productive scholar", again we quote from Professor
Ferguson, "as that term is now used, and hence her gifts and her
achievements are but little known to the botanists of to-day. She
was preeminently a teacher and an organizer. Only those who knew
her in this double capacity can fully realize the richness of her
nature and the power of her personality." She retired from active
service at the college in February, 1902, when she was made
Professor Emeritus; but she lived in Wellesley village with her
friend, Miss Horton, the former professor of Greek, until her
death in 1911. Mrs. North gives us a charming glimpse of the
quaint and dignified little old lady. "When in recent years the
blossoming forth of academic dress made a pageant of our great
occasions, the badges of scholarship seemed to her foreign to the
simplicity of true learning, and she walked bravely in the
Commencement procession, wearing the little bonnet which henceforth
became a distinction."
Another early member of the Department of Botany, Clara Eaton
Cummings, who came to Wellesley as a student in 1876 and kept her
connection with the college until her death, as associate professor,
in 1906, was a scientific scholar of distinguished reputation.
Her work in cryptogamic botany gained the respect of botanists
for Wellesley.
With this pioneer group belongs also Professor Niles, who was
actively connected with the college from 1882 until his retirement
as Professor Emeritus in 1908. Wellesley shares with the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology her precious memories of
this devoted gentleman and scholar. His wise planning set the
Department of Geology and Geography on its present excellent
basis. At his death in 1910, a valuable legacy of geological
specimens came to Wellesley, only to be destroyed in 1914 by the
fire. But his greatest gifts to the college are those which no
fire can ever harm.
Anne Eugenia Morgan, professor in the Department of Philosophy
from 1878 to 1900; Mary Adams Currier, enthusiastic head of the
Department of Elocution from 1875 to 1896, the founder of the
Monroe Fund for her department; Doctor Speakman, Doctor Barker,
Wellesley's resident physicians in the early days; dear Mrs. Newman,
who mothered so many college generations of girls at Norumbega,
and will always be to them the ideal house-mother,--when old alumnae
speak these names, their hearts glow with unchanging affection.
But the most vivid of all these pioneers, and one of the most
widely known, was Carla Wenckebach. Of her, Wellesley has a picture
and a memory which will not fade, in the brilliant biography
[Carla Wenckebach, Pioneer (Ginn & Co. pub.).] by her colleague and
close friend, Margarethe Muller, who succeeded her in the Department
of German. As an interpretation of character and personality,
this book takes its place with Professor Palmer's "Life of Alice
Freeman Palmer", among literary biographies of the first rank.
Professor Wenckebach came to Wellesley in 1883, and we have the
story of her coming, in her own letters, given us in translation
by Professor Muller. She was attending the Sauveur Summer School
of Languages at Amherst, and had been asked to take some classes
there, in elementary German, where her methods immediately attracted
attention; and presently we find her writing:
"Hurrah! I have made a superb catch--not a widower nor a bachelor,
but something infinitely superior! I must not anticipate, though,
but proceed according to program....
"The other day, when I was in my room digging away at my Greek
lessons, the landlady brings in three visiting cards, remarking
that the three ladies who wish to see me are in the reception room.
I look at the cards and read: Miss Alice Freeman, President
(in German, Rector Magnificus) of Wellesley College; Mrs. Durant,
Treasurer; and Miss Denio, Professor of German Literature at
Wellesley College (Wellesley, you must know, is the largest and
most magnificent of all the women's colleges in the United States).
I immediately comprehended that these were three lions (grosse
Tiere), and I began to have curious presentiments. Fortunately,
l was in correct dress, so that I could rush down into our elegant
reception room. Here I made a solemn bow, the three ladies
returning the compliment. The president, a lady who must be a
good deal younger than myself, a real Ph.D. (of Philosophy and
History), told me that she had heard of me and therefore wished
to see me in regard to a vacancy at Wellesley College, which,
according to the statutes, must not be filled by a man so long
as a woman could be procured. The woman she was looking for must
be able, she said, to give lectures on German Literature in German,
and to expound the works of German writers thoroughly; she would
engage me for this position, she added, if she found that I was
the right person for it.
"I was dumfounded at the mere suggestion of this gift of Heaven
coming to me, for l had heard so many beautiful things about
Wellesley that the idea of possibly getting a position there
totally dazed me. Summoning up courage, however, I controlled
my wild joy, and pulling myself together with determination, I
gave the ladies the desired account of my studies, my journalistic
work, etc., whereupon the president informed me that she would
attend my class the next day."
The ordeal was successfully passed, and the position of "head
teacher in the German Department at Wellesley" was immediately
offered her. "Now you think, I suppose, that I fell round the
necks of those angels of joy! l didn't though!" she blithely
writes. But she agreed to visit Wellesley, and her description
of this visit gives us old College Hall in a new light.
"The place in itself is so beautiful that we could hardly realize
its being merely a school. The Royal Palace in Berlin is small
compared to the main building, which in length and stateliness
of appearance surpasses even the great Winter Palace in St. Petersburg.
The entrance hall is decorated with magnificent palms, with
valuable paintings, and choice statuary. The walls in all the
corridors are covered with fine engravings; there are carpets
everywhere and elegant pieces of furniture; there is gas, steam
heat, and a big elevator; everything, down to the bathrooms,
is princely."
Professor Muller adds, "Of course, she was 'kind enough' to accept
the position offered, although it was not especially lucrative.
'But what is a high salary,' she exclaims, 'in comparison to the
ease and enthusiasm with which I can here plow a new field of work!
That, and the honor attached to the position, are worth more to
me than thousands of dollars. I am to be a regular grosses Tier
now myself,--what fun, after having been a beast of burden so long!'"
From the first, Wellesley recognized her quality, and wisely gave
it freedom. In addition to her work in German, we owe to her the
beginnings of the Department of Education, through her lectures
on Pedagogy.
Speaking of her power, Professor Muller says: "Truly, as a teacher,
especially a teacher of youth, Fraulein Wenckebach was unexcelled.
There was that relieving and inspiring, that broadening and yet
deepening quality in her work, that ease and grace and joy, that
mark the work of the elect only,--of those rare souls among us
who are 'near the shaping hand of the Creator.'" And Fraulein
Wenckebach herself said of her profession: "Every teacher, every
educator, should above all be a guide. Not one of those who, like
signposts, stretch their wooden arms with pedantic insistence in
a given direction, but one, rather, who, after the manner of the
heavenly bodies, diffusing warmth and light and cheer, draws the
young soul irresistibly to leave its dark jungles of prejudice and
ignorance for the promised land of wisdom and freedom." And her
students testify enthusiastically to her unusual success. One
of them writes:
"To Fraulein Wenckebach as a teacher, I owe more than to any other
teacher I ever had. I cannot remember that she reproved any
student or that she ever directly urged us to do our best. She
made no efforts to make her lectures attractive by witticisms,
anecdotes, or entertaining illustrations. Yet her students worked
with eager faithfulness, and I, personally, have never been so
absorbed and inspired by any lectures as by hers. The secret of
her power was not merely that she was master of the art of teaching
and knew how to arouse interest and awaken the mind to independent
thought and inquiry, but that her own earnestness and high purpose
touched our lives and made anything less than the highest possible
degree of effort and attainment seem not worth while."--"We girls
used to say to each other that if we ever taught we should want
to be to our students what she was to us, and if they could feel
as we felt toward her and her work we should want no more. She
demanded the best of us, without demanding, and what she gave us
was beyond measure.--It was courses like hers that made us feel
that college work was the best part of college life."
These are the things that teachers care most to hear, and in the
nineteen years of her service at Wellesley, there were many students
eager to tell her what she had been to them. She writes in 1886:
"What a privilege to pour into the receptive mind of young American
girls the fullness of all that is precious about the German spirit;
and how enthusiastically they receive all I can give them!"
In the late eighties and early nineties there came to the college
a notable group of younger women, destined to play an important
part in Wellesley's life and to increase her academic reputation:
Mary Whiton Calkins, Margarethe Muller, Adeline B. Hawes, the able
head of the Department of Latin, Katharine M. Edwards, of the
Department of Greek, Sophie de Chantal Hart, of the Department
of English Composition, Vida D. Scudder, Margaret Sherwood, and
Sophie Jewett, of the Department of English Literature. In the
autumn of 1909, Sophie Jewett died, and never has the college been
stirred to more intimate and personal grief. So many poets, so
many scholars, are not lovable; but this scholar-poet quickened
every heart to love her. To live in her house, to sit at her
table, to listen to her "cadenced voice" in the classrooms, were
privileges which those who shared them will never forget. Her
colleague, Professor Scudder, speaking at the memorial service
in the College Chapel, said:
"We shall long rejoice to dwell on the ministry of love that was
hers to exercise in so rare a measure, through her unerring and
reverent discernment of all finest aspects of beauty; on her
sensitive allegiance to truth; on the fine reticence of her
imaginative passion; on that heavenly sympathy and selflessness
of hers, a selflessness so deep that it bore no trace of effort or
resolute purpose, but was simply the natural instinct of the soul....
"Let us give thanks, then, for all her noble and delicate powers;
for her all-controlling Christianity; for her subtle rectitude of
intellectual and spiritual vision; for her swift ardor for all
high causes and great dreams; for that unbounded tenderness toward
youth, that firm and steady standard of scholarship, that central
hunger for truth, which gave high quality to her teaching, and
which during twenty years have been at the service of Wellesley
College and of the Department of English Literature."
This very giving of herself to the claims of the college hampered,
to a certain extent, her poetic creativeness; the volumes that
she has left are as few as they are precious, every one "a pearl."
Speaking of these poems, Miss Scudder says: "And in her own
verse,--do we not catch to a strange degree, hushed echoes of
heavenly music? These lyrics are not wholly of the earth: they
vibrate subtly with what I can only call the sense of the Eternal.
How beautiful, how consoling, that her last book should have been
that translation, such as only one who was at once true poet and
true scholar could have made, of the sweetest medieval elegy
'The Pearl'!" And Miss Bates, in her preface to the posthumous
volume of "Folk-Ballads of Southern Europe", illumines for us
the scholarship which went into these close and sympathetic
translations:
"For the Roumanian ballads, although she pored over the originals,
she had to depend, in the main, upon French translation, which
was usually available, too, for the Gascon and Breton. Italian,
which she knew well, guided her through obscure dialects of Italy
and Sicily, but Castilian, Portuguese, and Catalan she puzzled out
for herself with such natural insight that the experts to whom
these translations have been submitted found hardly a word to
change. 'After all,' as she herself wrote, 'ballads are simple
things, and require, as a rule, but a limited vocabulary, though
a peculiarly idiomatic one.'"
Not the least poetic of her books, although it is written in prose,
is the delicate interpretation of St. Francis, written for children
and called "God's Troubadour."
"Erect, serene, she came and went
On her high task of beauty bent.
For us who knew, nor can forget,
The echoes of her laughter yet
Make sudden music in the halls."
["In Memoriam: Sophie Jewett." A poem by Margaret Sherwood,
Wellesley College News, May 1, 1913.]
In 1913, Madame Colin, who had served the college as head of
the Department of French since 1905, died during the spring recess
after a three days' illness. Madame Colin had studied at the
University of Paris and the Sorbonne, and her ideals for her
department were high.
Among Wellesley's own alumnae, only a very few who were officers
of the college during the first forty years have died. Of these
are Caroline Frances Pierce, of the class of 1891, who was librarian
from 1903 to 1910. To her wise planning we owe the conveniences
and comforts in the new library building which she did not live
to see completed.
In 1914, the Department of Greek suffered a deep loss in Professor
Annie Sybil Montague, of the class of 1879. Besides being a
member of the first graduating class, Miss Montague was one of
the first to receive the degree of M.A. from Wellesley. In 1882,
the college conferred this degree for the first time, and Miss
Montague was one of the two candidates who presented themselves.
One of her old students, Annie Kimball Tuell, of the class of 1896,
herself an instructor in the Department of English Literature, writes:
I think Miss Montague would wish that another of her pupils,
one who worked with her for an unusually long time, should
say--what can most simply and most warmly and most gratefully
be said--that she was a good teacher. So l want to say it
formally for myself and for all the others and for all the
years. For I suppose that if we were doomed to go before
our girls for a last judgment, the best and the least of us
would care just for the simple bit of testimony that we knew
our business and attended to it. And of all the good people
who made college days so rich for me, there is none of whom
I could say this more entirely than of Miss Montague.
Often as I have caught sight of her in the jostling crowd of
the second floor, I have felt a lively regret that she was
known to so few of the girls, and that her excellent ability
to give zest to drill and to stablish fluttering wits in order,
could not have a fuller and freer exercise. In the old days
we valued what she had to give, and in the usual silent,
thankless way, elected her courses as long as there were
courses to elect; but we have had to teach many years since
to know how special that gift of hers was. Just as closer
acquaintance with herself proved her breadth of mind and
sympathy not quite understood before, so more intelligent
knowledge of her methods showed them to be broader and more
fundamental than we had quite comprehended. With her handling,
rules and sub-rules ceased to jostle and confuse one another,
but grouped themselves in a simpler harmony which we thought
a very beautiful discovery, and grammar took on a reasonable
unity which seemed a marvel. So we took our laborious days
with cheer and enjoyed the energy, for we quite understood
that our work would lead to something.
But if there could be an interchange of grace and I could take
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