Howells and Harvard

CitationAaron, Daniel. 1980. Howells and Harvard. Harvard Library Bulletin XXVIII (4), October 1980: 438-442.

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Harvard University - Houghton Library / Harvard University. Harvard Library bulletin. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Library. Volume XXVIII, Number 4(October 1980)

Howells a11d Harvard l)auiel Aaron

N SEARCl-11}..,.G for a subject suitable for this occasion> I decided that a fe,v ,vords about Ho,veUs and Harvard n1ight be in order - not only because the Ho,vells fan1ily has presented the Kittef}T Point house to the University hut also because 1--Iolvclls' occasional

ref ercnccs to T-T ~rv:-1rd tcH ns son1cthing a hon t hjs not-so-simple attitude to\vard the ,vhole Iloston-Cinnbridgc socia] scene ..

It 1nust be said at once that IrJ arvard did not bulk very large in IPio,vc1ls' lif c nor ,vus I-I1lrvard nu1ch aiTcctcd by his proxitnity to it. I-I arvard took notice of him, of course, as early as 186 7, ,vhcn it con-f crrcd upon hi111 ~n honor~ry AJ\1. degree. It is not kno\vn ,vhcthcr or not he ,velcomed the uccori1panying privileges of ,vearing an aca-demic gu\vn 1 111arching in Con11ncnccn1cnt Day parades~ -and voting for the Overseers+ A fc\v years later he ,vas pressured by President Eliot into accepting a university ]ccturcship (he lectured for the next t\vo years on n1odcrn Jitcrarurc to a srnall c]ass), a·na in 1886 he had

+

the good sense to turn do\vn the offer of the Smith professorship. I say ''good sense'? because1 although he ,vas flattered by Harvard's

offer (as he ha<l been flattered in 1882 ,vhen he ,vus invited to join the facu]ty of The Johns Hopkins University·),. he knc,v in his heart that teaching col1ege boys ,vould not be the best use of his tin1e. Jan1es Russell Lo\vell, his friend and mentor, had ad vised again.st it: A prof essorsh, p [J.,o\vcH had \Vdttcn hin1] t:akcs a great d€al of timei andi if you teach jn any 1nore direct ,vays than by Jccturcs, uses up an in1rncnsc ~tock of nerves. Your illevitable ten1ptation (in some sorl your duty) ,viH be to make yourself le.11-nr-d- \Vhich you haYen)t the least need to be as author (if you only ha\'C inc -at your clhov; to cnrrcct your English no,v nnd theni n~ughty boyl).

Besides Lo,velJJs caveats, there ,vcrc the practical considerations to think about. For the bait of a1leged securit) 7 to be gained from a uni-versity· position> he \Vould take a si?.-able cut in earningsr And, to top it oft\ he did not rca1l y like lecturjng - even though he found that he ,v11s pretty good -at it.

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So Ho,vclls stayed dut of Academia and had the satisfaction of es-capjng ,vhat 1night have bcco1nc an irksome chore ,vhile savoring the honor of being invited to join~ ,vorshipful company.

Son1e of I-lo,vcllsi commentators (taking his recollections of Cam-bridge perhnps too unequivocally) have made much of his inve of the Ca1nbridge ,,rorthics and of his verbal k.nee-bendings~ And it is true that he ,vas1-as he once put it, "conscious of 1n y youthful in1dcquacyn ,vllcn he first encountered 111en ]ike Charles Eliot Norton (al\vays a somc,vhat inhibjting if kindly Cambridge presence for the outsider from Ohio), Hu]mes, Longf cllo,v, and l--10\veH. The Atln11tic A1onthly editor ,vho never got beyond the eighth grade had to sub111it to L.o\vell's correcting ''n1)r crrjng r-JJoulds ~nd sboulds. i-, On one occasion, tlo,vel]s recalled., "in the vast area of my ignorance! he specified my small -acquaintance \Vith a certain period of English poetry, saying1

''l ou~rc rather shady., there, old fcllo,v., ,, Fond -as he ,vas of Lo,vel1, Ho,vells ,vas al,vays conscious ,vhcn ,vith hin1 ((of an older -and .stricter ci vii iza tion th an 111 y o,vn~ an unbroken tradition, a 1n ore au th ori ta ti ve status .. His democracy ,vas 1nore of the head and mine 1norc of the heart, and his denied the equality \vhich 111ine affirmed.',

The 1nore one reads H O\vclls' books a.nd essays and rcvic,vs, the more apparent it becomes that his subservience js tinged ,vith irony-and somerin1es even ,vjrh resentment. For example, his revie,v of Pro-fessor Barrett ''-'cndcll's A LiterarJ History of A111erica in 1901 (,vhen Ho-\vells no Jongcr ro11ed around the Boston-Catnbridgc hub) ,vas an uncharacteristically· acidulous crjrique of Can1bridgc parochia1istn. Conceding the tnerits of \.,rendellJs book, he still found it ''priggish and

• + i , patrontz1ng.

It is as if! having been born a gcntlcnrnn., he \Vishcd conscicntjously to sin1plify h.in1sclf, and to learn the being and doing of his inf criors by a hu1nane cxatnin-ation of their conditions, and a considerate f orbcamnc:c to,vard their social de-fects. J f he had c-alicd -l1is book "l\. Sn1dy of Ne,v England Authorship in its Rise an<l J)ccUnc, l\fjth Son1e Glances at Anlerican Literature,° one might stt1l have f onnd hin1 ,v::n1ting in proportion.

''-'hat v\Tendcll presumably failed to grasp, among other things., ,vas that Boston had outlived its ]iterary primacy and that as Harvard be-can1e less literary., the rest of the country became more so. Ho,vells apologized to '''endell some thirteen years later for the hrirshness of his revie,v (jr ,vas ,vrittent he said, uin a very abomin-able spirie"), but

Harvard University - Houghton Library / Harvard University. Harvard Library bulletin. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Library. Volume XXVIII, Number 4(October 1980)

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jr ,v2s an authentic expression· of an attitude he usually repressed or n1orc guarded]y conveyed.

Harvard is not spccifical1y 1nentioned in the n1any ironical 2sides on social inequality that dot his 1·cvic,vs, but it does figure proxnincntJy in one of hi~ ~trongest novels, The Landlord at Lion's I-lead.

This novel, you \viii rec~ll., is the story of a young n1averick from Nc,v l-Ia1npshire4 He is unafRicted. l)y the Nc\v Engl~nd conscience -nnd is even a sort of blackguard in the I-IoYvcHsian sense, but he is Jikallle for all ]1is ungcntlcn1anly self-centered aggressiveness~ Thomas Jefferson Durgin (his very name is an affront) stands out an1ong the elegant scions of Boston Hkc a bear at a tea. party. Jn ,vhat Ho,rells understood to be the Harvard student slang of the 189osl he js a '"'1ay/) a. tern, of contctnpt applied to the yokeJs or outsiders \vho ~ttend the University. Jeff exhihits nbad forn1·" by Hurvard standards, partly bcf:ause he is naughty by nature and partly (:is even his severest critic in the 'novel concedes) because he has been socially j11-treated.

But jnstead of bcjng co~vcd by his classier ciassn1ates, Jeff f ee]s con-ten1pt for their ,veaknesses and pride in his o,vn manliness, and it tells us something ahout Ho,veHs that he later confessed a decided liking for his blunt amoral hero ,vho shocked his betters and felt no guilt about his effrontery~

Ho,vclls' picture of Har,1"ard in Tbc Landlord at Lion's I-lend is co1nplcn1cntcd by an essay George Santayana ,vrote for the Hrrrr,}ard AJ 011 tbl y 1n 189 2, five years bcf ore the publication of the novel. It ,vas called 'tA GJirnpsc of Yale.'' In this piece, Santaynn2 posed simple barbarian d crnocratic Yale ( \vhcrc ,:~divisions of \Vea.Ith and breeding'' ,verc "not n1adc conspicuousn), against sophisticated I Iarvard, don1ina-tcd h) 7 a city '\vith \vell-111arked social sets, the 1nost fashionable of ,vhich sends aH jrs boys co coIJcgc.' 1 They f orn1, he \Vrotc, ''the n1ost conspicuous n1asculine contingent of Boston soctety, and the necessity falls upon thc1n of dctcr111ining ,vhich of their coJ]cgc friends -arc so-cia11y presentable. This circu1nstancc brings out at I-Iarvard an element of snobhcry \V hich at Yale is in abeyance.''

Clearly Jeff D ,vould ha,rc l1ccn happier at )7 ale \Yhere the srudcnts according to Santayana ,vere not over-scrupulous~ loved lifet trusted jn successt 2nd deployed "a ready jocoscncssH and udemocratic amiability·, and a radiant conviction that there is nothing better than one ts self. 't

So far as I kno,v, Ho,vclls knc\v or c2.rcd Jittlc about Yale, and

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besides the n1rgets of his satire ,vere rjght under his nose. JwJ c is at his best ,,,hen he sho\vs a proccssio11 of proper Boston gjrls led by a Roston 111atron scouting the tcrritor)T of the Yard occupied by the jay.s and the.ir ( 'f olksn and ad v::incjng to,vard t hc111 '\vith son1ething of that collective intrepidity and individual apprehension characteristic of people in slu,nming. n Jcffi along ,vith a fe\v other jays, is invited by· one of his prop er cl a. ssn1 a tc s to a prop er tea. Th cir presence is ex-pected to add an agreeable frisson to the f-ashionablc gathcdng. For "society,'~ Ho,vel1s blandly--notes, "had just been stirred hy the read-ing of a certain book L he ,vas obvious! )T ref erring to the llev. Charles ?vL Sheldon ~s lachryn1osc evangelical bcst-scHcr~ 111 His Stepsl pub-lished a year before T/Je Land lord] ,vhich had then a very great vogue) and severa] peop]e had been do,vn a,nong the ,vretched -at North End doing good in a conscience-stricken effort to avert the millenium ,v hich the hook in question seemed to threaten." Hence the lady-hostess \vho had alrcad)r done good ,vork at the North End (ccaught at the chance to n1cct the co1lege jays .in a sp1rit of Christian charity,, and en] tsted 11severa] brave gir Js ,v ho \Vould not be afraid of all the jays in coJlege. ~.,

The revie,v-er in the Advocate faulted Ho,vclJs' one-sided vic,v of HarYard and n1aintaincd that the tcrn1~ ~'jay/i signifying "the rustic-ro\vdyish ch1ss of 1ncn/"' ,v2s 1'alrcady obsolete here, if indeed jt \Vas ever heard .. H I-le found n1any virtues in Ho\veJls' novel but concluded that the author's l{no,vlcdgc of Harvard had Hbeen acquired more by hca rss y t112 n ohs crva tio n.''

1-lo\vclls hirnsclft jn a prefatory note he ,vrote for the 1909 edition of Tbe Laudlord at l...1io11's fiend., conceded that undergraduate life cou]d only be 1'truly learned,,. from Hits o,vn Jeveln and that he had "a hvays been ready to stand corrected by undergradua tc experience.'' Prcsun1ahly his son, John n1cad I-lo\vclls (\vho graduated fron1 I-Iar-vard in 1891) provi<le<l him ,vith local color about Harvard 1s "moods and n1anners'i - at least Ed\Yln Cady so informs n1c. And Ho,vells intirnates as n1uch ju his preface. Granting that the ,vord ' 1jay" 1night be obsolete, he thought that Jeff Durgin ,vas not ~'altogether out of dra\ving. '' "\,\'hat he chiefly prized in Durgin 1 he ,vrote, ''if I n1ay· go to the hottom of the jnkhorn, is the realization of that anti-Puritan quality ,vhich ,vas al\vays vexing the heart of Puritanism, and ,vhich I had constantly fc]t one of the most interesting facts in my observation of Ne,v England~ti

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The modest clain1 that his handling of the Harvard scene ,vas not far off the n1ark is borne out by hvo entries on Cnn1bridge ''1nuckcrsu ,vhich appeared in the 1906 volun1e of the 1-Iarvard Advocate. The first complained ahout the ragamuffins infesting the Yard: "Thcjr speech is neither agreeable nor their n1anners subdued, and thejr \Vho]c attitude points to -an obscure if not questionable origin/' The other objected to the presence of the non-Harvard Cantabrigians at '~our evening lec-tures,'"' and the Sunday invasion of the Yard 11by young n1cn and \Votnen of the Jo,vcr classes and tastes~-n Only by· barring the g:ttes to 1'this unsightJy and 1ncddlcson1e cro,vd ... ,vho are really our ene1nicsu could the Hheauty and dignity·"' of Harvard be preserved. I-Io,vclls the rea]ist in search of his n1nterial might, 1 .suggest, have come -across si1ni1ar-sounding paragraphs so offensjve to his cqualitarian bias.

"\i\1hcthcr so or not, Ho,vells had been affirming his faith in a Jeffer-sonian natnra1 aristocracy from his earliest days in the A tln11tic, and it n1ay not be amiss to end n1y remarks ,vith a quotation from a piece he ,vrote in 1870 during his Harvard lectureship: a rcvic,v of Tbe Bazar Book of Etiquette. Tbe Cnre of tbe l1erso11, A1nnuers, and Cerenzon-irrls.

i\·1en and ,von1en born into rich ::111d [ nsh1onablc society ,vj]l ahvnys be au fa it in its custo rns; and pcop le , vhosc \Vish to rise in to th o.t kind of society is cruelly granted ,vnl not be kept fro111 betraying their unfash.ionab]c origin by all the behavior books that ever ,vere 1Nrittcn ... AH the ,visdom needed for the career of the ordinary repuh1ican aspirant can be condensed into three rules, ,vhich he nrn.y \Vritc do,vn on h.is rcvcrsib]e p:-wper c.:uff; Keep out of fine 2. Be c]canly, sin1p]c, and honest; 3. Never be esharncd of a b]under. F,,•crything beyond these is vanity.

Harvard University - Houghton Library / Harvard University. Harvard Library bulletin. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Library. Volume XXVIII, Number 4(October 1980)

CONTR[BUTORS TO THIS ISSUE D AK IEL AA Ros-is ,, ic tor S. 1~ ho1n n:s Professor of Eng Hs h :1. n d An1 crican Li tcra-turc at Harvard; his books include A1cn of Good Hope: A Sto1-y of A1nerican Pro gi-essives ( l 95 1), lVriters on tbe Le{ t: Episodes in A1uericau Literary Co1n-11nu1ir111 ( 1961) 1 and T/Je U11rim-itte11 lVar: A111erican l-Vriters and tbe Civil JVar ( 1973).

J\{. D~ Fv.J.D, Reference Librarjan in the I Jttaucr l..iLrary at Harvard, .is the author of Tbe-Structure of l 7 ioleuce: Anned Forces as Social Systen1s ( 1977) and of :a numbcr of artic]cs, inc]udjng "The Early Evo]ution of the Authori-tative Text'' in the January 1 978 IiARVARD L1BnAnY BuLLE'nh".

To1TH E!ii.1 E RsON W F.BS'ff R Gt: F..GG ( l\ 1 rs. \;V ard L Gregg) is a n1cn1h er of the Radcliff c Cb:ss of 1931. She edited One First Love ... The Leticts of Ellen 1..-ouisa Tucker to Ralp/J W nld o E1J1er:rou, ·wh.ich ,vas. published by the Harvard University Press in 1962~

Li:o ]\ 1. KA 1s ER I Prof cssor of Classi ca 1 Stu di cs at Loyo La Uni vcrsi ty of Cru cago, is the author of many articles, including contributions to se\Ten previous issues of the IluLLETJK.

DA v Ill J. N ORDLOH is Asso CJ ate Professor of English at India nri University. Hjs dissertation at Indiana ( 1969) ,vas ~, ;_\ Crjcjcal Edition of ,v. D. 1-Io,veJls" J' ears of Aly Y' outll' and he is one of the editors of the Selected Edition of Ho,vells thnt is being published by the India.na Uni,·crsity Press.

E. ,~,_ P1rcHER is a 1nc1nbcr of the Dcparnnent of English of the U niver~ity of A]berra. 1-:lis publications inc]ude several contributjons to Tbe Librnry and his dissertation, at Leeds .. ,vns '~A Studv of Short Prose Ficuon PubHshed in Britain in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Ccntur.ies, "'ith a Catalogue of Talcs in Seventy-Five Rcprcs-cntativc Co]Icctions, 178;-1820. 11

i\11:RlON !VI. SEALTSj Jn., is Henry A. Pochm~nn P1ofessor of English. at the U n1-vcrsjty of \~lisconsin; 0~1e of his hooks] A.1 elville's Rending ( 1966) ,vas orig-inally serialized in the Bu1.1.F.T(N andi n1orc rc:ccntly, he has contributed to the January 1978 and July l 979 issues.

ALAN SEABURGi Curator of 1\-1:inuscripts at the Andover-Han .. •arJ Thcologica] Lil >n1.ry t ":ras-Archivist of the Unitarian U nj versa] ist A 5SO c i at ion before co1n-i n g to his prcscn t position at f-Iarvard in l 9 7 o. I-I is arti cl c, , .. Son1 c Unitarian M-anuscripts at Andover-H2rvard, 1] appeared in the January 197 8 BuLT.tT1N ..

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