Charles W. Eliot: 'Enlarger of the Common Life'

I

MR. CROTHERS always said that he thought it would be impossible to convey to the next generation the remarkable effect produced on his contemporaries by President Eliot. His written words are comparatively commonplace, and you could not reproduce — for those who never saw him enter a room — that subtle thing we call ‘presence.’ Other men are tall and commanding, although it might be said that almost no other man had his voice — whatever the quality was, it carried with it the expectation of his hearer’s being impressed, which is half the battle in public speaking.

I remember reading a letter of one of Lord Chatham’s contemporaries in which he described an episode of the day. Lord Chatham had made a vigorous plea for a very unpopular measure. Silence reigned as he slowly left the chamber, but, as he passed out the door, an excited member of the opposition sprang to his feet and began an angry rejoinder. He was going full tilt when he saw, in the doorway, Lord Chatham returning. The orator stopped, became confused, and sank slowly to his seat. The narrator went on: ‘This may seem surprising to anyone unacquainted with Lord Chatham, but not a man present thought it anything but natural — nay, even fitting.’ There is something about the incident that made me think of Mr. Eliot. He clothed even an unimportant fact or statement in a garment of such dignity that it did not shuffle in and out of the conversation, but remained as an intrinsic part of it.

I remember an insignificant episode to which he gave real meaning. It occurred in the First Parish Church, of which he was a member. A meeting after the morning service was called to acknowledge a legacy given by a maiden lady in memory of her brother. Those who remained were conscious of that little stir of excitement which an unknown benefaction always produces. The chairman called the meeting to order and, in that perfectly colorless monotone which seems to belong to a presiding officer, as such, read the donor’s brief statement, that she wished to give to this church, of which he was long a devoted member, a gift in tender memory of her brother. The gift was three hundred and fifty dollars, of which the annual interest was to be used for the charities of the church. The chairman continued: ‘Is there a motion to receive this gift?’ For just a moment there was that awful silence which comes when people are hastily adjusting their minds to the unexpected. Mr. Crothers was rising to his feet when, from the seat behind, came that wonderfully rich, mellow voice of President Eliot, speaking in the first person and repeating slowly, word for word, the terms of the gift. ‘I move that we of the First Parish receive the

gift of Miss-of three hundred and

fifty dollars, the interest to be used for the charities of the parish, a gift given in tender memory of her brother, long a devoted member of this church. It is such gifts that bind us together.’ There was not a person present who did not feel that the little gift had been suddenly ennobled and clothed in imperishable garments.

Mr. Crothers once wrote an essay on seventeenth-century prose. As I read it over the other day, it seemed to express just what I want to say about President Eliot. The essayist had been discussing Izaak Walton, Thomas Fuller, Jeremy Taylor, John Milton, Lord Clarendon, and John Bunyan. He wrote, ‘If I were to indicate the chief characteristic of these men, I should say it was their ability to give an uncommon expression to common sense. Prose does not need to soar, it is pedestrian in its habits. It is at its best with its feet on the solid earth. But with his feet on the ground a man may dawdle on the path till we lose all interest in his progression. Or he may walk with a firm confident stride as one who knows where he is going and who enjoys the wholesome exercise. The characteristic of the great prose writers of the seventeenth century was a huge heroic common sense.’ Then he went on, ‘There is a prose which for power to stir us is surpassed only by the rarest kind of poetry.’ Of Mr. Eliot’s writing I do not think that is true, but when he was there in person to say what he had to say with that wonderful voice, it was extraordinarily impressive. Our common language stood out word by word. I have said when he was there to say it — for he was preeminently a speaker, not a writer.

He had the gift of words. I see him coming down the linguistic highway of mankind bringing with him words freighted with meaning, words freshly coined, words not yet used and battered about until they had lost all their sharp edges. He brought out their primary meanings. His thoughts of our life here upon earth were full, rich, deep thoughts, but they were simple and uncomplicated. We have an ample vocabulary in which to express delicate shades of meaning or no meaning, but he had no use for words like ‘ intriguing ’ or ‘meticulous.’

As I speak of words, memory will recall to those who knew him the phrasing of some honorary degree, or of those inscriptions for which he was so famous. How beautiful some were, and how dignified and adequate all of them! The absence of exaggeration suggests that they were understatements, but it seems quite otherwise to me. He brought to view the basic romantic reasons that use and custom have obscured. He had the ability to make us see, perhaps for the first time, the deep underlying meanings which only the thoughtful sense. I love particularly the inscription on the Washington Post Office in which he and Woodrow Wilson shared: —

The final phrase is the very one for which my mind was searching, it so entirely expresses his attitude — that of the essentially democratic man. So long as we judge the value of our lives by the standard of experiences common to all men, we do not get estranged from democracy. ‘Enlarger of the common life.’ To President Eliot that life was capable of wade and rich variety, but it never ceased to be the common life, and, although he had a certain spiritual awkwardness that separated him from the common man, he had none which separated him from the common life. He was free of the artificialities, the cynicisms, that divide.

I remember once hearing him speak on ‘The Durable Satisfactions of Life,’ and was a little shocked to hear him mention food as one of them. We are amusingly inconsistent about food. For all the painstaking effort, the time and money we spend on it, we rather despise those who talk much about it. But as I listened to Mr. Eliot while he slowly brought forth the homely joys that man has had from the beginning of time, I suddenly felt the pleasant physical satisfaction of shelter and home, and rest and food. To all the experiences that have lifted primitive man into something better, he paid the highest tribute. Building the home, providing food and shelter, the love of wife and children, were always to him of very deep and fundamental importance, and he never elaborated their interrelations into the dangerously complicated pattern that so often obscures — especially in the present-day novel — these vital relations and responsibilities. His deep happiness in an unusually rich and tender family life was the pleasure that every right-minded man since Adam has been able to enjoy.

II

One cannot speak of Mr. Eliot without dwelling and liking to dwell on his tenderness in illness, not only of his own family, but of others. A father who went to him about a student son who was drinking too much, or who was getting into evil ways, might receive what seemed to him scant sympathy, but the parent with a physically handicapped son who was ‘making good’ found in him an interested and sympathetic listener.

During our first years in Cambridge there descended upon us one of those domestic cyclones with which all families are familiar. The influenza had run its devastating course. Mr. Crothers had taken his turn perpendicularly, as he always did, but the rest of us were in various staggering stages of convalescence when the baby came down with pneumonia and, at the same time, the plumbing suddenly became useless. President Eliot heard of our plight. At nine o’clock the next morning he was at our door. He had already interviewed the doctor, the owner of the house, and the plumber, and from all three he had serious reports. The trouble with the plumbing would involve tearing up floors and putting in new pipes. It might take two weeks. He had come to ask us to move to his house for that time. The two older children had already been taken into the homes of friends, but Mr. Crothers, the nurse, the four-year-old, the baby, and I accepted the generous hospitality. One does not forget such kindnesses! There was nothing too trifling to do for us if it would add to our comfort. Noticing that the nurse was an Englishwoman, he asked her if she would like beer with her meals. She reluctantly declined. Instantly the desire to know, which was such a marked characteristic, asserted itself. I heard him ask kindly, ‘Is it a conscientious objection or is it your liver?’ It was her liver.

And Mrs. Eliot! For, after all, generosity of that size and nature comes out of the housekeeper in the end. Yet she took it all so easily, almost as a matter of course, that five people — one a very sick baby — should literally take possession of their orderly house.

The family life was delightful. Beside the deeper feeling, they both had an indispensable liking for each other’s society. She had none of that reforming fervor that often makes a devoted wife so trying. His little foibles were observed with a quick smile and dismissed, as if she said, ‘So like Charles.’ I should suppose she was probably the only one who took him lightly.

She was so handsome — so adequate to the demands made upon her. Her singing was a delight, and her sense of humor supplied a felt need. She was an irresistible mimic, and he would draw her on to telling us, as recent arrivals, of old Mrs.-and her lap dog. He would sit beaming with anticipatory pleasure as she began the tale — and no wonder! I cannot think we should have enjoyed the old lady herself half so much. She told us of a second-hand furniture dealer, whom we already knew, who had endeared himself to her by confiding that he lived in Brighton but had social privileges in Allston. She retailed the conversation with him over an old desk she thought of buying. Suddenly she was the man himself, head on one side, weighing as a lover of antiques the desk and its appropriate setting in her library. ‘Ah, Mrs. Eliot,’ he would say, ‘I can see the room as it is now,’ — an expression of cold disfavor crossing his face, — adding with an ecstatic smile, ‘and as it will be when this desk is placed.’

During those two weeks I saw an entirely different side of President Eliot, the very human, simple person behind the imposing exterior. He sat on the floor and built block houses for the four-year-old. He was directly, very directly, interested in every detail of our lives. One day at dinner he said to me, ‘How much salary did you have in your former parish? Did you save anything?’ Curiously enough, t he question seemed neither impertinent nor illtimed. I recognized that his interest was impersonal. What he wanted to know was how early it was possible for young people to marry. How much could they live on? How much could they save? I told him that we had started with a salary of $1,500, which had been increased to $3500 by the time we left, eight years later. That we were a family of five, including Mr. Crothers’s mother, and that, during the eight years, we had acquired two additional babies. That, aside from a life-insurance policy, we had not been able to save. He nodded comprehendingly. ‘I seE,’ was all he said, but I felt that I had passed my examination.

III

He had, I think, one of the most radiant smiles I ever saw. It lighted up that rugged, scarred face in a strangely beautiful way. You were so warmed and welcomed by it that you wanted to enter right into the intimacies of friendship, but there was always some little difficulty about the door. It usually ended by his coming out and standing on the mental doorstep, where you had a brief but pleasant conversation, and then you went your way. In his familiar world of family and kindred he moved freely, but he never seemed to me to have any way of giving easy access to people outside that circle, and was shut in rather than unwilling to go out.

His terse, succinct way of talking had an immediate effect on the people with whom he conversed. There was a prompt delivery of whatever idea one had, but no lingering on the way. Into even the most inconclusive, wandering style of discourse there crept a sudden incisiveness. It was not that one was consciously hurried, but the little personal observations, the things not directly bearing on the matter in hand, quickly dropped to the bottom.

Some of his interviewers must have thought a little of Victoria’s plaintive remark that Mr. Gladstone always addressed her as if she were a public meeting. It was not that President Eliot had a hortatory style in private life. He did not ‘address’ you, but he did have something of the Socratic method of question and answer. Such a technique had an alarmingly devastating effect on conversation. He failed to get the little intimate glimpses of the people with whom he talked which would have been revealed in desultory, leisurely discussion, but he did get the facts. He had, of course, the stimulus of opposition, for it was built up rather solidly about him, but he could never have had the pleasure of verbal fireworks, nor the easy give-and-take that helps one to understand how the other man feels.

His mind was always interested in the reason why. Success or failure he accepted at once; no time was lost in the contemplation of an accomplished fact; but the question remained: Why did it succeed or why did it fail? He left no mental stone unturned to ascertain. With the little irrelevant facts left over, his mind refused to deal.

Is n’t it in Our Mutual Friend that Dickens tells of the speculative junk dealer who among his wares finds a collection of bones, conceives the idea that an entire skeleton would be salable, and gets a medical student to assemble them? To his surprise, there are some bones left over, and he frugally puts them up on a shelf labeled ‘Human Warious.’ Mr. Eliot would have sympathized with the effort to make the scattered bones serve an orderly purpose, but he would have given no shelf room to anything as vague as ‘Human Warious.’ When he had assembled what he considered the relevant facts, he closed the conversation or the investigation, with a promptness that was often disconcerting. As a concrete example of what I mean, there is the story of the violent ringing of the doorbell at 1 A.M., taking Mr. Eliot to the door to find a distraught young man who immediately addressed him on the subject of his soul’s salvation, and ended with, ‘Something tells me that you are going to Hell.’ Mr. Eliot replied briefly, ‘You have been misinformed,’ and closed the door.

His attitude toward education and toward trade-unions was, it seemed to me, essentially democratic. He felt that the classical education was our inheritance from those who planned a gentleman’s career, and therefore inappropriate to a modern democracy; and he feared the trade-union as a despotic force curtailing the common man’s liberty to work where and when he wished.

As for the higher education of women, he saw it, during his long life, struggle for birth; he saw its precarious infancy and its sturdy youth. During the formative years of Radcliffe College he stood steadily its friend when friends were few, but the whole question of the education of women lay very distinct and separate in his mind from the education of men. He wished all the riches of the intellectual life to be made available to women in order that their development might be more interesting and varied, but a doubt always lingered in his mind lest, as a result of such training, women might be lured from the home and the cradle.

I remember meeting a former dean of Radcliffe College just after the Radcliffe Commencement and asking her casually how it went. She spoke of various incidents, ending with, ‘And President Eliot, looking so magnificent, warily avoiding any reference to higher education, but rocking the cradle as usual ’ — and she gave a long-drawn sigh.

I understood how she felt. There was something about that aloof look of the President’s that was final. He had not appeared worried, nor had he pleaded for domestic life, but he had stood there to remind them that erudition — that a Ph. D. — was to be judged only by the candidate’s attitude toward the real things of life. If higher education meant that our college women were to be diverted from marriage and from the happy rearing of children, it could not and ought not to take deep root. It was another instance of his insistence on keeping the big human relations clear-cut. All the little fluttery theories folded their wings before a certain massive common sense.

His active career was so prolonged that he inevitably lived to be called old-fashioned. He never, indeed, took extended flights from his base — but his base was an extraordinarily broad one and made of tested material.

IV

There are endless stories of President Eliot. I am inclined to think that the stories that are told of a person are more valuable than most biographical material, and that it does not so much matter whether they are true or not. I used to be disturbed by the entirely, or largely, apocryphal stories that were attached to Mr. Crothers, but I stopped trying to deny or correct them, for the only ones that stuck were the ones that were like him, even if they did belong to somebody else. I think the stories of Mr. Eliot are likewise most revealing. To anyone who knew him, the stories are better than any description.

I like the story of his observing a little newsboy with a twisted face, surrounded by a jeering circle of boys who, for the moment, were not boys, but primitive savages. Ignoring the tormentors, he spoke across to the victim. ‘Don’t mind them. Do you see,’pointing to his own face, ‘I have something, too? Just go along with your work and don’t mind.’ The advice was his own method of dealing with such difficulties

— no self-pity, no ‘love your enemies,’and, more than all, no dwelling upon it. ‘Go along with your work and don’t mind.‘

I always liked the one about his buying a horse. He went to the stable to inquire about the possibilities. The owner was not there, but the man in charge brought out a horse, and, after much talk and a trial drive, Mr. Eliot said he would take him. When the owner returned, his employee informed him of the sale.

‘But,’ asked the owner, ‘did you tell him that the horse would n’t back?’

‘No,’ replied the man, ‘I did n’t tell him.’

Then this remarkable horse dealer said, ‘I guess I ’ll go up and tell him myself,’ which he did.

Mr. Eliot was gravely concerned and hesitated some time.

‘He should have told me,’ he said, more than once, ‘but I like the horse. He has points that are important to me

— and I seldom back.‘

His granddaughter relates a delightful incident. In summer President Eliot always took over the housekeeping, gravely ordering the meals and attending very efficiently to all the details. Late one afternoon, at Northeast Harbor, a man and his wife from the summer colony called. They were generous benefactors of Harvard and great admirers of Mr. Eliot. As they rose to go, Mr. Eliot said he was sorry Mrs. Eliot was not at home, but that he would be very glad to have them stay to supper, which was their evening meal in summer. They were delighted to accept. As Mr. Eliot passed through the hall, he met his granddaughter. ‘Please tell Mary [the cook] that the friends will stay to supper.’ The little girl whispered, ‘Shall I tell her to cook something else?’ ‘Let me see,’ said Mr. Eliot, ‘we are to have liver and doughnuts — no, that is enough.’ They sat down to the frugal meal. As the liver appeared and was passed, the lady quietly declined. Mr. Eliot looked at her, smiled kindly, and said, ’It is all there is.’ Thus admonished, she meekly took the liver. When it was removed, a large plate of doughnuts appeared. Again the lady absent-mindedly declined, and again Mr. Eliot smiled — she was reminded, and took a doughnut. The husband felt that something must be done to redeem his wife’s slips, and he said to her, ‘Oh, Anna, if we could only have doughnuts like these!’ Anna responded feebly, ‘I wish I knew how to make them.’ Mr. Eliot said quietly to the waitress, ‘Please ask Mary to come here,’ and, as the cook appeared, he observed, ‘Mrs.— would like to have you give her the recipe for the doughnuts.’ A paper and pencil were forthcoming and the details written down then and there. Both the simplicity and the literal-mindedness were so like him.

His absolute directness of speech was a matter of course to those who knew him, but Matthew Arnold, with his weary, disillusioned, but subconsciously superior attitude, must have been surprised when it was directed to him. Mr. Eliot was making a brief stay in London soon after Mr. Arnold had returned from his visit to the United States. He sent, as he had been requested to do, a note to apprise Mr. Arnold of his arrival. Mr. Arnold responded at once. What would Mr. Eliot enjoy? Was there anyone he would like to meet? Would he dine here, or go there?

‘No,’ Mr. Eliot replied, ‘I have not time enough here to do much, but if you are still school inspector in East London, I should like to go on your rounds with you.’

Mr. Arnold said that he was to visit the board schools in his district on the next day, and would call for him. They visited school after school, and in each one went through the same dreary round. The children were called up to recite, class after class. Then from the platform, in the presence of the children, Mr. Arnold put the teacher’s shortcomings plainly before her. Finally, when he arrived at the pupil teacher, a poorly prepared, pitiful older girl, her faults were found to be almost too many to enumerate — but Mr. Arnold did his best.

‘In every instance,’ said Mr. Eliot in telling of his experience, ‘we left the pupil teacher in tears, and in several instances the teachers as well.’ He continued, ‘At luncheon, Mr. Arnold asked me for my impressions of the East London schools and of our morning together. I said something about the schools, and then I told him that his method of inspecting would not, I felt sure, be tolerated even in the backwoods of America. He seemed a good deal surprised,’ Mr. Eliot concluded drily.

I was a victim of the same directness when, about fourteen years ago, we bought our first Ford. As I came down the aisle after church, a few days after the purchase, Mr. Eliot greeted me with, ‘How is the new Ford?’ I replied that it was all that we had dreamed it would be. ‘But,’ asked he, ‘who drives the car?’ I said, ‘The youngest is already driving. The next youngest gets her license next week. I am observing them and soon I shall drive.’ He shook his head. ‘.It will take you a long time.’ ‘Oh no,’ I replied, ‘I feel more cheerful about it. I look out the window any hour of the day and see the stupidest people driving Fords, and I feel certain that, if they have learned to drive, I can.’ ‘But,’ said he, smiling, ‘perhaps they began younger.’

Mr. James has told the story of Harvard’s conferring an honorary degree on Prince Henry, and of President Eliot’s rather reluctant part in it. I suppose one would have had to be present to have got the full flavor of the occasion. The nervousness of Professor Münsterberg, the entire serenity of Mr. Eliot, the full rounded sound of that ‘from the oldest of republics to the youngest of empires,’ and the conferring of the degree as to the ‘grandson of Queen Victoria’ — it was so perfectly consistent throughout.

The next day, on the way to the square, Mr. Crothers stopped to speak to a professorial friend, who was amusedly relating how Professor Münsterberg had sought out the President early in the week, to be sure that he knew what a member of the imperial family would expect in the way of etiquette. President Eliot brushed it lightly aside. Prince Henry had come to visit a republic. It would seem suitable to receive him according to the usual custom of conferring degrees at Harvard University. Professor Münsterberg, picturing the scene, felt he must make one last effort.

‘But surely Prince Henry will be given the central chair?’

‘No,’ said President Eliot. ‘I had not thought of making a change. That is the chair I usually occupy in conferring degrees.’

As the two men were laughing over the incident, they saw President Eliot crossing the street to speak to them. The professor turned to him and said, ‘I hear that Professor Münsterberg has taken to his bed after the excitements of yesterday.’

‘Ah,’ said President Eliot, smiling, ‘I understand that he did not like my allusion to the young man’s grandmother.’

He went on to speak with real liking of Prince Henry, whom he had found unpretentious and agreeable.

The Prince had told Mr. Eliot that he found this American trip pleasantly varied. At home his official duty, as the Kaiser’s brother, was usually representing him at funerals.

Once in a while you hear a story about President Eliot that most people are surprised to find true. There is one that his architect tells of him. Behind his newly acquired Brattle Street house was a row of apartment houses. The architect suggested that they should be ‘planted out’ with a line of poplars. Mr. Eliot’s reply was, ‘No, I think not. That would cut off their view of the sunset.’

V

A sense of humor is usually listed after the sterling qualities have been enumerated, but, curiously enough, it is more honored in the breach than in the observance. No one likes to have it omitted from the list of his characteristics, and many a victim of biography would rather sacrifice some of the more imposing virtues that lead the procession than have this insignificant attribute withheld.

One of the older professors at Harvard, in speaking of President Eliot’s magnanimity toward those who opposed him, said, ‘He never minded opposition. He expected it and was prepared to meet it. But let anyone ridicule his plan ever so mildly and he was undone. He did not abandon his idea, but he was disconcerted, and for the time being his forward movement was interrupted.’

Mr. Crothers used to say that the seeds of immortal fame rarely germinate in the soil of a successful career. A man like Mr. Eliot conceives an idea, such as the elective system, which is a great step forward in education, and he carries it through. To those who come after him the achievement seems only part of the natural process of evolution, and they cannot, even if they would, go back over the path which he has made into a road. The one who does a piece of really important constructive work has great allies. The old system is, in the minds of many, already discredited. Abortive attempts at improvement have cleared away the underbrush for the future road builder. The fiery radical has advocated changes so destructive that his ideas seem safe and possible. He needs keen intelligence, a discriminating sense of what can and what cannot be done, and, above all, strength to overcome the inertia which is the deadliest enemy of the reformer, and courage and conviction to keep up the pressure until the work is completed.

It is not easy to estimate President Eliot’s accomplishment in looking back. The forces of the opposition dwindle in perspective. The disheartening failures which he had the insight to recognize as incidents and not finalities, a public opinion which, for twenty years, continued to be antagonistic, demanded a patience beyond praise. He did not have the temperamental inability of many idealists to do what we call ‘spade work.’ He said, ‘My life has been much more varied and interesting than that of most men, but I should say that nineteen twentieths of it was drudgery.’

One cannot take the word ‘ drudgery ’ quite as literally as he did, for not only did the intelligence with which he went through the daily round give it dignity and worth, but much of it was highly decorative. To walk along in a procession, arrayed in academic splendor, doubtless became drudgery to him, but to many it might seem the very topmost feather of fortune’s cap.

Not long ago I reread his little book, John Gilley. The reading of it was like an hour spent with him. The introduction begins, ‘This little book describes with accuracy the actual life of one of the to-be-forgotten millions. Is this life a true American type? If it is, there is hope for our country.’

All through this accurate account you feel Mr. Eliot’s constant pleasure in contemplating the activities of an intelligent fisherman on the Maine coast. He describes his work in clearing his rocky acres, his experience in building a new boat. The details are immensely interesting to him. He does not simply state that one of John Gilley’s ventures was loading cobblestones on a boat and selling them to the city of Boston for an unexpected profit. He inquired about the labor involved. John Gilley had to go quite a distance for the stones. Then he had to select them with an eye to uniformity. They had to be picked up and carried to a pile near the boat. A second handling loaded them, and a third threw them out on the dock in Boston. It was hard work, but it paid. As a method of earning a living, it could have been made as dreary as Markham’s ‘Man with the Hoe,’ but in Mr. Eliot’s narration there is none of the sodden despair that we feel in reading the poem. John Gilley stood upright and won through. His life exemplified toil attended by success.

During the Civil War a crude oil made from a coarse fish, locally known as porgy, became suddenly valuable, and John Gilley set up a rough mill for its production. Mr. Eliot writes, ‘The refuse from the press was a valuable element in manure. All of John Gilley’s porgy-chum went to enrich his precious fields.’ He adds, characteristically, ‘We may be sure this well-used opportunity gave him great satisfaction.’ This was what Mr. Eliot meant when he talked about ‘joy in work.’

In his later years John Gilley’s fellow townsmen honored him by electing him to public office. He was a selectman and served on the school board. As a town officer he exhibited the same uprightness and frugality which he had shown in all his private dealings. To have been chosen to represent them by his neighbors, every one of whom knew him personally, was to him a source of rational satisfaction.

Ones mind goes back to the phrase, ‘Enlarger of the common life.’ John Gilley was born to the same life as the Man with the Hoe, but as Mr. Eliot interprets him he is that man ‘enlarged.’

He ends the little book, ‘In these public services John Gilley had occasion to enlarge his knowledge and undertake new responsibilities.’ Mr. Eliot could not have more accurately and concisely described his own work as president of Harvard University.