“It must be a college of the New England type--just where and how it is
to be started is the question,” said one of the men who, one evening in
the middle eighties, were discussing with my father and grandfather the
possibility and need of a good college in Southern California, one of
high standards of character and scholarship. There was no question of
necessity--only of ways and means. The boys and girls must be given the
same type of education as that offered in the far away homeland.
Southern California was booming, and hearts and hopes were high. It
was a bold undertaking for the small group of Congregationalists, but
with faith and hard work and time it could be done--the founding of
a college, “Christian, but not sectarian, for both sexes,” a slogan
from the first. Later the hopes and dreams of the few crystalized into
action and the word came home that a committee had been appointed to
find a location.
After much jaunting, even so far as Banning, on the east, the choice
fell upon Piedmont, a sightly mesa north of Pomona, a little town that
had recently been growing up some forty miles east of Los Angeles; and
until a permanent name could be decided upon (possibly that of some
devoted donor) the venture was to be named “The Pomona College.” This
name was not finally accepted for some twenty years.
From time to time I heard of the progress of the undertaking. Father’s
cousin, Nathan Blanchard, who had been disappointed in his boyhood
ambition for a college education in Maine, was much concerned in this
project for providing opportunity for the young people of his later
state. He became one of the first trustees, and continued on the
board and was vitally interested so long as he lived. It was to his
generosity that the college owes its beautiful acreage of oaks and
native growth, Blanchard Park.
Rev. Charles B. Sumner, the minister of the Pomona Congregational
church, had secured a young man, Frank Brackett, recently graduated
from Dartmouth to open a private school in Pomona. It met in the
church parlor. Mr. Sumner’s son and daughter and a few others
needed a chance to prepare for college. After about six months the
authorities of the new college took over this school as a preparatory
department--teachers, students, and all.
In the meantime, plans for a permanent building were maturing, and amid
hopes and prayers, joy and a certain trepidation, the corner stone was
laid on the beautiful heights at the mouth of Live Oak Cañon, close to
the mountains, with a wide outlook over the valley.
When plans for the college first took form, Southern California was
full of hope and enthusiasm--those were the boom days. Men were making
fortunes over night, and the generosity of many hearts promised
sufficient support for the college. But the point of saturation in land
speculation was reached and a panic was precipitated and the new-born
enterprise faced disaster. Then began years of self-denial, struggle,
devotion, visions that have resulted in the college known today. Many a
time it was a very serious question whether or not the breath of life
could be kept in the baby.
About the time I came home from Field Seminary, condemned to no more
school, the young institution was offered the empty hotel in the
unsuccessful boom town of Claremont, together with certain lots staked
out about it. The trustees decided to accept the gift, planning to use
this site ultimately for the preparatory work only, and to go on with
its college buildings at Piedmont as originally intended.
The following June the school introduced itself with closing exercises,
oral examinations, etc. Grandfather was among the guests. Although he
was now over eighty, he spent much of every day with books, reading
constantly his Greek or Latin, or solving mathematical problems for
sheer joy in it. He was delighted by an oral examination in Greek given
by a Mr. Norton, the new head of the school. One boy especially pleased
him by showing evidence of good teaching and by the gusto with which
he translated his Homer. He “believed the boy was the son of Deacon
Barrows of the Ojai.” Perhaps this same boy’s enthusiasm for the war
exploits of Homer is responsible for the military fervor of the man.
So when I decided that my eyes, fortified by glasses, were not yet
gone, and that I must go to school again, grandfather suggested that
I try the new one at Pomona. “Of course it is pioneering, but seems
genuine and worth trying,” he said. Consequently, on a hot August day,
Aunt Martha and I went forth to investigate, and, perhaps beginning a
long line of the mistaken, sought Pomona College in Pomona.
After some delay we found a man with an express wagon who took us to
Claremont, an hour’s drive under a scorching noonday sun. We soon left
the little settlement, passed the apricot and peach orchards that have
since been replaced by oranges, and struck off in a diagonal through
virgin land to the large building, gabled and turreted, standing alone
in the distance. As we came nearer we discovered that there was more
town than we had realized. The same Santa Fe station that is now in use
was in its place--would that we had arrived there instead of at the
Southern Pacific in Pomona!
On the sandy road, now Yale Avenue, there was one store, which
contained the post office,--a primitive department store kept by Mr.
Urbanus, whose name was the only suggestion of a city in the region. A
little farther up the road was a spare, white, box of a house, which
has since grown porches and a garden, where we found the principal of
the school, Mr. Norton, with his wife and baby girl, Katharine. To
the east was Mr. Biely’s barn; to the west Colonel W. H. Holabird’s
two-storied house; and two or three other small empty houses peeked
over the top of the brush. On the outskirts rose an imposing red and
yellow towered and ornamented school house, waiting for the children
of the visioned city to materialize. Some twenty years later it was
supplanted by the present attractive grammar school, moved across the
street, and, with form and color made more modest, given over to the
use of the city fathers.
The ex-hotel belonged to the same architectural period as the Del Monte
at Monterey or the Coronado at San Diego, but naturally it was of
lesser glory.
Such was Claremont in 1889; no streets, no walks, just a few spots
reclaimed from the desert, connected by trails or sandy roads; all the
rest sage, cactus, stones, an occasional oak or sycamore; but the same
ever-beautiful and mysterious mountains stood guard, the same sunny
skies and fragrant air gave charm. Rabbits scuttled between the bushes,
lizards and horned toads enjoyed the climate, rattlesnakes found a
peaceful home, and at night coyotes ranged and sang.
A little clearing had been made about the aforetime hotel now devoted
to the incipient college, and vines and trees had been planted but
as yet they had not made sufficient growth to be noticeable. The oak
tree that now stands in the center of College Avenue was then in its
native state in the midst of the brush. The building with its meager
furnishing had stood empty all summer and accumulated dust added to
its dreariness. However the plan of work offered me was attractive
and, much to the surprise of my aunt, I decided to enter in the
fall, thus beginning the procession of children, grandchildren,
great-grandchildren of the old scholar who from that day to this have
been connected with the college.
In September the third member of the so-called “old faculty,” Miss
Spalding, arrived. She was destined to develop the English department,
but this year filled in, teaching Latin, German, spelling and
composition, and how many other subjects I do not know.
All the activities of the school were in the one building. The large
parlor with the circular window was chapel and assembly room. The room
occupied in recent years by the Dean of Women was study hall for the
younger students; Prof. Norton had a small classroom on the east side,
Miss Spalding had half the dining room roughly partitioned off, and
Prof. Brackett dispensed mathematics and physics over the bar in the
hotel bar-room. He dispensed the physics so successfully that I was
able three years later in Wellesley college to rely once or twice on
Claremont knowledge to carry me through a physics lesson otherwise
unprepared.
The Hall housed all the resident members of the school except Mr.
Norton’s family. Mr. Brackett and his bride were on the first floor;
and upstairs, divided by a partition, pervious to sounds and notes, if
not to persons, were the men’s and women’s dormitories--eleven boys in
the former, four girls and two teachers in the latter. Here also roomed
Miss Roe, sister of E. P. Roe of _Chestnut Burr_ fame, a forerunner of
the easterners who now make Claremont their winter home.
At this time there were about sixty students in the school, only one of
them, Helen Sumner, being of college rank. In the senior preparatory
class which I joined, there were about a dozen. They formed the unique
class that for seven years was the most advanced in the school--think
how dangerous to heads the experience of being seniors for seven years!
This class graduated from Pomona college in 1894 and numbered among its
members Dr. George Sumner and Dr. David P. Barrows.
The year I joined them I found each member of the class had read Caesar
during the summer vacation, taking examination and passing in September
in order that the class might go on with the required amount of Cicero
in the first semester and Vergil in the second, and so make college
the next fall, with four years of Latin done, and done thoroughly in
two years. With Vergil at nine in the morning (after submitting to
ten minutes of spelling drill on any word Miss Spalding might find in
Dr. Johnson’s _Rasselas_), and again at four in the afternoon we read
rapidly enough to get the charm of the poem as well as the dry bones of
vocabulary and construction. All the work of the year was strenuous but
full of delight--the happiest year of all my school life.
The primitive conditions of a pioneer school only added zest to the
students, but for those teachers who had come out of the East the
barn-like hotel in the desert, the lack of comforts and conveniences,
even of sufficient food, and the meager salaries possible meant
hardship.
One of the institutions of our day was the bus which met students from
Pomona who came to North Pomona on the “dummy,” which I recognized
as the discarded, first means of transportation between Long Beach
and the outside world. Down there it had been known as the G. O. P.,
“Get Out and Push,” because frequently the male passengers had to
dismount and help propel it when it hesitated in its progress from
Thenard, the junction on the main S. P. line near Wilmington, to the
little camp-meeting settlement on the bluff, Long Beach. When it was
superseded there it evidently had been transferred to the remote
service between Pomona and the new Santa Fe railroad to the north of
the town.
The bus was very rickety, two long seats whose cushions sprouted
excelsior, a somewhat tremulous canopy top, a rear step that swung
loose so that it required great skill to mount, especially since there
was a hole in the floor where one would naturally place one’s foot in
entering. It must have been a gift bus, into whose mouth one must not
look enquiringly.
Bret Harte, a high, bony, bay horse, and Amos Obediah Jonah Micah, a
roly-poly squat sorrel were the mis-mated pair who provided locomotion.
I was once told that the bones of one of these horses is preserved in
the college museum, but an after thought on the part of the informer,
suggested that the historic skeleton might have upheld one of the
steeds celebrated a year or two later,--Bismarck or Gladstone or
Mephistopheles. Speaking of the latter reminds me of a story once
current in Claremont concerning a conversation between the heads of
the Latin and Greek departments. “I can make a pun on any word you will
propose,” said Professor Colcord. “How about the name of my horse?”
replied Professor Norton. Quick as a wink came the response, “If I had
him here I could hit him with me-fist-awful-easy.”
My year in Claremont was an unusually rainy one, and for a time all the
lower part of town was under water from outbreaking springs. It was
welcomed by John McCall, the boy who drove the bus, as a providential
means of extending the usefulness of the public conveyance. Every night
he took the bus to the point now called the corner of Second Street and
Alexander Avenue, unhitched Bret and Amos, and left it standing in the
water all night, so that the rims of the wheels might swell enough to
retain the tires the next day.
On Sundays the bus must forego its day of rest in order to take
Claremont to Pomona to church, the former town not yet having a church
of its own. We enlivened the long, slow drive home, more than an hour
in our slow-going chariot, with calling up memories of all the good
things to eat we had ever known or imagined. We were none too well fed
at best and Sunday dinner came late. It is certain that we did not
suffer from over-feeding, but, on the other hand, I suppose our minds
were all the clearer for our restrained diet.
This was the time of the beginning of things. The Pomona College
Literary Society--high sounding name--had begun its career. Debates,
papers, three-minute ex-tempore speeches were taken seriously. One
gala day in spring we turned to Mother Goose and treated her works
in the same manner in which we had been handling Shakespeare. One
number on the program was a debate on “Was the mother justified in
whipping Jill on the occasion when she and Jack went for water?” I
remember it well for I defended Jill in opposition to David Barrows.
It was the first time that either of us had delivered a speech without
notes. Unfortunately, I lost--but who could expect to win against the
eloquence and, I maintained at the time, the sophistry of an embryo
University President? However, it was a split verdict and one of the
judges resisted his plausible arguments and gave credit to the weight
of my feminine defense of poor Jill. (Thank you, Dr. Sumner!) The
debate was great fun.
This year the college paper was born, and christened the _Pomona
Student_. It was a monthly, and, considering that it was conducted by
preparatory students, compares very well with its later representative,
even if I, who was its maid-of-all-work, do say so.
There was a music department, with Miss Stella Fitch as teacher. During
the next few years music became quite a feature, and its quality is
recalled with pleasure and regret in these days of prevailing jazz.
As for Athletics, tennis and baseball had arrived, but no football or
track work. Several students had their own saddle horses and one or two
could be hired. A happy memory is of a spring day, a ride through the
fragrant sagebrush, a running race down Ontario’s long street,--a good
time even if I did wear a long black habit and ride a sidesaddle.
On the first Mountain Day we went to Live Oak Cañon--perhaps thirty of
us. We led the outdoor life that has always been so large a part of
Pomona College attractiveness. I wonder if any one since my day, after
a picnic in the Wash, enjoyed an afternoon of sledding. Four of us,
naturally two boys and two girls, once topped off a “steak-feed” by
sliding down the short, grassy slope of the knoll, south of the present
Greek Theater, with a frying pan and an iron baker for our sleds.
The heating arrangements in the Hall were primitive, so that a minor
object of every walk was to collect combustible material. I’m afraid
that a good many corner lot stakes went up in our smoke. The little
stoves were amusing. As I remember them, they seem about six inches
square, by twelve long, but I suppose they really must have been at
least ten by fifteen. One day I went in under the Hall in search of
chips left from the building, but meeting there two cunning little
black and white wood-pussies, I quickly and silently retreated, lest
they should consider me a poacher on their preserves and protest.
The college library at that time occupied partially half a dozen
shelves in an alcove. Miss Spalding, who had brought two hundred books
with her out of the East as a nucleus for the library was in charge,
and in the spring term inspired us to see how much we could earn for
its benefit. Soon all sorts of enterprises were under way. Our dining
table instituted a system of penny fines for tardiness or slang. I was
book-keeper and still hold the record. Individuals offered their wares
or talents for the fund. In the April number of the _Student_ I find
various advertisements: “We sadly look at our tattered garments, but
suddenly our faces light up, for we remember that Miss Metkiff darns
at 1 cent per square inch.” “R. S. Day Jr., famous tonsorial artist.
Hair cut, fifteen cents; shave, ten cents. Bangs cut and curled, ten
cents; long hair shampooed twenty-five cents; short hair, ten cents.”
Attractive rates offered by the first Claremont barber, you must admit.
I, who owned one of the original kodaks, taking pictures about the
size of a butter plate, made one very successful photograph. Rev. E.
S. Williams, a visitor at the college, volunteered to give Bancroft’s
_History of the United States_ to the infant library in exchange for a
picture of the Student Body. Our labors netted much fun, the history,
and about thirty dollars.
Excitement grew as Commencement approached, for a class of eleven was
ready for college and in September the actual work of college grade
would begin. Although the closing exercises were made much of, and
guests came from all over Southern California, we youngsters were never
allowed to forget that we were merely “preps,” and, lest we should
imagine ourselves of too much importance, no diplomas were allowed us.
We were told by Mr. Norton that we were “nothing but kids.” To remedy
this lack of evidence of our graduation, two of us picked out, finger
by finger, on the only typewriter in town, diplomas modeled on an
Amherst one, in which we granted ourselves the degree of “Haedi (kids)
in Artibus.” These we distributed at our class supper, served in Mr.
Brackett’s bar room. On this occasion our class prophet established her
claim to be a seer for she said, speaking of David Barrows:
“What are you, priest, poet or philosopher?”
“I am in the P’s at any rate,--purveyor.”
“Of mental merchandise,” said his sister.
“Allow me,” said a merry voice at my elbow, “to introduce Mr. Barrows,
H.A., B.A., M.A., D.D., LL.D., Ph.D., president of ... college, the
leader of young shoots in the way they should go.”
Perhaps Vere Metkiff was a suggestor rather than a seer, and it may
have been this prophecy that set the boy in the path to the presidency
of the University of California. I observe, however, that he is still
minus the proposed degree of D.D.
The next day a boy and girl sat all day on the stairs of Claremont Hall
and crammed Roman History out of two brick-red primers, and in the
afternoon took two college entrance examinations, to meet necessary
requirements. And they both passed. And perhaps they know as much Roman
History now as if they had spent months instead of hours in its study.
And so the year ended, and I left to go east to college as had been
planned for me so long as I could remember. But had there not been
stiffer backbones than mine at home, I think I would have been a member
of that first class at Pomona.
My friends did not forget me, and twice I hurried home from Wellesley
to go into camp with them up in San Antonio Cañon, two wonderful
experiences. Our party of twenty-six was the first of any size to go
beyond Hogsback. We had to go to its base by wagon, and then over the
trail, walking on up to the mouth of Bear Cañon where we stayed for ten
days. From here a dozen of us made the ascent of the peak, ten-thousand
feet high. Six of us stayed the night to see the wonder of the sun
coming up out of the desert,--one of the rare memories of my life.
The three teachers, Prof. Brackett, Dr. Norton, and Dr. Spalding,
whom I knew in that long ago day of the beginning of things, have all
these years been giving of their strength and knowledge. And Dr. C.
B. Sumner, who dreamed and planned and worked for the college, lives
to see it established and prosper, its bare, single building grown to
the beautiful campus and many buildings of the present, its student
body increased more than ten fold, while his son, the youngest of that
famous class, has for years been a valued and loved professor in the
strong and growing college of today.