YARDLEY HALL
It may be that you who are reading this story know Yardley Hall quite
as well as, maybe even better than I do. If so you will think me a bit
cheeky for describing it. But as this is likely to fall into the hands
of those who may, at the most, have only heard the name of Yardley, I
think we owe it to such to say a little about the scene of the story.
But I’ll make it as brief as I can, for I don’t like descriptions any
better than, possibly, you do. And if you are not satisfied with this,
why, it’s the easiest thing in the world to skip this chapter. I shall
think myself lucky if you don’t skip more than that before you have
finished my tale.
Yardley Hall School, then, is at Wissining, Connecticut, and Wissining
is a very little town--so little that some maps do not even show
it--situated on Long Island Sound about midway between Newport and New
Haven. A little river--not much more than a good-sized creek, to tell
the truth--leaves the Sound there and meanders back through marsh
and meadow until it finally loses all likeness to a river--even a
little one--and becomes simply a bog. But that is seven or eight miles
inland. At Wissining it makes quite a showing in a small way; it is
broad enough to accommodate a couple of islands, and that is something,
you’ll have to allow!
Coming from New York, and after you have left New Haven quite a
distance behind, you reach Greenburg. Greenburg is on the west bank
of the river and is something of a town. It has a good many factories
of various sorts; factories for silverware, brass tubing, clocks and
builder’s hardware. There are others beside, and a big boat-building
yard where they turn out gasoline launches. Whenever you come across a
launch whose engine bears the inscription, “Wissining Launch and Engine
Company,” you may be certain that it came from Greenburg. Of course if
you want to reach Wissining you pay no attention to the conductor’s
cry of “Greenburg! Greenburg!” You keep your seat in the car and after
a minute or two the train goes on, past the backs of the houses and
stores and over a little bridge across the river, and stops at a very
much less imposing station. That is Wissining.
If you stand on the platform after the train has gone and look about
you the first thing you will probably notice is a mass of stone and
brick buildings which stand on a plateau about a quarter of a mile
away. You are looking now directly north-east. Between you and the
collection of buildings, which, as the station master will tell you,
is Yardley Hall School, there lies nothing but a field and a country
road which starts off straight and level and very business-like only to
waver uncertainly a little distance away and then make a long curve up
a hill until it has reached the top of the plateau and is skirting the
fronts of the big buildings.
The school buildings are arranged in such a way that they form in
outline a letter J, the loop toward Greenburg and the straight part
facing the Sound. Clarke Hall is at the top. Then comes Whitson. Then,
forming the first curve, Oxford. Next is Merle and finally, supplying
the final twirl, the Kingdon Gymnasium. Back of Whitson and Clarke, and
having no part in the J, is Dudley Hall. This completes the list, save
for a heating plant tucked away near the gymnasium, and the boat house
on the river-bank.
If you stand on the steps of Oxford Hall you have a noble view before
you. In the immediate foreground there is a wide lawn, known as The
Prospect. Below and beyond are fields through which the road runs to
the village, a modest collection of some thirty or forty houses and
stores. Further beyond is the river, with the railroad bridge, the
wagon bridge and Loon Island for points of interest. Across the river
lies Greenburg, quite a city in appearance, her tall chimneys forever
spouting smoke. To your right, looking along the front of Oxford,
is field and wood, the river, and, beyond that, Meeker’s Marsh, a
mile-wide territory of reeds and rushes, streams and islands, where
there is good duck and plover and snipe shooting in season, or used to
be. There is a good-sized pond there, too; Marsh Lake they call it;
and if you have a canoe or a flat-bottomed boat and know the way you
can reach it from the river. In the far distance are wooded hills and
occasional farms.
Turning and facing the Sound you have in front of you a path which
leads straight across The Prospect, past the flag-pole, until, at
the edge of the plateau, it becomes a rustic bridge and crosses the
railroad. That bridge is a favorite lounging place, for you can look
right down into the funnels of the smoke-stacks as the engines whirr
by beneath you; that is, if you don’t mind a little smoke. The bridge
leads across the railroad cut and the path begins again, running down
hill now and parting to left and right at the edge of the woods. If
you go through the woods a few minutes’ walk will bring you to the
beach with the broad Sound before you. But from The Prospect the Sound
is well in view, for the woods and the village and the big Pennimore
estate, which fronts the Sound and river both, are all below you.
Almost due south those little specks of islands are The Plums. More to
the east that purple smudge on the horizon is the eastern end of Long
Island. I doubt if any school has a more wonderful outlook.
Yardley Hall School was founded in 1870 by Tobias Hewitt, M.A., Ph.D.,
Oxford. Then it was called Oxford School and there were only Oxford
and Whitson Halls. For a quarter of a century the Doctor did well
and the school flourished. But some fifteen years ago the Doctor met
reverses and the property, forty acres of land, and, by that time, four
buildings, passed into the hands of a stock company. The School was
renamed and the business reorganized, the Doctor retaining a sufficient
interest to give him an important voice in affairs. The new owners
spent a good deal of money. A fine gymnasium was built, a new athletic
field was laid out, the grounds were vastly improved, and, finally, in
1903 I think it was, Dudley Hall was erected. About the same time the
buildings, all save Dudley, were connected with each other by covered
colonnades, the gifts of graduates.
Of the buildings Oxford and Whitson are of granite, the former in
Gothic style and the latter without claims to any. In Oxford the
basement is given over to the chemical and physical laboratories and
store rooms. On the first floor are recitation rooms, the school
offices, and, at the eastern end, the Principal’s apartments. On the
second floor are recitation rooms and the library. The Assembly Hall is
on the third floor, as are the rooms of the rival debating societies,
the Oxford and the Cambridge. Whitson contains the kitchens and commons
downstairs and two floors of sleeping rooms above. Clarke is entirely a
dormitory, one of the new brick and limestone buildings put up in 1892,
Merle, erected in the same year, houses the students of the Preparatory
Class, for at Yardley there are five classes, First, Second, Third,
Fourth and Preparatory. It is in Merle that the Matron, Mrs. Ponder,
has her office. (Mrs. Ponder is popularly known as “Emily,” but no
disrespect is intended.) Dudley, the newest of the dormitories, is the
best in point of comfort, although its situation is not especially
desirable. In Dudley you can have a room all to yourself if you want
it, or you can go in with another boy and have a suite of study and
bedroom. The latter is the more popular way. Rooms in Dudley are
awarded first to the members of the graduating class and then, if there
are any left, to the Second Class boys.
Yardley is proud of its gymnasium, and justly so. When it was built, in
1895, it was the best preparatory school gymnasium in the country, and
even to-day few, I think, excel it. The basement floor is given over to
locker rooms, bath rooms and a commodious baseball cage. On the first
floor is the gymnasium, Physical Director’s office and bowling alley.
Above is the running track of twenty laps to the mile, the trophy room
and the boxing room. Four hours a week of physical exercise in the
gymnasium are required of all students save those engaged in active
sports as members of school or class teams. Mr. Bendix, the Physical
Director, is what the fellows call “a shark for work,” and there are
those who would never utter a regret if Indian clubs, chest weights,
dumb bells, single sticks, foils and boxing gloves suddenly disappeared
from their ken. But such fellows form a minority of the whole, you may
be sure.
If you take the path that leads down the slope toward the river from
the gymnasium you will see Yardley Field spread before you; six acres
of smooth ground leading with an imperceptible slope toward the river.
First come the gravel tennis courts an even dozen of them in the two
wire-netted enclosures. [The little red shed is where the nets are
stored.] Then you find yourself at the back of the grand stand, which,
built in sections of steel frame and wooden seats, can be moved as
desired from one part of the grounds to another. The track is a quarter
of a mile oval of hard, well-rolled cinders enclosing the gridiron and
diamond. If you skirt the track to the left you reach the boat-house, a
picturesque little building of weather-stained shingles about which ivy
and shrubbery grow.
Now follow the well-worn path along the river to the right until you
have reached the other end of the oval. That low expanse of grass and
rushes up-stream there, is Flat Island. It’s a joyous loafing place
in Spring before the mosquitoes begin business. To the right is the
golf links and in front of you is the Third Hole. There are only nine
of them and the course doubles back and forth perplexingly for the
newcomer. But it’s a pretty good course for all of that. The first tee
is up there on the hill, a little way back of the gymnasium and on the
edge of the woods; and there is a school legend to the effect that once
an “Old Boy,” visiting his son at Yardley, stood up there and drove
the ball clean into the river. And--well, I have nothing to say; you
can see the distance yourself. But I know that I wouldn’t like to have
to do it!
There’s a story at Yardley which tells how Doctor Tobias Hewitt, when
he came to this country from England to start a school, had, because
of his Oxford predilections, intended settling on the Thames River,
and how when he arrived there was a dense fog blowing in from the
Sound and he made a mistake in the rivers and didn’t discover his
error until it was too late. Then, so the story goes, he tried to have
the Wissining called the Thames and the Thames the Wissining; but the
State of Connecticut wouldn’t humor him. Of course the story was made
up only to illustrate the Doctor’s fondness for things English and,
more especially, Oxonian. And true it is that during the early days
of the school English customs were followed very closely. The Doctor
was Head Master then, the instructors were Masters, the classes were
“forms” and the dining hall was the “commons.” It is said that the
Doctor even tried to install the “fag” system among the boys and that
it went well enough until an unsympathetic youth from the free and
enlightened West mutinied. The effects of his mutiny were: item, a
disfigured nose for the boy whose fag he was supposed to be, and item,
an immediate declaration of independence from all other fags resulting
in a death-blow to the system. But all this was thirty years ago and
more, and to-day both Doctor Hewitt and his school are American to the
backbone, the Doctor rampantly so on occasions. To be sure, Oxford Hall
still holds its name and the dining hall is still known as commons;
the rival debating clubs clung to their original titles and the school
color had never been changed from dark blue. But these things merely
served to prove the school’s emancipation from the British yoke; and,
as for the school color, Yardley fellows will wither you with a glance
if you suggest any similarity in hue between it and the Oxford’s color,
informing you crushingly that it is “Yale blue.” Which, as Yardley
sends more students to Yale than to any other college, is as it should
be.