THE UNIVERSITY GOOSE
Columbia University at the time I went to it had just moved up to its
new buildings on Morningside Heights. The center of the group was a
magnificent white marble library, built almost entirely for display, and
with but little relation to books and those who were to use them. But of
this I had no suspicion; I had come now to the real headquarters of
education, and I studied the fascinating lists of courses, and my heart
leaped, because I was free to choose whatever I wished of all this
feast. I was a proud “bachelor of arts,” and declared my intention of
becoming a still prouder “master of arts.” To achieve the feat I must
complete a year’s course, consisting of a “major” subject and two
“minors,” and I must also compose a “thesis.” To register for all this I
paid a hundred and fifty dollars, earned by a newly discovered talent
for writing dime novels.
My major subject was English; and as part of the work Professor George
Rice Carpenter undertook to teach me the art of composition. This was an
undergraduate course, taken by students of Columbia College, and so I
had a chance to see how they were taught. To my dismay I found it
exactly the same dreary routine that I had been through at my City
College. Our professor would set us a topic on which to write a “theme”:
“Should College Students Take Part in Athletics;” or perhaps, “A
Description of the Country in Winter.” My own efforts at this task were
pitiful, and I was angrily aware that they were pitiful; I did not care
anything about the matters on which I was asked to write, and I could
never in my life write about anything I did not care about. I stood some
six weeks of it, and then went to the professor and told him I wanted to
drop the course.
So I discovered one of the embarrassments of the American college
system. Students are supposed to choose courses, but no provision is
made for them to sample the wares and make an intelligent selection. If
anybody finds he has made a mistake, he is in the same plight as if he
has married the wrong girl; he can not get out without hurting the
girl’s feelings, and I, unhappy blunderer in the undergraduate machine,
had to hurt the feelings of Professor Carpenter. “I don’t know what you
want,” said he, “or how you think you are going to get it; but this one
thing I can tell you positively—you don’t know how to write.” To which I
answered humbly, of course; that was why I had to come to him. But I had
become convinced that I wasn’t going to learn in that way, and my mind
was made up to drop the course.
Also I took a course in poetry with William Peterfield Trent. The
predecessors of Milton were the subject of our investigation, I
remember, and perhaps they were uninteresting poets—anyhow, the lectures
about them certainly were. I stood it for a month or two, and then we
came upon a grammatical error in one of our poets. “You will find such
things occasionally,” said the professor. “There is a line in
Byron—‘There let him lay’—and I have an impression that I once came upon
a similar error in Shelley. Some day before long I plan to read Shelley
through and see if I can find it.” And that finished me. Shelley was my
dearest friend in all the world, and I imagined a man confronting the
record of his ecstasies, seeking a grammatical error! I quit that
course.
Also I had started one in French. It was the same dreary routine I had
gone through for five years in Latin; translating little foolish
sentences by looking up words in the dictionary. I seriously meant to
read French, so stayed long enough to get the accent correctly, and then
retired, and got myself a note-book and set to work to hammer the
meaning of French words into my head. In another six weeks I had read
half a dozen of the best French novels, and in the course of the next
year I read all the standard French classics. I did the same thing with
German; having already got the pronunciation, I proceeded to teach
myself words, and in a year or two had got to know German literature as
well as English.
Most of my experience at Columbia consisted of beginning courses, and
dropping them after a few weeks. At the end I figured up that I had
sampled over forty courses. I finished five or six, but never took an
examination in one. And this was no mere whim or idleness on my part; it
was a deliberate judgment upon the university and its methods. I had
made the discovery that, being registered for a master’s degree, and not
having completed the necessary courses, I was free to register for new
courses the second year, without paying additional tuition fees; and
failing to complete the courses the second year, I was free to register
for the third year, and so on.
Thus I worked out my system—education in spite of the educators! I would
start a course, and get a preliminary view of the subject, and the list
of the required readings; then I would go off by myself and do the
readings. Almost invariably there was one book which the professor used
as a text-book, and his lectures were nothing but an inadequate résumé
thereof. At the beginning of his course on the drama Brander Matthews
would say “Gentlemen, I make it a point of honor with you not to read my
book—‘The Development of the Drama,’ until after you have finished my
course!”
Brander Matthews was a new type to me, the literary “man of the world.”
His mind was a store-house of gossip about the theater and the
stage-world, and I was interested, and eagerly read the plays. I knew
that Brander was not my kind of man, that his world was not for me; but
what kind of world I was going to choose, or to make for myself, I did
not at that time know. As I dwell on these days, I see before me his
loose, rather shambling figure, with a queerly shaped brown beard and a
cigarette dangling from the lower lip. I do not know how this dangling
was contrived, but I doubt if I ever saw the professor at a lecture that
he did not have that cigarette in position as he talked. Brander is the
beau ideal of the successful college professor, metropolitan style; a
clubman, easy-going and cynical, but not too much so for propriety;
wealthy enough to be received at the dinners of trustees, and witty
enough to be welcome anywhere. He is a bitter reactionary, and has
become one of President Butler’s most active henchmen; his reputation as
author of more than forty books is made use of by the New York “Times”
for an occasional job of assassinating a liberal writer.
With Nicholas Murray Butler I took a course in the critical philosophy.
At this time he was a modest professor, and his dazzling career lay in
the future. I shall have many impolite things to say about Butler, so
let me make it plain that there is nothing personal in my attitude; to
me he was always affable. He possesses a subtle mind, and uses it
thoroughly. With him I read “The Critique of Pure Reason” twice through
and as a work of supererogation I read also the impossible German. I had
had a little metaphysics before this, and was now pleased to have Kant
demonstrate that I had wasted my time. I took seriously what I read, and
assumed that my professor was taking seriously what he taught; so
imagine my bewilderment when shortly afterwards I learned that Professor
Butler had left the Presbyterian church, and had joined the Episcopal
church, as one of the steps necessary to becoming president of Columbia
University. It gave me a shock, because I knew he had no belief whatever
in any of the dogmas of the Christian religion, and had completely
demonstrated to me the impossibility of any valid knowledge concerning
immortality, free will or a First Cause.
Another “man of the world” type of professor whom I encountered was
Harry Thurston Peck, who gave me a course in Roman civilization of the
Augustan age. It was so like America that it was terrifying, but
Professor Peck I am sure was entirely unterrified. He was widely read in
the literature of decadence, and from him I heard the names of strange
writers, from Petronius and Boccaccio to Zola and Gautier. It was a
world of grim and cruel depravity, but one had sooner or later to know
that it existed, and to steel one’s soul for a new endeavor to save the
race. Poor Harry Peck was not steeled enough, and he broke the first
rule of the “man of the world,” and got found out. A woman sued him for
breach of promise, and published his letters in the newspapers. There
were some who thought he should not have been assumed to be guilty,
merely because a blackmailer accused him; but the powers which ruled
Columbia thought otherwise, and Professor Peck was driven out, and
committed suicide.
It was a peculiar thing, which I observed as time went on—every single
man who had had anything worth-while of any sort to teach me was forced
out of Columbia University in some manner or other. The ones that stayed
were the dull ones, or the worldly and cunning ones. Carpenter stayed
until he died, and Brander Matthews, and Butler, and Trent, who purposed
to read through the works of Shelley to find a grammatical error, and
John Erskine, whom I knew as a timid and conventional “researcher,” and
who, I am told, has been chosen by Butler as his heir-apparent. But Peck
went—and Hyslop, and Spingarn, and Robinson, and MacDowell, and
Woodberry.
James Hyslop gave me a course in what he called “practical ethics,” and
this was a curious affair. In the first part he discussed abstract rules
of conduct—regardless of the fact that there can be no such things. In
the second part he attempted to apply these rules to New York City
politics, explaining the methods by which Tammany politicians got their
graft, and devising elaborate laws and electoral arrangements whereby
these politicians could be kept out of office, or made to be good while
in. The professor was a frail and ascetic-looking little man with a
feeble black beard. It was painfully clear to me that the politicians
were more clever than he, and would devise a hundred ways of countering
his program before he had got it into action.
Now, as I look back upon this course, the thing which strikes me as
marvelous is that never once in a whole year of instruction did the
professor drop a hint concerning the economic basis of political
corruption. The politicians got money—yes, of course; but who paid them
the money, and what did the payers get out of it? In other words, what
part was Big Business playing in the undermining of American public
life? I took an entire course in “practical ethics” at Columbia
University in the year ’99 or 1900—two hours a week for nine months—and
never once did I hear that question mentioned, either by the professor
or by any of the graduate students in that class!
You would have thought that this would have made James Hyslop safe for
life; but alas! the poor man became too anxious concerning the growth of
Socialism throughout the world, and decided that the way to counter it
was to renew the faith of the people in heaven and hell. You may find
his ideas on this point quoted in “The Profits of Religion,” page 224.
He took to studying spiritualism, and the newspapers took him up, and
the university authorities, who tolerate no sort of eccentricity,
politely slid him out of his job.
After his recent visit to the United States, H. G. Wells wrote that the
most vital mind he had met was James Harvey Robinson, author of “The
Mind in the Making.” Twenty-two or three years ago I took with Professor
Robinson a course in the history of the Renaissance and Reformation. It
was a great period, when the mind of the race was breaking the shackles
of mediæval tyranny in religion, politics, and thought. I read with
eagerness about John Huss and Wyckliffe, Erasmus and Luther. I still
hope for such heroes and for such an awakening in my own modern world;
meantime, I observe that Professor Robinson, unable to stand the
mediævalism of Columbia, has handed in his resignation.
Then MacDowell, the composer. Edward MacDowell was the first authentic
man of genius I met; he is the only American musician whose work has won
fame abroad. He was a man as well as an artist, and his courses in
general musical culture were a rare delight. After much urging, he
consented to play us parts of his own works, and discuss them with us.
Needless to say, this was not orthodox academic procedure, and the
college authorities, who do not recognize genius less than a hundred
years away, would not give proper credits for work with MacDowell. The
composer’s beautiful dream of a center of musical education came to
nothing, and he retired, broken-hearted. As I described the tragedy at
the time, he ran into Nicholas Murray Butler and was killed.
Finally, George Edward Woodberry, who was in the field of letters what
MacDowell was in music, a master not merely of criticism but of
creation; also a charming spirit and a friend to students. He gave a
course in what he called comparative literature, and made us acquainted
with Plato, Cervantes, Dante, Ariosto, Spenser, and Shelley. He was a
truly liberalizing influence, and so popular among the men that the
Columbia machine hated him heartily. I was taking Brander Matthews’
course at the same time as Woodberry’s, and would hear Matthews sneer at
Woodberry’s “idealism,” and at his methods of teaching. A year later
Woodberry was forced out, under circumstances which I shall presently
narrate.