The Versatile Girl

Since she could not go to Harvard, Miss Abby Leach of Brockton, Mass, decided to make Harvard come to her: she persuaded three of its most eminent scholars to give her private lessons in Greek, Latin and English. It was a bold and brash decision for the 1870s, but Miss Leach did so well that she found herself a major argument for a hot crusade. If one young lady could master a Harvard education, why shouldn't others get the chance? It was perfectly obvious that never again could Harvard underestimate the powers of a woman.

Last week the college that eventually opened as a result of that crusade held its Diamond Jubilee. At 75, Radcliffe is having more than just a birthday; it is also celebrating something of a victory. In the long battle of the sexes, few campuses have fought so hard, or won out so completely. Who else besides the Radcliffe girl—student at one of the nation's top colleges for women and virtual coed at the nation's most noted university for men—can have quite so much cake and eat it too?

How Deplorable. At the beginning, of course, the cake was largely crumbs. For its first few years under sprightly President Elizabeth Gary Agassiz, it was usually known as the "Harvard Annex." It was not until 1894 that Mrs. Agassiz finally persuaded the Massachusetts legislature to grant her a charter ("I'd like to do anything that lady wants me to do," said one legislator after her impassioned speech). But, even by that time, some Harvardmen still retained their doubts. Huffed Litterateur Barrett Wendell, when asked if his daughters would go to Radcliffe: "My daughters, sir, I hope, are ladies." Snapped the equally literary Charles Townsend Copeland, when asked if he would give a course in Argument:

"How deplorable for women to become apt in argument. We can't obliterate a natural tendency, but why cultivate it?"

The college managed to survive. Gradually, it became a matter of routine for such men as William James, George Lyman Kittredge and Josiah Royce to plod their way out of the Yard for the commute to Radcliffe. Such teaching talent was bound to attract unusual students.

"And so," wrote Gertrude Stein, '97, "Gertrude Stein having been in Baltimore for a winter and having become more humanised and less adolescent and less lonesome went to Radcliffe." Two years later, Josephine Sherwood (The Solid Gold Cadillac) Hull followed; then came Helen Keller, '04, Novelists Rachel Field, '18, and Helen Howe, '27, and a host of scholars and scientists. But to all these brilliant entrances and exits, Harvard itself chose to pretend indifference.

Dean LeBaron Russell Briggs became Radcliffe's second president in 1903, and Ada Comstock Notestein succeeded him in 1923. The college was growing, but Harvard scarcely noted that it was populated by anything more than a race of flat-chested creatures in horn-rimmed spectacles. By the time that Historian Wilbur Jordan took over in 1943, the old jokes were still alive ("Is that a Radcliffe girl, or did a horse step on her face?").