Education: 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 goto 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?”).

Theory & Practice. It was during World War II that things changed. Harvard decided that it was a waste of effort to have professors give their lectures once in the Yard and once on the ‘Cliffe. Why shouldn’t the Harvard and Radcliffe classes be combined? “Harvard Goes Coeducational!” cried a Boston newspaper. “Harvard is not coeducational in theory,” said former President James Bryant Conant. “only in practice.”

As a woman’s college, Radcliffe ranks third in size, fifth ($9,636,000) in wealth among the Big Seven† it also turns out more female Ph.D.s than any place except Columbia and Chicago. But its education is almost entirely Harvard. Its 1,400 students now browse about Widener Library, compete for the Crimson, even boast that up to 50% of their married alumnae are apt to be Harvard wives. What has happened in 75 years? Says President Jordan: “One of the great cultural revolutions of our time has been the transfer from men to women of the responsibility for our cultural values. This is an enormous responsibility, and my bets are on the women.” Added the Lampoon in an unprecedented, if backhanded, tribute to the Radcliffe girl:

For she is the scholar and football fan,

The idiot child who talks “man to man”

But charms the hell out of her section man:

The versatile girl from Radcliffe.

I looked at her notes when she sat next

to me,

And I think she’s dumb as a person

can be.

But she got an A and I got a C:

It is time to protest about Radcliffe.

†The Big Seven tops: Smith in size (2,269), Wellesley in wealth ($21,916,000).