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Web Exclusives:
Under the Ivy February 15, 2006: A
war of words Anyone who watched or listened to the slightest snippet of the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Samuel Alito ’72 might be forgiven for yearning for olden days, when debate was presumably more civilized, or was at least a true intellectual contest. Against the backdrop of those discussions, it is refreshing to read the 1935 memoir of the felicitously named Bliss Perry, And Gladly Teach. Perry, a native of Williamstown, Mass., and a graduate of Williams College, came to Princeton to teach in 1893. It is hard to imagine the University just shy of its 150th birthday. It was still the College of New Jersey. Faculty and students together numbered roughly 180. Nassau Hall sat on a literal campus, a slight rise in the middle of an open field, without trees – or Blair Arch – to block its perspective on the railway station, which was only a few hundred yards away. Alexander Hall, in all its quirky, Romanesque glory, had just been completed. This was the bucolic setting in which Perry – who would go on to edit the Atlantic Monthly, become a widely respected writer and literary critic, and teach at Harvard – found himself. Perry, then a professor at Williams, had received a letter from a former mentor who was retiring from his Princeton position and was recommending Perry to succeed him. Despite the substantial pay increase, from $2,000 to $3,000 annually, Perry was inclined to reject the offer. One old friend assured Perry that “Princeton was a delightful place and that chickens and sweet potatoes were cheap”; Perry’s former professor added that “many Princeton professors were really ‘men of the world’ and belonged to clubs in New York.” Perry was unconvinced. “These arguments did not seem wholly conclusive,” he recalled in his book. Nonetheless, Perry decided to make the move. And at his very first faculty meeting in the fall of 1893, he took a seat next to a “long-jawed, homely, fascinatingly alert” professor of jurisprudence. For the next seven years, Perry would be treated to some of the best of Woodrow Wilson 1879’s early orations. One that made an impression came about in that first year, as the faculty considered instituting an honor system similar to one Wilson had seen in action at the University of Virginia, where he had gone to law school. President Francis Patton, Perry recalled, took the floor to square off against Wilson, who was defending the oath, “I pledge my honor as a gentleman that I have neither given nor received assistance.” Patton was not in favor of the code in general, and on that day he “proceeded to attack caustically that romantic conception of ‘a gentleman’s honor,’ which, as he declared, had once allowed a ‘gentleman to seduce a woman or kill a friend in a duel, but would not allow him to cheat at cards!’ ” Wilson, who was born in Virginia, “resented Patton’s ridicule of ‘chivalry’ as if it were directed against Virginia and himself,” wrote Perry. “He grew white and very quiet, and it was then that he was most dangerous. “In his reply, he was scrupulously courteous to the president, who had for personal reasons retained his British citizenship, but Wilson understood the sentimental side of American undergraduates far better than a foreigner, and he managed to convey that impression with unmistakable clearness and with a passion that swept the faculty off their feet. They voted to retain the phrase, ‘my honor as a gentleman,’ and it has remained in force to this hour.” Whether Wilson’s view of chivalry – or
Patton’s – was closer to the truth could be questioned,
of course. But the idea that someone could change minds and sway
hearts simply by the force of his words seems quaintly old-fashioned
today. Alas, true debate seems to have gone the way of the cheap
sweet potato.
Jane Martin ’89 is PAW's former editor-in-chief. You can reach her at paw@princeton.edu
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