Harvard Yard (41 page)

Once, a red brick quadrangle had looked out on village and Common. But old Stoughton had been torn down, so Massachusetts and Harvard Halls had become the frame for a larger and deeper picture.

The brewhouses and woodsheds were gone, the pigpens and sheep commons had been planted over with tall elms and trimmed grass. A new Stoughton had been built beyond Hollis; Holworthy Hall had closed off the north edge of the Yard. And University Hall—chapel, classrooms, four dining rooms for the four classes—had risen in brilliant white granite that drew every eye from the red brick and greenery around it.

Even the outhouses had been improved. The old row of two-holers had been replaced by a single long shed on the east side of University Hall, shielded discreetly by pines. Smart-aleck students called it “university minor.”

Some still considered Harvard as no more than a boarding school for smart alecks, where the average freshman was sixteen, the average class fewer than a hundred, the average attitude of the students alternately rebellious and shirksome. But the improvements in the Yard reflected many changes—in the expansion of the faculty, in the creation of law and divinity schools, in the direction of a university that no one would ever mistake for Increase Mather’s Puritan seminary on the Charles.

Then the bell began to toll and the grand marshal called to form the procession.

The sudden movement of random groups into ordered lines reminded Caleb of a military camp when drums beat the march. The band took the lead, followed by the undergraduates, among them his grandson, Theodore, ’37. And falling in behind them were the governor and the officers of the university.

Then the marshal called the name of Senator Paine Wingate, Class of 1759. For a moment, there was silence. The wind rustled the elms and all waited to see if a ninety-seven-year-old man would have the strength to appear. He did not, so the classes from 1760 to 1763 were called. There were no living graduates in any of them, but the formalities had to be observed. Then the name of Dr. Caleb Wedge, Class of 1766, echoed through Harvard Yard.

The applause began as a gentle stream and rose quickly to a cataract of cheers.

Caleb had known grand moments and frightening times within that circle of buildings, and in an instant, he remembered them all. But he knew that the other graduates were not cheering just for him. They were cheering the longevity of the college, and they were cheering themselves, for as long as such an old man moved ahead of them through time, that long would they all stay young. Still, Caleb’s eyes filled with tears, and he felt a weakness in his legs that caused him to hesitate before stepping forward.

So his son George, Class of 1800, hurried over, followed by his grandsons, George Jr., ’30, and Theodore—two more generations of good height and sharp features.

“Back to your places,” said Caleb. “I need no arm to lean on. I don’t even need a cane.” As proof, he took off his tall beaver hat, put it on the tip of the cane, raised the cane above his head, and shouted, “Follow me, Harvard!”

And the applause became a joyful shout.

Across the road, beyond the portals of Massachusetts and Harvard Halls, the Wedge ladies waited in the new Unitarian Meeting House, but not in comfort.

Lydia fanned herself with her program. “Just like the fathers of Harvard to keep the women in the balcony, where it’s too hot, while the men have their cheers outside.”

Christine worked on her knitting. “Let them have their day.”

“She’s right, Grandmother,” said Dorothy, a young woman of nineteen who wore a fashionable bonnet framing a slender and symmetrical face. “You and Aunt Lydia deserve to march with them. My mother, too, had the Lord not taken her.”

Christine said, “Having her with us would be blessing enough.”

“Yes . . . yes,” said Lydia. The curse of longevity, beyond watching your own deterioration, was to outlive so many people you loved. Lydia had buried her husband and an ardent suitor who died before they could marry, and more friends and relatives than she could count. But she had lived long enough to see this day, when she would make a statement that would define her for generations to come.

Outside, the band had stopped. The undergraduates had lined up on either side of the meetinghouse door, creating a corridor of youth through which the aged graduates would ascend the stairs. And there was Caleb Wedge, appearing first in the doorway, standing straight, putting his real foot forward.

“He looks so handsome,” said Christine.

“Handsome?” snorted Lydia. “He was made for tricorne and breeches, not pantaloons and cutaway and beaver hat, any more than toothless old women were made for frilly bonnets and curling-iron hair.”

“We’re not toothless.” Christine flashed what was left of her smile. “You have six teeth and I have nine.”

Young Dorothy brought a hand to her mouth to stifle a laugh. She had no interest in Harvard’s latest act of self-congratulation, but she never regretted time spent with her grandmother or great-aunt, especially when they were bickering, which they did until the meetinghouse had filled with graduates.

When all the Wedge men were in their places—Caleb, George Sr., and George Jr. in the pews, young Theodore standing with the undergraduates—Christine said, “A bold Wedge lineage.”

Lydia brought a hand to her ear. “Did you say ‘bold’ or ‘bald’?”

“Wedge men aren’t bald,” said Christine, looking out on a sea of male pates.

“Those with Cowgill blood go bare pretty quick on top. Even young Theodore.”

Dorothy said, “Theodore’s inhaling every detail, to write about it.”

“And there’ll be details aplenty”—Lydia looked at her program—“God help us.”

Three hours later, Caleb’s chin sat squarely on his chest and his snoring could be heard in the balcony. Lydia had napped and awakened not once but twice during President Quincy’s two-hour address. But all had been awake for the singing of the new hymn, “Fair Harvard,” and all were awakened for the recessional, “Old Hundred.”

Even Lydia sang. But soon enough, she was complaining again as the graduates processed back to the Yard. “All men. All men marching. All the time. All men.”

“We’re invited to the president’s levee tonight,” said Christine. “That’s good enough for
this
Wedge woman.”

Lydia snorted.

From the steps of the meetinghouse, they watched the men parade in a great ceremonial circle along the edge of the Common, across the road, past Holden Chapel, and back into the Yard. There, they made another circle and headed for a grand pavilion, atop which fluttered a white and crimson banner.

“What are the words on that banner?” asked Lydia.

“They’re not words,” said Dorothy. “They’re letters. Ve . . . Ri . . . Tas.
Veritas.
The Latin word for ‘truth.’”

“Did you hear that, Christine? Truth.” Lydia took Dorothy’s elbow. “Your granddaughter deserves something more than an invitation to a levee and lip service to truth.”

The banquet lasted through eight hours and forty toasts. It was hard to believe that President Josiah Quincy and his wife might have the energy to host a levee that night. But few could remember when spirits in Harvard Yard had been so high, or when the buildings had glowed in such brilliant illumination. On such a night, who could surrender to exhaustion?

Certainly not the Wedges, who went as a family to the levee.

Lydia led them through the door of Wadsworth House, saw Quincy receiving guests in the front room, and made straight for him.

Dorothy sensed that Lydia was up to no good, so she followed, and instinctively, so did all the other Wedges, which meant they came at Quincy in a group.

He was a new kind of president, the first not to have received training as a minister. He had been a lawyer, businessman, congressman, mayor of Boston, builder of a marketplace that bore his name, and something of an autocrat, too, condescending to students and disliked by faculty. His collar was starched so stiff that he had to move his whole body to move his head, and his unruly shock of red hair defined his prickly demeanor so well that portraitist Gilbert Stuart had made it his most conspicuous feature.

“A pleasure to see you all,” said Quincy, reaching for Caleb’s hand.

“The pleasure is all ours, sir,” said Caleb.

“Indeed,” said George Sr.

“Indeed,” echoed George Jr.

Quincy was standing before a table on which a package was displayed with the words “Letters from Alumni of Harvard College, written in August 1836, responding to the invitation of the Committee for the Bicentenary. To be opened by the President of Harvard College in the year 1936 and not before. Josiah Quincy, President of Harvard College, September 1836.”

No one knew that Lydia had slipped an envelope of her own into the packet. Looking at the words and the wax seals, she reveled in her little secret.

Quincy said, “I would thank the Wedges for the service they’ve rendered the college. And I am especially grateful for the letters they have contributed.” Quincy gestured to the packet. “They guarantee that your voices will be heard a century hence.”

“Including the ladies?” asked Lydia. “Will their voices be heard?”

Quincy turned to the old woman. “My dear madam, your voice sings in your poetry. I would hope for you to honor us with an ode to the day just passed.”

“I’ll consider it.” Lydia could not deny that she was flattered.

“’Twould be another fine gift from your family,” said Quincy.

“We have been glad to give,” said George Sr.

“Glad, indeed,” said George Jr., who followed his father’s lead in most things, as if to express confidence that he would one day replace his father in the most important thing, the running of the family business.

Dorothy had nicknamed her elder brother “the long-legged Napoleon.”

“And we thank you for your generosity in this bicentennial year,” said President Quincy. Then he raised his glass. “Ladies and gentlemen, to the Wedges.”

Once the hear-hears were heard, Lydia raised her glass. “To all who will stand here a century hence, educated by the college, nurtured by her ideas and ideals. Pray that some of them”—she paused and looked around—“will be women.”

There were a few more hear-hears, mostly from men who’d had too much punch or from wives who would have cheered out loud, were their husbands not scowling.

Quincy said, “My dear lady, women learn all they need to from their mothers.”

“My dear Mr. President,” responded Lydia, “until Mother Harvard learns to educate women, she’ll get no more of my money. Once she does, however, I will enrich her with a small gift of majestic proportion.”

Quincy’s face reddened, from his starched collar to his hairline.

And the long-legged Napoleon saved the day by doing what he did best. He turned the talk to money. “Mr. President, we cannot be certain of what will come in a hundred years, but we can be certain that those who follow us will respect us more if we leave them a better library. Herewith, I pledge that Wedge Shipping and Textile shall donate one thousand dollars to the construction of a new library.”

“Bravo,” said one of the men in the crowded room, and then came a fine soft rain of applause to wash away any unpleasantness.

“And,” he added, “I will urge my friends in the Boston Associates to do the same.” He was referring to a loose affiliation of capitalists, many of them Harvard men, who were advancing the cause of American business, North and South, by providing the money to drive the mills and build the ships and lay the iron rails.

“Let the gentlemen of the Boston Associates spread the wealth they take from the rest of the nation,” said Lydia. “We ladies will become the conscience of the nation.”

“Oh, Aunt Lydia,” said George Jr. “You read too much of your own poetry.”

And everyone in the room laughed. Except for the poet.

ii

Lydia Wedge had not spent her life campaigning for female education. Achieving such a thing would be a Sisyphean task, the work of generations, perhaps unfinished when that packet of letters was opened in another century. Her true battle was against an enemy she believed could be beaten in her own lifetime: slavery.

Every Tuesday, Lydia directed her driver to take her down Brattle Street—the new name of the Watertown Road—across the Great Bridge, and into Boston. There, she would stop on Beacon Hill and pick up her grandniece, Dorothy. Then they would ride to the Washington Street office of the
Liberator,
the abolitionist newspaper published by William Lloyd Garrison and his Harvard friend Wendell Phillips.

In the hall that adjoined the offices, the ladies of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society met once a month to hear a talk from Garrison or Phillips, to discuss philosophies and strategies, and, as one husband joked, “to swap recipes.” They also hired a sergeant-at-arms to discourage visits from certain Boston gentlemen.

These gentlemen were known as the Broadcloth Mob, a name they earned when they invaded a meeting in search of Garrison. They were, as Wendell Phillips said later, “not rabble, but gentlemen of property and standing from all parts of the city.” Garrison had leapt out a window to escape them, but they had caught up to him and nearly lynched him. And all of it was done, according to Phillips, “in broadcloth and in broad daylight.”

Why, in the city that called itself the Cradle of Liberty, was there such anger for the abolitionists?

One of the Boston Associates, who himself wore a fine broadcloth cutaway and a tall beaver hat, might offer the answer. He stepped out of a dark doorway as Lydia and Dorothy left a meeting on a September evening.

“Georgie!” cried Dorothy.

“I’ve been waiting for you.” George Jr. was the tallest of the tall Wedges. Of the male Wedges, he had the most and the darkest hair. Of the latest Wedge generation, he had the most ambition and, thought Dorothy, the darkest designs.

She said, “Even the
short
-legged Napoleon would not wait to accost women in the shadows. He’d stand under a streetlamp instead of scaring them half to death.”

“Not half to death.” Lydia started walking. “I’m well beyond half dead.”