And then the professor of literature. Perhaps you think I should have had some success in classes of literature; but that only shows how little you know about college. A new professor came in just as I reached this class, and I learned in after years that he had got his appointment through the Tammany machine. A bouncing and somewhat vulgar little man, he was an ardent and argumentative Catholic, and his idea of conducting a class of literature was to find out if there was anything in the subject which could in any way be connected with Catholic doctrine and history, and if so, to bring out that aspect of the subject. Thus I learned that Milton, though undoubtedly a great poet, had cruelly lied about the popes; also I learned that Chaucer was positively not a Wyckliffite. I had not the remotest idea what a Wyckliffite was, but got the general impression that it was something terrible, and I was quite willing to believe the best of Chaucer, in spite of his perverse way of spelling English words. As part of the process of disciplining our taste in literature, we were required to learn poems by heart, and this professor selected poems which had something to do with Catholicism. Seeing that most of us were Jews, this was irritating, but we got what fun we could out of our predicament. At that time there was a popular music-hall song, with a chorus: “Ta-ra-ra-ra-boom-de-ay”; so we used to go about the corridors of our college chanting to this lively tune a poem by Austin Dobson:
Missal of the Gothic age, Missal with the blazoned page, Whence, O Missal, hither come, From what dim scriptorium?
Whose the name that wrought thee thus, Ambrose or Theophilus, Bending, through the waning light, O’er thy vellum scraped and white!
I hope you know the tune of “Ta-ra-ra-ra-boom-de-ay,” so that you may get the full cultural benefit from this recitation!
However, my little Catholic professor of literature did one thing for me; he let me know of the existence of a poet by the name of Shelley. We read “The Skylark” and “The Cloud” in class, and there came over me a realization of the ghastly farce I was going through in this college. I was near the end of my senior year, but my store of patience gave out, and I presented a letter to the faculty, stating that I was obliged to earn my own living, and requesting that I be allowed two months’ leave of absence. The statement was strictly true, but the implication, that I was going to spend the two months in earning money, was not true; I spent the two months sitting on the bed in an eight by ten hall bedroom in a lodging-house, reading Shelley’s poetry and Emerson’s Essays and the prose of Ruskin and Carlyle. I went back to college and made up my lost months in a week or two, and passed my examinations without either credit or discredit—ranking just in the middle of my class.