PROFESSOR RICHARD WELLINGTON HUSBAND
Lazurence Professor of the Greek Language and Literature
The death of Professor Husband on the ninth of April has brought deep grief to the whole college community. For some weeks he had been confined to his house with trouble of the heart. While this was recognized as serious, it was hoped it would yield to a long period of rest and quiet. But on the seventh the trouble became acute, and on the second morning after, quietly and in full consciousness, he met the challenge of bodily death with the same bravery with which he had met every challenge of the years of life.
Mr. Husband's early life was spent at Milton, Ontario, where he was born in 1869. He began his college studies at the University of Toronto. In his preparatory studies and at Toronto he had the splendid classical training of the English system—more thorough-going than our own, and giving him a basis for his later classical studies which never failed him.
Forced to interrupt his studies by ill health he. went to the ranch of a sister in Alberta. The two years' life in the open and the range-riding fully restored his strength, and he went on to the Pacific coast to complete his studies. He received the Bachelor's Degree at Leland Stanford in 1895 and the Master's Degree a year later, the same year receiving the Bachelor's Degree from the University of Toronto. Removing to the University of California he continued his graduate studies until 1899, when he returned- to Stanford as Instructor in Latin. The next year he came to Dartmouth to take up the work of an Instructor in Greek.
For a time Mr. Husband had the law in mind as a profession, and did the introductory work in the law courses of the university, but he returned to classical studies with the definite intention of making teaching his profession. In the California universities he came into contact with some of the ablest classical teachers of America; his enthusiasm was aroused, his studies were wisely directed, and he acquired an appetite for scholarly investigation which never left him. Some years after he left Stanford a chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa was established there and Mr. Husband made one of the first members.
When in the autumn of 1900 Mr. Husband came to the Greek department of Dartmouth, he brought an accuracy and breadth of scholarship and a contagious enthusiasm which made him at once a power in the College. During the years of his graduate studies Mr. Husband had been an Instructor at Leland Stanford, Mills College, and the University of California, so that class-room work at Dartmouth was no experiment with him. He was thorough, painstaking", and inspiring; he did not chafe at the drudgery of elementary work in the then required courses, and he knew how to tempt the student to go on into the more advanced work of the department. After a time he saw that there was a place hitherto unfilled here for the study of the Greek and Latin languages as a part of the linguistic inheritance of the modern languages. He therefore offered courses in historical Greek and Latin grammar, and these led to a more advanced course in Comparative Philology. For special preparation in this field Mr. Husband spent a year in universitystudies in Leipzig, with travel in Italy and Greece. The college work in classical philology brought Mr. Husband into increasing contact with the department of Latin, and after a time he gave literary as well as linguistic courses there. Finally with the diminishing number of students in Greek and the increasingneeds of the department of Latin, he gave nearly all his work to the Latin language and literature. His professional promotion was steady; in 1903 he became assistant Professor, and in 1915 full Professor of Classical Philology.
In these years in the classical departments Mr. Husband was always a great teacher. His master}- of his subject, his ambition for high scholarship in himself and in his students, and his fine human sympathies and contacts assured success. But he was never satisfied with the mere work of teaching. He was by instinct and training an investigator; he looked upon research as absolutely essential, not only as a preparation for teaching but as a constant accompaniment of it, and in research he was willing to give infinite pains to minute study. While teaching Sophocles, Plato, and Cicero with the utmost emphasis upon their broad literary qualities, he was publishing such detailed studies as "The diphthong ui in Latin." "The Zeta of the Greek alphabet," "The Relation of Kelts and Ligurians," papers which involved the most minute original research.
The teaching of Cicero's speeches led Professor Husband into a new field. His professional knowledge of the principles and practice of modern law led him to take up the technical questions involved in Cicero's legal pleas. A group of papers embodied the results of these studies—work in a field wholly unlike that of his earlier Dartmouth pursuits, and one in which very few classical scholars were able to work successfully. These studies in Roman legal procedure led to a still more important problem, for the study of which he went to Princeton for a semester of special research. The result was his volume published by the Princeton University Press in 1916, The Trial of Jesus beforePilate. The book was widely recognized as presenting new and commanding views upon a much controverted problem. The main study involved the importance of subsidiary investigations, which were printed in papers on The Chronologv of the Caesars, The Date of the Crucifixion, and The Pardoning of Prisoners by Pilate.
This fruitful and continuous activity of Professor Husband made him not only an inspiring teacher but a most stimulating colleague. If one was tempted to settle into the easy routine of stereotyped teachings, with long summers of easy life in a country club, contact with such a man was a daily rebuke; if one was inclined to say that minute technical studies were incompatible with broad human treatment in the class room, Professor Husband's work was a daily proof of the opposite; if one was so pressed with heavy teaching schedules and responsible committee appointments that continued research seemed impossible, Professor Husband showed to us all that it could be done. And he was most generous in the giving of his time. Groups of students reading Latin and Greek with him in the evenings, a classical club largely inspired by his leadership, colleagues helped by his painstaking criticism and proof reading can all testify to his generosity.
Professor Husband's studies widely published in the technical journals and his active participation in the American Philological Association not only gave him high standing in academic circles, but were of very great value to the reputation of the College. At best every college must to some extent suffer in its scholarly reputation in comparison with the university, where research can be made the chief occupation of many men. The college which has the service of a productive scholar like Professor Husband is doubly fortunate.
One of Mr. Husband's most marked services to the College both in its own membership and in its reputation throughout the country was in his presentation of the Oedipus Tyrannus in the Greek in the spring of 1910. A group of students who were reading the Greek drama with him in an evening club conceived the ambition to give the play in Webster Hall. It was a formidable undertaking, an impossible one it seemed to many of us, but with his enthusiasm and his confidence that if a thing ought to be done it could be, Professor Husband finally said "We'll do it." It is only fair to say that the splendid success of the enterprise was his own success; students cooperated heartily and developed unexpected powers, his colleagues aided loyally, but the wisdom and the force behind it all, over-riding every obstacle, were his own—perhaps even that would have been insufficient had it not been for the splendid help and classical knowledge of his wife. The Greek play, as finally given before an audience which included delegates from all the New England colleges, was one of the finest products of Dartmouth scholarship which the College has ever presented to an audience.
During all these years Professor Husband had been in continuous and responsible committee service. His clearness of judgment and executive ability had made him an important part of the college administration; in fact the present admirable system of committee organization is largely- the result of his initiative.
When the United States entered the World War Professor Husband's executive ability and his power of adapting himself to new conditions marked him at once as one of the men whom the College must give to the service of the Government. Removing to Concord he became Secretary of the New Hampshire Committee on Public Safety, Office Manager of the District Board of New Hampshire, and New Hampshire War Historian. Mrs. Husband giving herself with equal devotion to the State work of the Red Cross, they sacrificed their home life for the time for the emergency service of the State. In these years Professor Husband extended his acquaintance and influence widely beyond the academic circles in which till then his life had been passed, and won the confidence and gratitude, of the leaders in state affairs—notably the late General Streeter, with whom he was very intimately associated. .
When at the close of the war the President of the College conceived the plan of applying to the College itself the work in "personnel" which had been so successfully-.developed as a part of military administration, Professor Husband was manifestly the one man to take charge of it. As applied to college men this work was almost wholly new; it demanded ability to master detail, to organize investigation, to make contact between academic, business, and professional circles; it required sympathy and understanding of young men, and, above all, constructive imagination. In the five years in which Professor Husband has held this position under the title, first, of Associate Dean, and latterly of Director of Personnel Research, he has justified the hopes of the President. Making large use of the developing science of intelligence tests, of personal reports from the faculty, and of all records of the achievements of individual students in the class room and the varied college activities, he has supplemented this information with close personal contact with all the men of the College as they approached the end of their course. On the other side he has made careful studies of the opportunities for college men in business and the professions, himself making close contacts with leaders in a very wide field; and he has been able to advise wisely in choice of life work, and in many cases to help outgoing men to find positions where they could work to best advantage. He early saw the importance of special treatment of men who were under abnormal nervous strain, and he made the service of a specialist in psychotherapy a part of the new department. He has brought his office out of the experimental stage, and made it not only an essential part of the College, but a leader in the personnel work of the academic world at large.
In addition to the heavy work of organizing and developing the personnel office at Dartmouth, Mr. Husband generously gave his help to the establishment of this kind of work in other institutions. He also was a valued member of several national organizations interested in human relations problems, such as the Taylor Society; the Society of Industrial Engineers; Personnel Research Federation, on whose editorial board he served; and until his illness was chairman of the Committee on Relations with the Business Colleges of the American Management Association.
Mr. Husband's hearty comradeship was one of the outstanding features of his personal life; his acquaintance with classical scholars was very wide and his friendships intimate.. In these later years his more public contacts had won him a great circle of friends. His intellectual interests were as wide as his friendships. Professor Husband had the courage and confidence that make for success; he was entirely free from the conceit and selfishness that sometimes mar it. Under three administrations he gave himself largely and generously to the support of the Head of the College; he accepted heavy responsibilities and was never found wanting.
Professor Husband's religious life was sincere and steadfast.. His service to St. Thomas Church at home was supplemented by responsible work in the state as a member of The Council of the Diocese of New Hampshire, and Secretary of the Social Service Department. His sympathies were wholly with the liberal movements in religious thought, and he brought to them study and knowledge beyond that of most laymen.
In 1901 Mr. Husband brought to us his young wife, who had been a comrade in his studies in California; from that time to this she has been the perfect comrade of his life. He lived to see his son Richard holding an honorable place in the sophomore class of the College. The new home on Clement Road was renewing the gracious hospitalities of the former home on Park Street.
In the thought of the passing of a life so useful and the breaking of ties so many and so close, one likes to recall words which many an alumnus will have heard from Professor Husband's lips in the old days—"No evil comes to the good man in life or in death; God cares for him."
RICHARD W. HUSBAND
