1897 Its 50th Reunion
1897 Golden Jubilee—coming back to college after fifty years is an experience. As we drove into Hanover from the south, our first view was the spire of the Library which gave us a thrill. "There she is. Isn't she beautiful?"
Hanover comes out to meet you with a new show of fine houses that seemed to us like children dressed up, playing away from their own door yard to show off. Funny we didn't know that Hanover had any south till long after we left it.
Now it comes south to meet us but doesn't hold us long. We soon come to the run-down little section of South Main St. and then to the black glass store fronts just as bad and ordinary and commonplace as most any Main Street, but not quite so bad as Bridgeport or Bellows Falls, but just plain bad. You can't see much of it because the traffic is so thick you are in danger if you look.
1897's Golden Reunion
Must Hanover have a slum area? If so, let's create one. We have a good start at the rear of Thayer School. Our own "tobacco road," as I like to call it. Our short, bad, busy Main Street is soon behind us and Dartmouth College begins about 200 feet from the campus at Campion's Store on the right before you come to the Inn.
There good fenestration begins and the commonplace ends. Going north under the elms all is beautiful except a few buildings with "unmanifest" fenestration on the west of the campus. We all recall "Clothespin's" quotation from Emerson, given in his nasal New England accent, "If eyes were made for seeing, then beauty is its own excuse for being."
Hanover this year, our fiftieth, put on a show of green. Trees were perfect, the grass on the campus a royal carpet. Our hats come off to Gooding and his staff of caretakers and janitors. As secretary of my class, I want to thank Gooding and his men for the way they have kept Dartmouth College these long hard years. One of my best friends in Hanover is a janitor "Al." Thank you for your good work at a fraternity house.
What a setting for our reunion! The first man I saw was Erdix Smith, my fishing pal of college days. I refused to shake hands with him until I put on my fishing hat which was handy on the back seat of my car. A fine, tall "bell hop" at the Inn came out to be helpful. It gives me a thrill to have the welcome start under the portecochere. "How-do-you-do, Mrs. Ham and Mr. Ham." Thanks fellow, keep it up, it means soft money.
Erdix and I came early to keep our contract: "This joint agreement entered into in good faith shall become effective when signed by each of the three confessed fishermen of the Class of '97. We three, Henry Morris Lull, Erdix Tenney Smith, and William Hale Ham, jointly and severally agree to procure by proper methods sufficient, edible fish of the fontinalis species, to provide each of the classmates a reasonable meal at the occasion of our reunion fifty years after graduation from Dartmouth College. This agreement is to become effective when signed by all three of the above-mentioned classmates. ERDIX T. SMITH, HENRY MORRIS LULL, WILLIAM HALE HAM."
"Gib," called "Hamilton" and sometimes called "Ham." was there, and "Jigger" sitting on the porch of the Inn looking just as natural as if he had not been away. "Gib" looks just like he did in college, well-dressed, light of step, gracious, sincere and generous. "Jigger" youthful looking, same wonderful smile, sportily dressed and wearing a "powdered wig" that would have made a Washington or Lee. late of Virginia, jealous. Erdix was enthusiastic, well-dressed. Let me quote my wife. "Erdix always looks well-dressed, his clothes are of fine material and they fit." "Gib's" wife was there. "Gib," HerbyThyng, and I knew her as a young lady in New York when we were the typical hall room boys in the great city wearing high hats, Prince Albert coats and carrying canes when we went on parade. We dressed just like Prexy Bartlett except we wore ascot ties and the Prince Albert had a bell shape. The canes we used were like Charlie Chaplin's. We used to visit May Hibbard's home and "Gib" married her at St. John the Divine. We went to the wedding all dressed up. We four were the first back, "Gib" in comfortable, wool tweeds, Erdix in English worsted "good goods," "Jigger" in comfortable sports and myself in the product of my hand-loom and my spinning machine.
Erdix and I went fishing Thursday, with the results not reported herein. We did, however, fulfill our contract—plus. There used to be a song that ended every verse with "And it's nobody's business but mine." Friday most of the classmates came. I had an early breakfast with HenryChase, a later one with Foss, a third one with "Hiram" Tuttle, alias Morton C.Tuttle. We roomed together and loved the same dog, Vic. He became serious right away because I read to him my talk to be given to the graduates and others. We were anxious to develop the proper claque so as to have quick action, if and when needed. "Hiram" questioned one part of my talk and only accepted it after we had been slumming back of Howe Library and back of the Inn. He wore a moderately wild sport suit woven in broken twill in color and fiber to be individual. I had to go some to match him in loudness of pattern.
Information about Henry Lull, as reported to me by D. J. Russell, Vice-president, Southern Pacific Cos., reads as follows: "Naturally an outdoor man, he became in Oregon an indefatigable fly fisherman. About the only company rule he ever broke was to "borrow" the roadmaster's rail motor car on week ends to reach the more inaccessible trout streams of that state. No deep sea and surf man, his outdoor instinct in Texas led him to golf, which in his earlier career was looked down upon by him as a puerile waste of time. Thanks to his New England inheritance as exercised on the initial tee, plus fair execution and entire self-control in emergencies, he does very well at this avocation." Henry fished in West Windsor. Refused to confess the use of dynamite. Did describe a method of scattering horse meat on the surface of the pond and shooting a heavy charge of buck shot with a shot gun but maintains to the last—that he only used a Red Ibis and a Professor. As to his method, he says nothing. He called me at midnight Thursday to say that he had caught 27. He brought them to Hanover and was very calm about it when most men would have celebrated to a degree sometimes called vulgar. Erdix, Christie and I brought in 33, making a total of 60 square tail and rainbow—29 for the class and one extra for "Sport" Morse, 16 for the wives who were under the care of a night herd at the Inn, 12 for President Dickey and two for Miss Gill who cooked us such a nice dinner. I wish to hell "Sport" knew how hard it was to catch fish when the wind is in the East. He must have felt silly when he got a bill for $3 for his dinner, thinking fish was all he was going to get.
Our program at our reunion was set up on a thoroughly studied agenda, the ideology of which was set by Judge John OtisSibley, formerly inmate of Wentworth Hall and a member of the Ku Klux Klan of our day, known as the Wentworth charge of Delta Alpha. Judge Sibley said, "You all remember when Johnnie Row (author of the song 'Row, Johnnie, Row') was writing the French proverb on the board and I threw a piece of chalk at him and just missed. He turned quickly and said, I quote, 'I want the gentleman of my section who threw that chalk to stand up.' All forty of us in the class stood up as one man." That tells the story of our reunion better than anything else I can say. There were minor difficulties and one or two low-brow thoughts introduced. One classmate seemed a little inflated. He talked about his hobby of blowing smoke rings and having them canned to send to Europe. I didn't get it. Perhaps others did. Rowe got out of hand a little at the dinner. "Sport" gave excuse for his excesses and bad actions as the privilege of one who is "fancy free." "Mike" Kelly has access to pictures sufficient to put Rowe in the "Hoosegow" and maybe cause ah expensive trip to Reno by his wife. Photographs taken just before going to dinner, in which one of the girls of '22 class breezed in at "half-seas" and did a lot of cuddling that no man 50 years out should allow. "Sport" maintained his rights as a single man but got a little worried when I said, "How about her husband?" He asked me, "Do you think her husband will raise hell about it?" And I said I thought he might. Some efforts are being made to suppress the picture. How much effort I am not sure. Would like to save Rowe but I do not think "Sport" deserves it.
The real tragedy of the reunion was the wholesale arrest of the class between fish and meat at our banquet. The writ listing charges began as follows:
"To the Sheriff of the County of Grafton, or his Deputy, or either Constable of the Town of Grafton within said County—GREETING: BY AUTHORITY OF THE STATE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE: You are hereby commanded to summon for immediate appearance at the "Hoosegow" in Hanover for charges of various and sundry kinds to appear there and then before the inferior judge of the inferior court within aforesaid County at the "Hoosegow" in Hanover, New Hampshire, and to answer to the following charges, each of you being charged as follows:"
The writ then went into the sorry details concerning the crimes and amount of damage done by the 31 members of '97 present and concluded:
"I, JAMES CAESAR PETRILLO, the subscribing authority, hereby certify that I have personal knowledge as to the financial responsibility of the plaintiffs and deem it sufficient to pay costs in this action.
"Of this writ, with your doings thereon, make due service and return this day. Dated at said Hanover, N. H., this 14th day of June, A.D. 1947.
Row Johnnie Roe, Commissioner Inferior Court of said Grafton County"
If any classmate blows too hard about his virtues, let it be known that with all of these grave charges not one denial was made and an able attorney did not only ask for delay of appearance for all of this nefarious gang who ate fish and meat together, and then the next morning we had to have hornpout for breakfast. Christie, hornpout fisherman No. 1, using angle worms and a bamboo pole fishing at night with a lantern, brought 50. There is no report of his having any assistance but no reunion of our class can run without his charming, efficient wife, and I bet she caught half of them. Our class picture will show who was there. We sent a postal card signed by each one of us to those who were not able to come. Eddie Carr wrote me a long letter saying how happy it made him to get this postal card.
Sunday afternoon most everybody went away, each one saying it had been a glorious reunion and some of us agreeing that we would meet in Hanover every year till our number comes up.
P. S. "Gov." Tent brought back his original skis which he used when "Pa" Rollins introduced winter sports in Hanover in 1895, thus starting the winter sports in New England. Tent presented these skis to Dartmouth College.
1897's Reunion Roster: Fred Appleton Frank Johnson William Balch Walter Kelly Charles Bolser Henry Lull Jay Brown Carroll Morse Edward Carr Horace Pender Henry Chase Weld Rollins Herman Christophe Brainard Rowe Frank Drew Joseph Ryan George Foss John Sibley Harold Gibson Erdix Smith George Gilman Winfield Temple William H. Ham Charles Tracy John Henderson Morton Tuttle George Hilton Roy Ward Hermon Holt Albert Watson T. H. Huckins
THE GROUP PORTRAIT OF THE FIFTY-YEAR CLASS, 1897: Left to right, front row, Rollins, Pender, Johnson, Ryan, Christophe, Balch, Foss, Drew, Kelly, Morse, J. D. Brown. Back row, Gibson, Tent, Ward, Temple, E. T. Smith, Chase, Appleton, Holt, Henderson, McFee, Rowe, Bolser, Ham, Tuttle, Lull.
CLASS SECRETARY
