The Hanover Scene

A RECENT announcement that, starting next year, sophomores as well as freshmen will be required to take their daily bread under College control has brought a mild flurry of protest, but nothing compared to the yammering that will come later, after the faculty has achieved the dubious beneficence of turning the Class of 1959 into sophomores. Discontent will reach its zenith, at least in the columns of TheDartmouth, a year from next March, along with bitter diatribes against hour examinations, fraternity discrimination, noise in the dormitories, and the cut system. March in Hanover seems always to furnish particular leisure for voicing irritations, but institutional eating, no matter how good, never has been and probably never will be the people's choice.

Over a half century ago, Bubby Bartlett wrote: "College Hall has wrought a marvellous change in the humanity of the College ... raising the standard of alimentation throughout the village, promoting genial discussion of serious topics, and enabling the College to be a gracious host to organizations from within and without." Our recollection of the graciousness of the Commons' atmosphere is not as keen, but neither is it bitter when we recall some of the feasts we have enjoyed in the Sumppump Rooms of numerous second-rate hostelries. Then, too, eating in Commons was not an iron-clad requirement, and one could always substitute a toast-side at Phil's or Scotty's or, if opulent, descend to the Grill and wave an order slip in the air until it was grabbed by a supercilious waiter under the baleful eye of Jim Haggerty. Another out was the eating club - some of which, like the Bagley and Smalley establishments, maintained a pretension of exclusiveness. For $4.50 a week there was plenty of solid, unimaginative fodder and genial discourse on enlightening, if not invariably serious, topics, to say nothing of an obbligato of trenchant comment that floated in from the kitchen.

The report is that current national prosperity and international peril are persuasive to early marriage and that the percentage of undergraduate Benedicts is soaring, so that many a hand that reaches for the sheepskin is already practiced in furling the rabbit skin around Baby Bunting. If this be true, rumors of the superiority of home cooking in Wigwam Circle may well add to the disgruntlement of those forced to market for their food by the plate instead of by the basket. And how could it be otherwise, when even the most untutored housewife can purchase canned white sauce and prepeeled grapes, and can always maintain on an "Emergency Shelf" such dainties as Okra, Prune-plums, and Maraschino Cherries? A few years ago an undergraduate complained bitterly in the local press of the disturbance caused by hearty dormitory neighbors coming in late "off the trail" from a chubbing expedition and making raucous jest over Marvin's having lost the can opener. Today's bride would be paralyzed without this staple of the "kitchen shower," although a greater need, and one which we commend to the AEC, is the development of an atomic device to worm into the swaddling of impermeable cellophane that now drapes most staple and fancy groceries.

For the majority, however, there stretches between the text-book and the family budget book an indeterminate period of "eating around," with no limitation on choice except that imposed by economic law. They can suffer the nauseous addition of tomatoes to clam chowder. They can relish a typical shore dinner (canned beans and soggy crackers), or seek out innumerable metropolitan haunts where opulent friends may set them up to delightful $16.50 blue plates. They can dine sumptuously at the Café Royale in The Hague, or Locke-Ober's in Boston, or the Vespers in Philadelphia, or the Wilder Vermont Grill. They can gorge at the Nassau Tavern on Tiger Butter (or ghi, as it is called in India). They can patronize Chock-Full-o-Nuts, or sip their vin rose with their griddle cakes at Schrafft's.

We have sampled the offerings of these and numerous other boites from Trois Rivieres to Okefenokee and from Trader Vic's to Presque Isle, and have consumed enough to keep a man alive for more years than we tell anyone but the Social Security Administration; but among the keenest gustatory recollections of our celibate days are exclusive early Sunday evening suppers in Commons, when a few of us would cut Chapel and wallow in superiority and creamed chipped beef while our more godly or less provident mates were enduring spiritual salvation across a bleak and snow-swept campus.