A Wife's-Eye View of the DM*
In that halcyon era of the twenties when Sidney Smith drew Andy Gump, and every "Oh Min" was worth a good belly laugh, the Chicago Tribune carried a little item about a Dartmouth College student swallowing a goldfish in a fraternity initiation. Our father, a Tribune man and no-nonsense Bible belt clergyman, used the story as a dreadful object lesson, dismissing the whole doubtful area of Eastern colleges and fraternal life with one piercing question, "Do you see what I mean?"
We four children saw.
Twenty years later, though, one of us married a completely acceptable, non-goldfish-swallowing Dartmouth man (hereinafter fondly referred to as a DM) and lived happily ever after.
But in looking back, we believe it might be a kind and merciful act to revise the marriage vow for any and all brides taking unto themselves one of this strange and wonderful species (unquestionably unique even in Ivy League circles). She should "promise to love, honor and obey this man ... till death do us part ... and his college." This should be understood to include all appurtenances thereunto belonging, together with all and singular memories, memoirs, books, yearbooks, exam papers, term papers (New Departure in . Education in the Quincy school system), pictures, and other memorabilia ad infinitum. She should promise to plunge into any and all alumni activities he chooses to engage in. It would help if she would say she would walk by his side through the murky waters of enrollment work for the county, and perform all typing chores and paper work cheerfully, whenever called upon, even right after a 2:00 a.m. feeding.
D sweaters one expects around the house after a two-letter man has spent four years on the hallowed Hanover plain. There are white ones with a dark green D and dark green ones with a white D. (They will still be around seventeen years later and by then be more precious than rubies and much fine gold.) Pictures of hockey teams are nice in the basement playroom. One - "to my most improved player, with best wishes, Eddie Jeremiah" - is fine just above the workbench. Father captaining the tennis team is an inspiration to a firstborn, the picture hanging just above his bed. Father on the team before the captaincy appears in appropriate spots throughout the house. Coach Red Hoehn is a household word and we respect his presence on our walls.
The Vox Clamantis in Deserto emblem is perfect above the basement fireplace. The framed sketch of the Dartmouth College campus is perfect above and behind the piano in the den. Dartmouth Hall - also framed, this one gold - introduces the Dartmouth decor as one walks into the dining room. We use the Royal Cauldon England (Est. 1774) Dartmouth dinner plates on state and family occasions only. The beautiful scenes of Baker Library Tower, Ledyard Bridge, the Old Row, Observatory Hill, Tuck School, the College Church, D.O.C. House, Webster Hall, Parkhurst Hall, and Carpenter and Baker are supposed to send the conversation up country to Hanover. They do. Dinner music which brings a lump to the throat fastest is Winter Wonderland by the Dartmouth College Glee Club. The after-dinner speech which makes hearts beat faster fastest is the "Burning of the Books" talk given by Dwight David Eisenhower while visiting on campus and receiving an honorary doctorate in June 1953.
The Winter Wonderland scenes are reproduced on a stunning green and white silk scarf (scholarship fund, $5) which is a Must for any self-respecting wife of a DM. Eleazar Wheelock proffering rum and religion to an Indian is the only weathervane a loyal son would have on his roof, and if one listens carefully one can almost hear those moccasined feet stirring restlessly in the wilderness, drowning out the sounds of any insolent prancing or pawing of other intruders on the roof.
This physical identification with the College is exceeded only by the sumtotal spiritual domination of the life of the DM. Once a man has walked the duckboards in early spring and heard the chimes of Baker Library, his entire Weltanschauung is tinged with dark green. There is a Heimweh in his eye and a Schmerz in his heart the day he leaves Hanover that will go with him through life.
A DM will read The New York Times from cover to cover on Sunday night and as he turns off the light on the bedside table he will say, in tones no less than sepulchral, "Honey, do you realize that Commander Shepard's father is a Dart- mouth man?" and the drowsing but welldisciplined spouse will fight off fatigue and murmer obligingly, "Isn't that wonderful, dearest," and they will fall asleep and dream of undergraduates in D sweaters polishing dark green space ships out there in weightlessness land.
This condition is not to be taken lightly or scorned in any way by the uninitiated. When your DM says, as you drive up to a Howard Johnson's on Sunday afternoon, "This one is run by a Dartmouth man," do not ignore him and turn to 15, 13 and 9 in the backseat and say testily, "We will have 15-cent cones, repeat, 15cent cones," but rather say, turning to your husband with great respect, "How positively phenomenal, darling." Do not, for goodness' sake, add flippantly, "Was he of the class of aught-aught or aughteight?" because if you do he will look at you with that look of incredible disbelief that anyone could be so sacrilegious.
When he has been appointed stufffinder chairman for the area (says National Enrollment, "There's stuff in that county, find it") and he comes into the kitchen at 5:29 p.m. laden with groceries and asks while kissing you on the cheek, "Any Form Sixes from the College today?" for heaven's sake do not say, "What college is that?" If you do he will go into the bedroom and pull off his tie without another word.
The funny thing about this feeling is that it rubs off onto the wife. Nothing is lovelier than to find a corsage at your door in the Hanover Inn with a note saying welcome to the wife of a DM. And when the great, big, wonderful President John Sloan Dickey addresses his DM en at a fund-raising dinner (wives guests of the College) in that great, big wonderful voice, and says that Dartmouth is an historic part of the homespun fabric of America, and that President Eisenhower said over and over again that this is the way a college should look, strange things happen. It isn't the latest Madison Avenue technique that prompts a wife to lean over, put her hand on her husband's, squeeze it, and whisper, "I'll just have my old suit cleaned."
Dartmouth Man. The one to whom the author is married is Samuel H. Snow '40 of Shrewsbury, Mass.
