Portraits of the Heart
Dartmouth's timeless images are framed on walls and captured in our dreams.
DARTMOUTH HALL ATOP ITS gently sloping lawn; Baker Library, flanked by elegant, dignified Sanborn House; and, across a lawn, Webster Hall, where, at a variety show long ago, I was anything but elegant or dignified, precipitating a three-year suspension in the spring of my senior year... .These and a few other now-misty Dartmouth images in my mind were all once a concrete, tangible part of my everyday world. But, oh, so long ago—44 years to be exact. With that much time having passed by, even Liv Kristin Robinson's beautiful, hand-painted photographs, displayed on these four pages, don't seem quite real to me.
What is real in my life today is the golden Dartmouth Hall embossed on the back of a smoky-black captain's chair I have in my den. I lean against its hard but pleasingly curved surface almost every day. There are half a dozen solid-green Baker Libraries on an equal number of sturdy cocktail glasses Sally and I keep on display behind the glass door of our buffet. Maybe one or two less by now. I seem to vaguely recall the summer evening when our dog Jeepers's long, bushy tail brushed one of them onto the slate floor of our patio.
Recently, while waiting in a Boston publisher's outer office for an appointment, I spied hanging on the wall a delicately rendered, gold-framed etching of the entranceway into Sanborn House. There was no mistaking it. Aha, I thought. The person I was about to meet had not only attended Dartmouth but had probably, like me, been an English major. Turned out I was correct on both counts. Of course.
So it is that my forever images of Dartmouth—at least the daytime variety—are now mostly on walls, chairs, cocktail glasses, clocks, and on the rear windows of cars. But at night.. .well, I must confess that at night they all appear in "the dream."
I'm running across the Green. It's usually spring. Often I'm trying to negotiate the duckboards. Remember them? I see by the clock in the Baker Library tower that I have less than five minutes to find where my final philosophy exam is being held, the one I must pass in order to graduate. Invariably, I look first in Webster Hall. How silly dreams are. As far as I know, there never has been a philosophy exam held in Webster Hall. Sometimes, when I push open the door (through which I once staggered on my way to the juvenile prank that proved to be my collegiate demise), I see that John Sloan Dickey is addressing my class as freshmen. He's telling us that one out of every three of us will not be here in four years. Scary. I quietly back out and close the door again. Occasionally, instead of Dickey, it's Robert Frost. Once it was the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.
Sanborn House is a more logical bet but the staid group in there, sitting around holding little cups of tea, doesn't even lookup as I race through. It's as though I'm invisible. They're discussing, of all things, Aristophanes and his Lysistrata.
All the classrooms in the buildings that comprise Dartmouth Row are empty. Where is everyone? Outside, suddenly it's dark and there seems to be a huge, raucous gathering on the lawn. "Beat Fordham! Beat Fordham!" Fordham? Through the windows of Thornton I can see orange flames rising rapidly into the sky over the Green. It's easy for a dream to switch seasons.
My search never ends. I'm not saying it continues every night but I'll bet I've repeated at least a hundred spring semesters at Dartmouth over the years.
Baker Library, Sanborn House, Webster Hall, Dartmouth Row. These Dartmouth portraits are framed on den walls throughout the world and yet, for me, they're now more an everlasting dream. But they're never distorted, invariably lovely and, even as I sleep, they always touch my heart.
You know, maybe I'm the luckiest Dartmouth alumnus who ever lived.
JUDSON HALE has been with Yankee magazine and The Old Farmer's Almanac since his graduation in 1958, editor-in-chief since 1910. lie lives with his wife,Sally, and a golden retriever, Jeepers, in Dublin, New Hampshire.
I'LL BET I've repeated at least a hundred spring semesters at Dartmouth over the years.
