Idiosyncracies of Professor Sophocles, Famous Harvard Scholar, of Last Century Narrated by Professor Palmer

The following character sketch of the late Professor Sophocles, who was a famous member of the Classical Department of the University many years ago, was written in 1891 by Professor George Herbert Palmer, now Alford Professor of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy, and Civil Polity, Emeritus. It is reprinted from "The Story of Fay House," a book by Mrs. George Plerce Baker, recently published by the University Press.

Outwardly he was always brusque and repellent. A certain savagery marked his very face. He once observed that, in introducing a character, Homer is apt to draw attention to the eye. Certainly in himself this was the feature which first attracted notice; for his eye had uncommon alertness and intelligence.

Those who knew him well detected in it a hidden sweetness; but against the stranger it burned and glared, and guarded all avenues of approach. Startled it was like the eye of a wild animal, and penetrating. "peering through the portals of the brain like the brass cannon." Over it crouched bushy brows, and all around the great head bristled white hair, on forehead, cheeks, and lips, so that little flesh remained visible, and the life was settled in two fiery spots. This concentration of expression in the few elementary features of shape, hair, and eyes made the head a magnificent subject for painting. Rembrandt should have painted it. William Hunt would have done it best justice among our own painters.

Never Allowed Portraits

It is a pity that no report of it hangs in Memorial Hall. But he would never allow a portrait of himself to be drawn. Into his personality strangers must not intrude. Venturing once to try for memoranda of his face, I took an artist to his room. The courtesy of Sophocles was too stately to allow him to turn my friend away, but he seated himself in a shaded window, and kept his head in constant motion. When my frustrated friend had departed, Sophocles told me, though without direct reproach, of two sketches which had before been surreptiously made,--one by the pencil of a student in his class, another in oils by a lady who had followed him on the street.

A boy who snowballed him on the street he prosecuted relentlessly, and he could not be appeased until a considerable fine was imposed; but he paid the fine himself. Many a bold push was made to ascertain his age; yet, however suddenly the question came, or however craftily one crept from date to date, there was a uniform lack of success. "I see Allibone's Dictionary says you were born in 1805," a gentleman remarked. "Some statements have been nearer, and some have been farther from the truth."

Concealed Age Successfully

One day, when a violent attack of illness fell on him, a physician was called for diagnosis. He felt the pulse, he examined the tongue, he heard the report of the symptoms, then suddenly asked, "How old are you, Mr. Sophocles?" With a ready presence of mind and as pretty ingenuity as if he were not lying at the point of death, Sophocles answered: "The Arabs, Dr. W., estimate age by several standards. The age of Hassan, the porter, is reckoned by his wrinkles; that of Abdallah, the physician, by the lives he has saved; that of Achmet, the sage, by his wisdom, I, all my life a scholar, am nearing my hundredth year."

Lived in Stern Independence

Closely connected with his repellent reserve was the stern independence of his mode of life. In his scheme, little things were kept small and great things large. What was the true reading in a passage of Aristophanes, what the usage of a certain word in Byzantine Greek,--these were matters on which a man might well reflect and labor. But of what consequence was it if the breakfast was slight or the coat worn?

Accordingly a single room, in which a light was seldom seen, sufficed him during his forty years of life in the college yard. It was totally bare of comforts. It contained no carpet, no stuffed furniture, no bookcase. The college library furnished the volumes he was at any time using, and these lay along the floor, beside his dictionary, his shoes, and the box that contained the sick chicken. A single bare table held the book he had just laid down, together with a Greek newspaper, a silver watch, a cravat, a paper package or two, and some scraps of bread.

His simple meals were prepared by himself over a small open stove, which served at once for heat and cookery. Eating, however, was always treated as a subordinate and incidental business, deserving no fixed time, no dishes, nor the setting of a table. The peasants of the East, the monks of Southern monasteries, live chiefly on bread and fruit, relished with a little wine; and Sophocles, in spite of Cambridge and America, was to the last a peasant and a monk. Such simple nutriments best fitted his constitution, for "they found their acquaintance there."

The Western world had come to him by accident, and was ignored; the East was in his blood, and ordered all his goings. Yet, as a grave man of the East might, he had his festivities, and could on occasion be gay. Among a few friends he could tell a capital story and enjoy a well-cooked dish. But his ordinary fare was meagre in the extreme. For one of his heartier meals he would cut a piece of meat into bits and roast it on a spit, as Homer's people roasted theirs. "Why not use a gridiron?" I once asked, "It is not the same," he said, "The juice then runs into the fire. But when I turn my spit it bastes itself."

Imported Wine From Corinth

His taste was more than usually sensitive, kept fine and discriminating by the restraint in which he held it. Indeed, all his senses, except sight, were acute. The wine he drank was the delicate unresinated Greek wine,--Corinthian, or Chian, or Cyprian; the amount of water to be mixed with each being carefully debated and employed. Each winter a cask was sent him from a special vineyard on the heights of Corinth, and occasioned something like a general rejoicing in Cambridge, so widely were its flavourous contents distributed.

Shunned Social Gatherings

Whenever this cask arrived, or when there came a box from Mt. Sinai filled with potato-like sweetmeats,--a paste of figs, dates, and nuts, stuffed into sewed goatskins,--or when his hens had been laying a goodly number of eggs, then under the blue cloak a selection of bottles, or of sweetmeats, or of eggs would be borne to a friend's house, where for an hour the old man sat in dignity, and calm, opening and closing his eyes and his jack-knife; uttering meanwhile detached remarks, wise, gruff, biting, yet seldom lacking a kernal of kindness, till bedtime came, nine o'clock, and he was gone, the gifts--if thanks were feared--left in a chair by the door.

There were half a dozen houses and dinner tables in Cambridge to which he went with pleasure, houses where he seemed to find a solace in the neighborhood of his kind. But human beings were an exceptional luxury. He had never learned to expect them. They never became necessities of his daily life, and I doubt if he missed them when they were absent.

Nursed Bantams--Frank and Nina

But his solitary heart went out most unreservedly and with the most pathetic devotion toward fragile chickens; and out of these uninteresting little birds he elicited a degree of responsive intelligence which was starting to see. One of his dearest friends, coming home from a journey, brought him a couple of bantam eggs.

When hatched and grown, they developed into a little five-inch burnished cock, which shone like a jewel or a bird of paradise, and a more sober but exquisite hen. These two, Frank and Nina, and all their numerous progeny for many years, Sophocles trained to the hand. Each knew its name, and would run from the flock when its white-haired keeper called, and, sitting upon his hand or shoulder, would show queer signs of affection, not hesitating even to crow.

The eggs, as soon as laid, were penciled with the date and the name of the mother, and were then distributed among his friends, or sparingly eaten at his own meals. To eat a chicken itself was a kind of cannibalism from which his whole nature shrank. "I do not eat what I love," he said, rejecting the bowl of chicken broth I pressed upon him in his last sickness.