The Master's Touch

The first snowfall of the winter brought with it notices to Lowell House.

SNOWBALLING

This seasonal diversion contravenes the rule against playing ball in the courtyard. Human nature ensures that some people will indulge in it anyway.

There is an old House custom that when a gentleman breaks a window, he reports it, pays the resultant bill, and that is that. Those who are not gentlemen do not take responsibility and may well get away with it. But if they are caught, there is always the question of whether there is room in the House for cheats.

Individuals have a splendid opportunity to designate their own characters. --Elliott Perkins

With that formal admonition, the Master of Lowell House dismissed the problem of snowballs and broken windows for another winter. If some House members thought they detected a glint of humor beneath the stern formality, Perkins probably would not dispute it. For twelve years he has guided Lowell House with a light but firm hand, and likes the results. House members share his satisfaction.

Since he took over from Julian Coolidge '95 in September, 1940, Perkins has shown an appreciation for a good joke well played. The House member who risked his distinctly non-Hibernian neck to make the Lowell tower glow green on St. Patrick's Day night got a fine letter of recommendation to the Medical School, half of it devoted to that incident. When Perkins learned that the prankster was one of the first from his class to be admitted, he was not surprised. "I know they are always interested in a fellow with ideas," he says with a smile.

Perkins likes his job, which he compares to boot-legging, because one meets such interesting people. "It's the best job you can have if your tastes run that way, and mine do," he explains. A lean and balding six-footer who wears glasses so he can see across the class room, Perkins has an almost encyclopedic knowledge of Harvard history and lore. But he will get up during even a casual conversation for a book to verify a name or a class, a habit which he charges, off to a historian's insistence on exactitude. Perkins' field is Eighteenth Century England and in the fall he teaches History 142a, besides being a History and Literature tutor.

Before he got the job, Perkins never thought much about being a Housemaster. Born 52 years ago this month at Westwood, Mass., into a family of distinctly proper Bostonians, he prepped at Milton Academy, graduating in 1918. He then spent a year on a ranch (developing into an incredibly inept cowboy, he says) before entering Harvard with the Class of 1923. He captained the third 150-pound crew in College history during his senior year and got his degree cum laude in History and Literature. He enrolled in the Law School, but found law so little to his liking that he welcomed the chance to become an assistant dean of freshmen in 1925.

After two years of cautioning freshmen not to make the same mistakes he did, Perkins left University Hall to become a part-time tutor in History and Literature while working on his doctoral thesis, a study of English Elections under Sir Robert Walpole. He then obtained a year's leave of absence to carry on research in England, where he went to work under L. B. Namier, the leading scholar in the Parliamentary field, but only after promising Namier he would be around at least two years to cover the extensive topic. Perkins was able to arrange for a second year's leave, then a third (he was having a good time) but when Namier began talking about a fourth, he decided it was time to go.

Perkins received his doctorate at mid-years in 1936, but what he describes as an "event of considerable magnitude" took place in between. He met Mary Baker Wilbraham, an English lady who was visiting in the country. Impressed, he gave chase, following the lady to England the next two summers, and in April, 1937, they were married. In the summer of that year, Perkins was appointed to the rank of faculty instructor.

Faculty instructors then had three years in which to prove their worth, and when Perkins was called in by Mr. Conant in the spring of his third year, he expected a polite handshake and best wishes in his new job, wherever that might be. When Conant offered him the job at Lowell House, Perkins recalls that he was so surprised that he could only utter a one-word expletive, which would hardly bear repeating.

Perkins set about learning the complex business of being a Housemaster, but the war came and filled his House with freshmen. Since the war, problems such as what to do with 430 men in a House designed for 300 have demanded full attention and still do.

The emphasis at Lowell under Perkins falls on tradition and custom. Of all the traditional observances the favorite seems to be the weekly teas on Thursday, where Mrs. Perkins entertains with the Master. She presides over the teapot and can tell a seldom-seen guest that she has forgotten his name in a most delightful way. The only person ever to get the better of Mrs. Perkins was the brash Midwestern sophomore who came to tea on a bet and demanded his with lemon and cream and five sugars.

Perkins is currently concerned about a possible imbalance in the House created by a lack of athletes. Some House members have gone so far as to suggest that he recruit a few House football players. "I might," he says with a nod towards Eliot House, "Finley's been getting away with it for years." Other than that, Perkins has no immediate plans. "I'll be content to just keep on trying to make big ones out of little ones," he says.