The Class of (18)92

"LOOKING BACKWARDS, it seems almost tragic to Hershey, or perhaps comic, that he really has nothing worth reporting," says the entry. Fifty years after graduating from Harvard College, Omer Fenimore Hershey, a retired lawyer living in Florida, reflected on his life and told the class secretary there was well, not much of interest.

So wrote the secretary of the Class of '92, 50 years after Hershey had graduated. The year was 1942, and the 191 surviving members of Harvard's Class of 1892 were taking stock of their lives.

Most of which were framed by catastrophe. They marched out of Harvard Yard into the Depression of 1893. They met for their 25th reunion three months after America's entry in the Great War, and they returned for their Golden Anniversary with the Battle of Midway in progress.

We recently bought a copy of the Fiftieth Anniversary Report of the Harvard College Class of 1892 in a used bookstore. We paid a dollar for the book, a compilation of 191 autobiographical sketches, called "Class Lives," which are each about two pages long. We feel a tenuous connection with these men, perhaps like you'd feel with a dead great aunt. Or a major league baseball player who went to your high school. Or maybe the guy buried next to your mother's grave. It's kind of morbid.

THE BOOK IS basically the record of 200 old men trying to justify their lives to other men they had known 50 years earlier. Some of them tackled this task with the pomposity you would expect. Richard Walden Hale "finds that the best hobby is owning plenty of New England land." Ernest Blaney Dane wrote that "although his collection [of fine jade and crystal] is not as large as the one in the Metropolitan Museum, he believes it is finer."

But for the most part, they affect a pleasing modesty. Everett John Lake lists his profession as manufacturer and makes only passing reference, in a list under public service, that he was the governor of Connecticut.

Talbot Bailey Aldrich "shoots a few ducks, and misses many, on the rice fields." Willard Dalrymple Brown listed his hobby as "home gardening: specializing in weeds."

William Joseph Long replied to the secretary that he had never held public office. "He doesn't like or trust political reformers, and has not sufficiently reformed himself to pose as the reformer of a community."

William Hutchinson Pyncon Oliver, a lawyer, told the secretary that "he has received no honorary degree, and has deserved none." Ross Perry said he "is still practicing law, but in a very cursory way, and does not want troublesome clients."

"Class" figured strongly in their vocabulary. For Mithcell Davis Follansbee, "nothing was too much trouble as long as it was for the Class." Benner "gave everything he had for the Class." Franklin Newell wrote that the deceased secretary did "much to weld the Class together as a unit."

After all, the Class had been good to them. In 1892, no student journalists complained about the preferential admissions treatment of legacies. Harvard was a family institution--more than half of their sons would attend the College. Richard Walden Hale knew "the character and careers of his ancestors who graduated in 1701, 1745, 1787, 1844, and 1880."

Of course there were exceptions to the general pattern: the poor Canadian who came on a scholarship, and the occasional Jew. But the Saltonstalls and Greenoughs and their brethren predominated.

With their crisp English names, they joined family firms, city clubs and the Republican Party. They became physicians, lawyers, teachers and bankers. One of the bankers, John Harsen Rhoades, wrote mournfully, "I am not a business man, nor ever have I been. I believe, instead, I should have been a poet-artist." Another, Hugh McKennan Landon, wished he had been an engineer or an architect. But for the most part, there were few agonized choices about careers.

Consider William Cameron Forbes. He drifted after graduation, travelled for a while, then volunteered for two years in a broker's office. After that, he coached the Harvard football team to an undefeated season in 1898. That was his big break.

Decades later, he reflected, "I have no doubt at all that my later achievement as coach of the winning Harvard Varsity, after many years of defeat, was the controlling factor in getting me favorable consideration on the part of President Roosevelt, an ardent Harvard and football enthusiast, for the high appointment he gave me to the Philippines."

Selected in 1904 as Commissioner and Secretary of Commerce, Forbes rose to Governor-General, until recalled by President Wilson. When the Republicans regained power, he resumed his diplomatic career as Hoover's ambassador to Japan. No wonder Coach Restic keeps hoping for an undefeated season.

The Class had less amicable relations with the second Roosevelt. One member thought the most important change since graduation was "the beginning of the destruction of our...Republic by the election of President Roosevelt for a third term, who, in the name and under the pretense of democracy, have changed our democracy into a dictatorship equal to that of Italy."

A classmate, Frederic Hathaway Chase, was "especially impressed by the extent to which the United States has gone towards national socialism," while another, Arthur Hugh Jameson, referring to the Wagner Act, wrote that "a labor dictatorship has been created" and could only hope "that the American people will revert back to the type of their ancestors and recapture that priceless gem of Liberty, which is never appreciated until it is lost."

These entries reflect both a specific moment in history and the timeless cry of the old man who believes the world has been in steady decline since his youth. Not only was FDR ruining the democratic system; the whole nation was collapsing.

They reserved greatest scorn for younger generations. "With the college-bred youth leading the retrogression," Howard Schiffer Gans complained, "we have largely lost our individualism, our courage, and our capacity for moral indignation."

Asked about the greatest changes in the past 50 years many class members mentioned either the creeping socialism that seemed to be attacking from all sides, or technological innovations, especially the automobile and the radio. Roy Jones worried about the "drift of the people away from individual responsibility toward mass regimentation and the control of opinion by radio and other propaganda."

Except for one member who worked a few years for Goldwyn, the Class seems to have been largely unaware that since their graduation, moton pictures had been invented. If any class member had seen Gone With the Wind or Citizen Kane, he did not consider it worth mentioning as an important change.

THE CLASS OF '92 had many privileges by virtue of their social standing, but they also had to fulfill the expectations of their class. They were funneled into the usual career paths: they became lawyers, bankers, doctors, writers, school teachers. They joined the club. (Thomas Lamont belonged to 19 of them.) They spent free time playing tennis and golf.

William Cotton Damon could not list these sports as hobbies, and he apologized: "His type of business calls for all the physical exercise any man needs. So he has never had to learn golf."

The lives were privileged but seem, well, rather dull. From their own sketches they did not graduate with any sense of mission, a desire to change the world. They were happy to go along.

They were bored even by their vacations. Chapman Henry Hyams told the class secretary that he "has taken the usual trips to Europe but reports nothing of unusual interest." They were expected to travel.

In the pre-jet lag era, one did not hop over to Paris for spring break. Travel was serious business. Most class members had made a few trips overseas, usually for a couple months at a time. One traveled partly for pleasure, of course, but going abroad was part of a citizen's duty to expand his horizons.

Francis Alger Ingersoll expressed some regret that he had not seen much of the world, but now that he had retired, he hoped "before he passes on to become through travel a better American."

We are most interested in the farmers. What was it like to raise wheat in the Midwest, alone in the field, with four years at a private university back East buried deep in the past? We aren't sure, because there is only one line in the sketch of Charles Beardsley, a farmer from Clarks, Nebraska.

"He has not replied to the Secretary's letters."