Jolly-Ups and a 'New Look' at Radcliffe

Her account of four years in Radcliffe Yard recalls the fun and frustrations of life during a time that, to today’s coed campus, has become a thing of the past.

No matter how you look at it, 50 years is a very, very long time, the span of two generations, as a matter of fact, half a century to be precise. It is no wonder, then, that the manners and mores of that early time would be considered not only antiquated but rather quaint. For those of us who lived through those times, however, they were up-to-date and decidedly groovy.

Radcliffe had two locations: the Yard on Garden Street with Agassiz on one end, Mallinckrodt on the other end, Fay House on the right side, the Radcliffe library on the left side. There was an ancient cherry tree in the Yard with a wooden seat around the base of it that was Radcliffe’s logo and a favorite photo-op, a sort of substitute for John Harvard’s statue in Harvard Yard.

All indoor sports, from modern dance to swimming to fencing took place in Agassiz. There was also a theatre in Agassiz where Radcliffe’s drama society, the Idler Players, staged their productions. Radcliffe Administration was housed in Fay and if you needed to speak with one of the three female deans, Fay House is where you would find them.

Radcliffe’s other location was the Quad, where all the dormitories were and where field hockey was played. Each dormitory had a housemother who was omnipresent throughout the first floor, which consisted of a dining room, living room and a couple of entertaining rooms for more intimate gatherings. There were no closed doors on the first level and no men were allowed above the first floor. Gentlemen callers were announced by telephone upstairs (there was one telephone on each floor). When women entertained men in the dormitory, the rule was that ladies kept both feet on the floor when seated. Miss Gerrish was the housemother in Cabot Hall where I lived and, as I look back, she resembled then what I resemble today, an old lady in need of oiling.

Gracious living was a recurrent phrase 50 years ago and like all Radcliffe populations some practiced it and others scorned it. Jolly-ups (a.k.a. tea dances) were the usual social get-togethers to which Harvard men would be invited. The Radcliffe women, in full-skirted, ankle-length dresses, would sit or stand around the edge of the dance floor and hope for an invitation to dance to the strains of a live orchestra playing such songs as “Let’s Build a Stairway to Paradise” or “Racing with the Moon.” The fox-trot, interspersed with waltzes, rhumbas, sambas, and jitterbug, was the popular rhythm. In those days, knowing how to dance was akin to knowing how to brush your teeth: you had been doing it regularly since you got your twelve-year-old molars.

Women neither telephoned men for dates nor were so unlady-like as to invite a man to dance. As a horsewoman, I thought of those dances as horse fairs at which prospective buyers carefully examined the horseflesh before purchasing. The only difference at those jolly-ups were that the Harvard men did not examine up close either our teeth or our feet. Despite this realization, I enjoyed the jolly-ups because I loved to dance and I wasn’t so homely that I didn’t get chosen.

One cannot envision these jolly-ups accurately without picturing two items of clothing often worn by the women: a little cocktail hat and white or black wrist-length gloves. The hat would usually have a small, black veil which would partially cover the face (peering through mesh was considered very sexy). Christian Dior and his “New Look” was the designer of choice and we would wear “knock-offs” of his fashions. Many Radcliffe women scorned any female who wore make-up and had an interest in her appearance. “Frivolous and non-intellectual” was the verdict. Because so many Harvard men preferred Wellesley women to Radcliffe women, all Wellesley women were accused of being frivolous and non-intellectual.

Academic classes were coed and met in Harvard buildings. Most courses consisted of two lectures and one section meeting each week. The entire class would gather for each lecture but the class would be divided into sections of approximately fifteen people each for discussion. The lectures would be given by a noted professor, the section meetings by a teaching fellow. Having come from a single-sex school, I relished the exchanges between men and women in the section meetings. With a dynamic professor like Sam Beer, for example, who challenged superficial notions of Nietzsche or Locke in his Social Sciences 2 lectures, the section meetings were exciting free-for-alls where everyone questioned everyone else’s argument. Some of these section meetings spilled over into heated discussions over beers at Cronin’s, the favorite local pub.

Another professor who challenged our ideas was B. F. Skinner, the noted behaviorist. In those days it was fervently believed that babies were born without any imprint whatsoever. They were a “tabula rasa” and the parents had two years in which to form the personality. Professor Skinner was such a fervent believer in this notion that he invented a box (with holes in the bottom and screening on all sides) in which to place a baby so as to have total control over the baby’s stimuli.

Politically in the ’50s everything was a mess. Nationally we were subjected to dreadful Senator Joseph McCarthy who exploited fear of the Soviet Union for political advantage. Television was in its infancy and could only be viewed in bars. Senator McCarthy conducted hearings on un-American activities in the Department of the Army live on television, a first-ever event. These hearings were a magnet for students who were appalled by what was widely viewed as a witch-hunt. Interestingly, “Intensive Russian” was a popular course; students were optimistic that understanding the language of communism was the first step toward building bridges.

Local politics was even more horrific than national politics. A man named James Michael Curley ran for mayor of Boston from a jail cell. Although none of us could vote, Radcliffe and Harvard students formed an organization called “Citizens for Hynes” and worked tirelessly to elect a relative unknown candidate, John B. Hynes, who won and after whom the present-day Hynes Convention Center is named. That exhilarating experience gave me a life-long love of politics and an extraordinary appreciation that miracles can occur if hard, hard work is a component.

Extra-curricular activities encompassed many facets of school life. Boston was a cultural mecca: the Museum of Fine Arts, the Gardner Museum, where chamber music was performed on Sunday afternoons, and Symphony Hall were delightful venues and cost next to nothing for students. The Harvard and Radcliffe Choral Society performed with the Boston Symphony Orchestra every year and, even if one couldn’t sing (my fate), the opportunity to see one’s classmates performing with one of the great world symphony orchestras was an enormous treat.

In addition to Boston theatre (Boston was a “try-out town” and South Pacific opened in Boston during our college years), there were four theatres in Cambridge: the Radcliffe Idlers, Harvard Theatre Group (HTG), the Poet’s Theatre, and the Brattle Theatre. All were excellent and graduated many performers and directors to the New York stage.

There were always splendid people coming to Harvard to gift us with their talents: T.S. Eliot read “Four Quartets” in Sanders Theatre, Robert Frost read “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening” in the Winthrop House Commons Room, and Aaron Copland played “Appalachian Spring” on the piano in Paine Hall.

All of this was heady indeed! But what did we gain from all this? An abiding love of learning, the excitement of and appreciation for creativity, the wonder of the flexible, inquiring mind. What we experienced is antiquated, what we learned is timeless.