Adobe Days/Chapter 14
Chapter XIV
Pioneering at Pomona College
“It must be a college of the New England type—just where and how it is to be started is the question,” said one of the men who, one evening in the middle eighties, were discussing with my father and grandfather the possibility and need of a good college in Southern California, one of high standards of character and scholarship. There was no question of necessity—only of ways and means. The boys and girls must be given the same type of education as that offered in the far away homeland.
Southern California was booming, and hearts and hopes were high. It was a bold undertaking for the small group of Congregationalists, but with faith and hard work and time it could be done—the founding of a college, “Christian, but not sectarian, for both sexes,” a slogan from the first. Later the hopes and dreams of the few crystalized into action and the word came home that a committee had been appointed to find a location.
After much jaunting, even so far as Banning, on the east, the choice fell upon Piedmont, a sightly mesa north of Pomona, a little town that had recently been growing up some forty miles east of Los Angeles; and until a permanent name could be decided upon (pos sibly that of some devoted donor) the venture was to be named “The Pomona College.” This name was not finally accepted for some twenty years.
From time to time I heard of the progress of the undertaking. Father’s cousin, Nathan Blanchard, who had been disappointed in his boyhood ambition for a college education in Maine, was much concerned in this project for providing opportunity for the young people of his later state. He became one of the first trustees, and continued on the board and was vitally interested so long as he lived. It was to his generosity that the college owes its beautiful acreage of oaks and native growth, Blanchard Park.
Rev. Charles B. Sumner, the minister of the Pomona Congregational church, had secured a young man, Frank Brackett, recently graduated from Dartmouth to open a private school in Pomona. It met in the church parlor. Mr. Sumner’s son and daughter and a few others needed a chance to prepare for college. After about six months the authorities of the new college took over this school as a preparatory department—teachers, students, and all.
In the meantime, plans for a permanent building were maturing, and amid hopes and prayers, joy and a certain trepidation, the corner stone was laid on the beautiful heights at the mouth of Live Oak Cañon, close to the mountains, with a wide outlook over the valley.
When plans for the college first took form, Southern California was full of hope and enthusiasm—those were the boom days. Men were making fortunes over night, and the generosity of many hearts promised sufficient support for the college. But the point of saturation in land speculation was reached and a panic was precipitated and the new-born enterprise faced disaster. Then began years of self-denial, struggle, devotion, visions that have resulted in the college known today. Many a time it was a very serious question whether or not the breath of life could be kept in the baby.
About the time I came home from Field Seminary, condemned to no more school, the young institution was offered the empty hotel in the unsuccessful boom town of Claremont, together with certain lots staked out about it. The trustees decided to accept the gift, planning to use this site ultimately for the preparatory work only, and to go on with its college buildings at Piedmont as originally intended.
The following June the school introduced itself with closing exercises, oral examinations, etc. Grandfather was among the guests. Although he was now over eighty, he spent much of every day with books, reading constantly his Greek or Latin, or solving mathematical problems for sheer joy in it. He was delighted by an oral examination in Greek given by a Mr. Norton, the new head of the school. One boy especially pleased him by showing evidence of good teaching and by the gusto with which he translated his Homer. He “believed the boy was the son of Deacon Barrows of the Ojai.” Perhaps this same boy’s enthusiasm for the war exploits of Homer is responsible for the military fervor of the man.
So when I decided that my eyes, fortified by glasses, were not yet gone, and that I must go to school again, grandfather suggested that I try the new one at Pomona. “Of course it is pioneering, but seems genuine and worth trying,” he said. Consequently, on a hot August day, Aunt Martha and I went forth to investigate, and, perhaps beginning a long line of the mistaken, sought Pomona College in Pomona.
After some delay we found a man with an express wagon who took us to Claremont, an hour’s drive under a scorching noonday sun. We soon left the little settlement, passed the apricot and peach orchards that have since been replaced by oranges, and struck off in a diagonal through virgin land to the large building, gabled and turreted, standing alone in the distance. As we came nearer we discovered that there was more town than we had realized. The same Santa Fe station that is now in use was in its place—would that we had arrived there instead of at the Southern Pacific in Pomona!
On the sandy road, now Yale Avenue, there was one store, which contained the post office,—a primitive department store kept by Mr. Urbanus, whose name was the only suggestion of a city in the region. A little farther up the road was a spare, white, box of a house, which has since grown porches and a garden, where we found the principal of the school, Mr. Norton, with his wife and baby girl, Katharine. To the east was Mr. Biely’s barn; to the west Colonel W. H. Holabird’s two-storied house; and two or three other small empty houses peeked over the top of the brush. On the outskirts rose an imposing red and yellow towered and ornamented school house, waiting for the children of the visioned city to materialize. Some twenty years later it was supplanted by the present attractive grammar school, moved across the street, and, with form and color made more modest, given over to the use of the city fathers.
The ex-hotel belonged to the same architectural period as the Del Monte at Monterey or the Coronado at San Diego, but naturally it was of lesser glory.
Such was Claremont in 1889; no streets, no walks, just a few spots reclaimed from the desert, connected by trails or sandy roads; all the rest sage, cactus, stones, an occasional oak or sycamore; but the same ever-beautiful and mysterious mountains stood guard, the same sunny skies and fragrant air gave charm. Rabbits scuttled between the bushes, lizards and horned toads enjoyed the climate, rattlesnakes found a peaceful home, and at night coyotes ranged and sang.
A little clearing had been made about the aforetime hotel now devoted to the incipient college, and vines and trees had been planted but as yet they had not made sufficient growth to be noticeable. The oak tree that now stands in the center of College Avenue was then in its native state in the midst of the brush. The building with its meager furnishing had stood empty all summer and accumulated dust added to its dreariness. However the plan of work offered me was attractive and, much to the surprise of my aunt, I decided to enter in the fall, thus beginning the proces of children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren of the old scholar who from that day to this have been connected with the college.
In September the third member of the so-called “old faculty,” Miss Spalding, arrived. She was destined to develop the English department, but this year filled in, teaching Latin, German, spelling and composition, and how many other subjects I do not know.
All the activities of the school were in the one building. The large parlor with the circular window was chapel and assembly room. The room occupied in recent years by the Dean of Women was study hall for the younger students; Prof. Norton had a small classroom on the east side, Miss Spalding had half the dining room roughly partitioned off, and Prof. Brackett dispensed mathematics and physics over the bar in the hotel bar-room. He dispensed the physics so successfully that I was able three years later in Wellesley college to rely once or twice on Claremont knowledge to carry me through a physics lesson otherwise unprepared.
The Hall housed all the resident members of the school except Mr. Norton’s family. Mr. Brackett and his bride were on the first floor; and upstairs, divided by a partition, pervious to sounds and notes, if not to persons, were the men’s and women’s dormitories—eleven boys in the former, four girls and two teachers in the latter. Here also roomed Miss Roe, sister of E. P. Roe of Chestnut Burr fame, a forerunner of the easterners who now make Claremont their winter home.
At this time there were about sixty students in the school, only one of them, Helen Sumner, being of college rank. In the senior preparatory class which I joined, there were about a dozen. They formed the unique class that for seven years was the most advanced in the school—think how dangerous to heads the experience of being seniors for seven years! This class graduated from Pomona college in 1894 and numbered among its members Dr. George Sumner and Dr. David P. Barrows.
The year I joined them I found each member of the class had read Caesar during the summer vacation, taking examination and passing in September in order that the class might go on with the required amount of Cicero in the first semester and Vergil in the second, and so make college the next fall, with four years of Latin done, and done thoroughly in two years. With Vergil at nine in the morning (after submitting to ten minutes of spelling drill on any word Miss Spalding might find in Dr. Johnson’s Rasselas), and again at four in the afternoon we read rapidly enough to get the charm of the poem as well as the dry bones of vocabulary and construction. All the work of the year was strenuous but full of delight—the happiest year of all my school life.
The primitive conditions of a pioneer school only added zest to the students, but for those teachers who had come out of the East the barn-like hotel in the desert, the lack of comforts and conveniences, even of sufficient food, and the meager salaries possible meant hardship.
One of the institutions of our day was the bus which met students from Pomona who came to North Pomona on the “dummy,” which I recognized as the discarded, first means of transportation between Long Beach and the outside world. Down there it had been known as the G. O. P., “Get Out and Push,” because frequently the male passengers had to dismount and help propel it when it hesitated in its progress from Thenard, the junction on the main S. P. line near Wilmington, to the little camp-meeting settlement on the bluff, Long Beach. When it was superseded there it evidently had been transferred to the remote service between Pomona and the new Santa Fe railroad to the north of the town.
The bus was very rickety, two long seats whose cushions sprouted excelsior, a somewhat tremulous canopy top, a rear step that swung loose so that it required great skill to mount, especially since there was a hole in the floor where one would naturally place one’s foot in entering. It must have been a gift bus, into whose mouth one must not look enquiringly.
Bret Harte, a high, bony, bay horse, and Amos Obediah Jonah Micah, a roly-poly squat sorrel were the mis-mated pair who provided locomotion. I was once told that the bones of one of these horses is preserved in the college museum, but an after thought on the part of the informer, suggested that the historic skeleton might have upheld one of the steeds celebrated a year or two later,—Bismarck or Gladstone or Mephistopheles. Speaking of the latter reminds me of a story once current in Claremont concerning a conversation between the heads of the Latin and Greek departments. “I can make a pun on any word you will propose,” said Professor Colcord. “How about the name of my horse?” replied Professor Norton. Quick as a wink came the response, “If I had him here I could hit him with me-fist-awful-easy.”
My year in Claremont was an unusually rainy one, and for a time all the lower part of town was under water from outbreaking springs. It was welcomed by John McCall, the boy who drove the bus, as a providential means of extending the usefulness of the public conveyance. Every night he took the bus to the point now called the corner of Second Street and Alexander Avenue, unhitched Bret and Amos, and left it standing in the water all night, so that the rims of the wheels might swell enough to retain the tires the next day.
On Sundays the bus must forego its day of rest in order to take Claremont to Pomona to church, the former town not yet having a church of its own. We enlivened the long, slow drive home, more than an hour in our slow-going chariot, with calling up memories of all the good things to eat we had ever known or imagined. We were none too well fed at best and Sunday dinner came late. It is certain that we did not suffer from over-feeding, but, on the other hand, I suppose our minds were all the clearer for our restrained diet.
This was the time of the beginning of things. The Pomona College Literary Society—high sounding name—had begun its career. Debates, papers, threeminute ex-tempore speeches were taken seriously. One gala day in spring we turned to Mother Goose and treated her works in the same manner in which we had been handling Shakespeare. One number on the program was a debate on “Was the mother justified in whipping Jill on the occasion when she and Jack went for water?” I remember it well for I defended Jill in opposition to David Barrows. It was the first time that either of us had delivered a speech without notes. Unfortunately, I lost—but who could expect to win against the eloquence and, I maintained at the time, the sophistry of an embryo University President? However, it was a split verdict and one of the judges resisted his plausible arguments and gave credit to the weight of my feminine defense of poor Jill. (Thank you, Dr. Sumner!) The debate was great fun.
This year the college paper was born, and christened the Pomona Student. It was a monthly, and, considering that it was conducted by preparatory students, compares very well with its later representative, even if I, who was its maid-of-all-work, do say so.
There was a music department, with Miss Stella Fitch as teacher. During the next few years music became quite a feature, and its quality is recalled with pleasure and regret in these days of prevailing jazz.
As for Athletics, tennis and baseball had arrived, but no football or track work. Several students had their own saddle horses and one or two could be hired. A happy memory is of a spring day, a ride through the fragrant sagebrush, a running race down On tario’s long street,—a good time even if I did wear a long black habit and ride a sidesaddle.
On the first Mountain Day we went to Live Oak Cañon—perhaps thirty of us. We led the outdoor life that has always been so large a part of Pomona College attractiveness. I wonder if any one since my day, after a picnic in the Wash, enjoyed an afternoon of sledding. Four of us, naturally two boys and two girls, once topped off a “steak-feed” by sliding down the short, grassy slope of the knoll, south of the present Greek Theater, with a frying pan and an iron baker for our sleds.
The heating arrangements in the Hall were primitive, so that a minor object of every walk was to collect combustible material. I’m afraid that a good many corner lot stakes went up in our smoke. The little stoves were amusing. As I remember them, they seem about six inches square, by twelve long, but I suppose they really must have been at least ten by fifteen. One day I went in under the Hall in search of chips left from the building, but meeting there two cunning little black and white wood-pussies, I quickly and silently retreated, lest they should consider me a poacher on their preserves and protest.
The college library at that time occupied partially half a dozen shelves in an alcove. Miss Spalding, who had brought two hundred books with her out of the East as a nucleus for the library was in charge, and in the spring term inspired us to see how much we could earn for its benefit. Soon all sorts of enterprises were under way. Our dining table instituted a system of penny fines for tardiness or slang. I was book-keeper and still hold the record. Individuals offered their wares or talents for the fund. In the April number of the Student I find various advertisements: “We sadly look at our tattered garments, but suddenly our faces light up, for we remember that Miss Metkiff darns at 1 cent per square inch.” “R. S. Day Jr., famous tonsorial artist. Hair cut, fifteen cents; shave, ten cents. Bangs cut and curled, ten cents; long hair shampooed twenty-five cents; short hair, ten cents.” Attractive rates offered by the first Claremont barber, you must admit.
I, who owned one of the original kodaks, taking pictures about the size of a butter plate, made one very successful photograph. Rev. E. S. Williams, a visitor at the college, volunteered to give Bancroft’s History of the United States to the infant library in exchange for a picture of the Student Body. Our labors netted much fun, the history, and about thirty dollars.
Excitement grew as Commencement approached, for a class of eleven was ready for college and in September the actual work of college grade would begin. Although the closing exercises were made much of, and guests came from all over Southern California, we youngsters were never allowed to forget that we were merely “preps,” and, lest we should imagine ourselves of too much importance, no diplomas were allowed us. We were told by Mr. Norton that we were “nothing but kids.” To remedy this lack of evidence of our graduation, two of us picked out, finger by finger, on the only typewriter in town, diplomas modeled on an Amherst one, in which we granted ourselves the degree of “Haedi (kids) in Artibus.” These we distributed at our class supper, served in Mr. Brackett’s bar room. On this occasion our class prophet established her claim to be a seer for she said, speaking of David Barrows:
“What are you, priest, poet or philosopher?”
“I am in the P’s at any rate,—purveyor.”
“Of mental merchandise,” said his sister.
“Allow me,” said a merry voice at my elbow, “to introduce Mr. Barrows, H.A., B.A., M.A., D.D., LL.D., Ph.D., president of ... college, the leader of young shoots in the way they should go.”
Perhaps Vere Metkiff was a suggestor rather than a seer, and it may have been this prophecy that set the boy in the path to the presidency of the University of California. I observe, however, that he is still minus the proposed degree of D.D.
The next day a boy and girl sat all day on the stairs of Claremont Hall and crammed Roman History out of two brick-red primers, and in the afternoon took two college entrance examinations, to meet necessary requirements. And they both passed. And perhaps they know as much Roman History now as if they had spent months instead of hours in its study.
And so the year ended, and I left to go east to college as had been planned for me so long as I could remember. But had there not been stiffer backbones than mine at home, I think I would have been a member of that first class at Pomona.
My friends did not forget me, and twice I hurried home from Wellesley to go into camp with them up in San Antonio Cañon, two wonderful experiences. Our party of twenty-six was the first of any size to go beyond Hogsback. We had to go to its base by wagon, and then over the trail, walking on up to the mouth of Bear Cañon where we stayed for ten days. From here a dozen of us made the ascent of the peak, ten-thousand feet high. Six of us stayed the night to see the wonder of the sun coming up out of the desert,—one of the rare memories of my life.
The three teachers, Prof. Brackett, Dr. Norton, and Dr. Spalding, whom I knew in that long ago day of the beginning of things, have all these years been giving of their strength and knowledge. And Dr. C. B. Sumner, who dreamed and planned and worked for the college, lives to see it established and prosper, its bare, single building grown to the beautiful campus and many buildings of the present, its student body increased more than ten fold, while his son, the youngest of that famous class, has for years been a valued and loved professor in the strong and growing college of today.