Radio Script #604

Little Talks on Common Things

March 1, 1964

A few weeks ago I called your attention to “Dearest Emmie”, a book by our distinguished Waterville citizen, Carl J. Weber. There has now been published an even more important product of Dr. ~Ieber’ s research, “Hardy’s Love Poems”. Printed originally in London by Macmillan and Company, Ltd •• the book is distributed on this continent under the imprint of the Macmillan associates, St. Martin’s Press of New York and The Macmillan Company of Toronto.

Into this volume Dr. Weber has collected 114 poems written by Thomas Hardy during the year following the death of the wife whom he had addressed as “Dearest Emmie”. Charming as are the poems themselves, their readability is greatly enhanced by the 87 pages of introduction and biographical explanation, written only with that kind of detective skill that characterizes Dr. Weber’s writing.

To appreciate these poems one does not have to agree with Weber that they are the greatest collection of one writer’s love poems to be found anywhere in literature, greater even than Shakespeare’s “Sonnets” or Mrs. Browning’s “Sonnets from the Portuguese”. Superb poems these verses of Hardy’s certainly are, and they can stand on their own merits with or without comparison.

It is trite to remark that we appreciate persons only when they are gone. Knowledge of the long, chilling estrangement between Thomas and Emma Hardy causes the reader of these verses to wonder at first what kind of hypocrite Hardy was; but Dr. Weber’s detailed introduction gives convincing evidence that here was no hypocrisy.

One impulse for the poems was certainly self-reproach, for Hardy came to see that Emma was not entirely to blame for their drawing apart; that the fault, Dear Brutus, might equally lie with himself.

Anyhow, in tremendous nostalgic outbursts, Hardy resurrected the love scenes of by-gone days in Lyonesse, the sounds of Emma’s music, the tramps over moors and hills, the shared dreams, and the missed opportunities. Through the poems runs a stream of melancholy, sometimes even of foreboding, as when Hardy recalls a time when Emma stretched out her arms on a roadside sign post:

“Each open palm stretched out to each end of them.
Her white-clothed form at this dim-lit cease of day
Made her look as one crucified.
And we dragged on and on, while we seemed to see
In the running of Time’s far glass
Her crucified, as she had wondered if she might be
Some day — Alas, Alas!”

Some of the verses are written from the viewpoint of Emma herself:

“Would that I now knew
What feels he of the tree I planted;
And whether, after I was called
To be a ghost, he, as of old,
Gave me his heart anew.
Ay, there beside the queen of trees
He sees me as I was, though sees
Too late to tell me so.”

Waterville people may take pride that this book by a local man has received enthusiastic reception from the literary critics in England. Perhaps the foremost literary journal in the English-speaking world is the “Times Literary Supplement” of London. That paper said: “Mr. Weber deserves thanks for bringing these poems together as a part of our poetic heritage. They should stay together.” The London magazine “Books and Bookmen” said: “No scholar living is better qualified than Dr. Weber to interpret these poems. His book would be my choice as the year’s best volume of poetry.”

As good a Book as was “Dearest Emmie”, “Hardy’s Love Poems” is better and far more important. Unlike the poems themselves, Dr. Weber’s editing of them is not belated appreciation. Though he is a scholar enough to see the feet of clay, Weber sustains the feeling of reverence he has long had in the presence of his heirs.

It is a popular sport to heap scorn on the products of scholarship as dull, dreary and dry. There is nothing arid about any of Carl Weber’s writings on Thomas Hardy, and his lively editing of “Hardy’s Love Poems” is only further proof that in his hands scholarship is never dull.

One of our finest Central Maine institutions is the Oak Grove School at Vassalboro. For many years it has been conducted by Mr. and Mrs. Robert Owen, both alumni of Colby College, and it draws its girls from allover the country, as well as from several foreign lands.

Like most of the old Maine academies, Oak Grove began as a co-educational school, to provide education beyond what was then called the common school. More than twenty years before the first free high school was established in Maine, Oak Grove began its important service as one of more than fifty small academies in the state.

In 1892 Sam Burleigh’s “Kennebec Valley News” published an historical account of the schooL That account began as fo 11 ows: “One day in 1849 five men gathered in the home of John Lang to discuss founding a school. They were Lang, Ebenezer FrYe,Alden Simpson, Samuel Taylor and Alton Pope. All members of the Society of Friends, those men desired a school where their children might receive guarded education. After much discussion it was decided that only children from the homes of Friends should be admitted. John Lang donated an acre of land for the site.”

As we read further in the account, we learn that Oak Grove’s first building, erected hastily in 1850, cost only $2,500. It had a basement that was divided into two playrooms, one for boys and one for girls. On the first floor was a large school room, and over it were two classrooms and a place called the museum. Sam Burleigh said he had been told the museum was a room usually kept locked and was a mysterious place to any boy who peered through the keyhole, for what he saw was a weird skeleton standing guard over bottled snakes and a stuffed porcupine.

In 1854 the school was incorporated under the name of the Oak Grove Seminary. Its first principal in 1850 had been William Hobby, a member of Vassalboro’s first Quaker family. Three years before the incorporation Mr. Hobby had led a movement to open the school to all sects, not restrict it to Quakers. That extension of service was made in 1852.

Sam Burleigh’s account tells us that the early school was not a financial success. Each year the number of scholars decreased. It became more and more difficult to find in the community boarding places at rates which families could pay, and the enrollment of students from outside Getchell’s Corner was seriously affected. Hence, in 1857 the trustees decided they must build a dormitory. They at first considered that $2,500, same as the cost of the school building, would be quite enough, but Ebenezer FrYe,chairman of the board, had bigger vision: “No tiny building will suffice”, he insisted. “We must have at least $15,000 and if you will open subscriptions to members of the Friends, wherever they may live, I’ll start with $1,000, provided you will agree to raise the remaining $14,000.”

The trustees eagerly accepted Frye’s offer, but they restricted their fundraising campaign to the area of the Vassalboro, the Fairfield and the Falmouth Quarterly Meetings. The money was finally raised and the dormitory called “the boarding house” was built.

What Oak Grove expected of its principal was recorded in the trustees’ records when they employed Eli Jones to head the school in 1857. That record said: “The services of a Friend of religious character and moral worth shall be obtained to be Principal of Oak Grove Seminary. It shall be his duty to exercise a parental care over the inmates and have the government of the school. He shall have charge of the scripture lessons of the different classes and shall impart such moral and religious instruction as he shall deem calculated, with the Divine blessing, to promote the spiritual welfare of those under his charge.” When Eli Jones, accepting that understanding, opened the school in the fall of 1857, he had 35 pupils.

This is how, in the 1870’s, a woman who had been one of the girl students of that time, described their morning exercise: “For exercise each morning we girls walked the woods, reverently touched the nearest of the large elm trees in front of Warren Starkey’s and returned in a very subdued manner to our tasks. No high heeled shoes impeded our gait, no bangs clouded our brows, no earrings swung in the vernal breeze. We wore the plainest of calico sunbonnets. Yet we unfortunate wretches didn’t know we were either unfortunate or wretched. We were perfectly happy in our blissful ignorance of questions that would agitate our daughters in years to come.”

Sam Burleigh dug up another good story of Oak Grove’s early days. One Thursday afternoon a big quantity of fish arrived at the dormitory, principal dish for Friday’s dinner. As Sam puts it: “The boys got hold of that fish and transported it to aerial regions, where they prepared a grand banquet. In the middle of the night the boys stole away to the hiding place. To prevent the lighted lamps revealing their party, they draped bed quilts and wearing apparel over the inside of the door. The fish were put in the frying pan, when suddenly an uninvited guest appeared in the person of the principal. The boys were at once suspicious of a traitor in the midst. Someone must have tipped him off. But the good man assured them otherwise. ‘You could smell that fish way down to Getchell’s Corner. What I don’t already know about you boys, my nose knows. ‘”

When the old school building burned in 1883, sessions were suspended for a year. Money was soon raised for a new building, but that building also went up in flames in a terrible fire that cost a student’s life on August 31, 1887, a few days before the fall term was to open. Plans were made to convert gymnasium and stable into classrooms, when on Sunday, September 8, while all were at church, another fire broke out. Arson was at once suspected and a runaway pupil, picked up in Brockton, Mass., confessed. The culprit explained his crime by saying that the principal wouldn’t let him choose his studies, that the food was terrible, and that anyhow he didn’t like Vassalboro. Although he was only 15 years old, the lad showed no remorse, sat stoically through his trial, and took a stiff sentence without a whimper.

Under the leadership of Charles M. Bailey, the oilcloth manufacturer of Winthrop, a fine new building was soon erected. Oak Grove continued as a high grade boarding school. Under the Owens it was transformed into a girls’ school of national repute, with magnificent Tudor buildings, spacious lawns, and beautiful gardens, where the girls and their devoted teachers continue non-sectarian instruction, still under the great spiritual tradition of the Society of Friends.

Year: 1964