When Bartlett Jere Whiting '25 romped through his final English 1 lecture last week, the survey course seemed ready to fall into the realm of joint instruction. For during the five years that "Jerry" Whiting held away in the University's basic course in English literature, mixed classes were out of the question. Spicy expurgated portions of the required reading and juicy tidbits from the sex lives of the authors have made their way into his lectures to at least the Harvard meetings of the course, but just what he did or said to bring down the house on the other side of the Common must remain a secret forever in this part of Cambridge.

To every man who has ever taken the course with Professor Whiting, his lectures have been the bright spot in many a morning of dreary pedanties. Whether he is engrossed in debunking a scholar who purports to prove that someone else wrote Shakespeare's plays, describing and mimicking that maid-of-all-work, Fielding's Shamela Andrews, or stepping into the role of Charles Lamb's lunatic sister, this jovial son of Maine injects humor, pathos, and human interest into lectures that have earned him the epithet, "a one-man vaudeville show."

"If the teacher doesn't have a good time while he's teaching," the professor says, "no one else does," and practices what he preaches by thoroughly enjoying each lecture. His mimicry, pantomime, and caustic remarks on every topic in the all-inclusive course resurrect authors and characters alike, and although the amours of the Cavalier poets may not appear on the final examination, few open-minded listeners object to his treatment of them. All but the most serious grinds have been able to consider a "hot" lecture as "atmosphere."

Born in a small Maine town in the first decade of the century, Bartlett Whiting's adolescent ambitions centered around chemical engineering. In the summer of his sophomore year in high school he met "a Harvard professor who convinced me that I would get greater satisfaction from teaching English." He has no regrets about his choice, especially, he intimates, when he sees "what the chemical engineers and their allies are doing these days."

After coming to Harvard and receiving his degree in 1925, he traveled in Europe for a year under a Sheldon Fellowship. "The fellowship was for traveling or study," he relates, "and I traveled." His grand tour took him to most of the capitals of Europe, although he spent most of his time in what was then the cultural center of the continent and the world: Berlin. "The beer was good there, too," he reminisces, "and plentiful."

Returning to the University, where he had been influenced further by the literary-classic trio of "Kitty," "Copey," and Bliss, Professor Whiting immersed himself in graduate work. He became an assistant and Tutor in English and attained the rank of full professor last December. The author of numerous books on Chaucer, his specialty, and dissertations on the proverb as an expression of folk thought, Professor Whiting looks on his lone venture in anthology work with horror. "I'll never do anything like that again," he says of his co-editorship of the College Survey of English Literature, which includes most of the reading for English 1.

In one 53-minute talk "Jerry" has run through most of the emotions and theatrics undergone by an actor in half a lifetime. A master at satire, an expert at pantomime, overflowing with an intricate knowledge of some of the lesser known details in the lives of almost every English author, Professor Whiting has never played it straight.