On all sides these days one hears the questions "What is Harvardmanship?" "What sets the expert in Harvardmanship apart from the common herd?" You yourselves have no doubt asked these very questions in your hearts and never receiver an answer.
The first point that must be cleared up is that of nomenclature. The expert in Harvardmanship is called a Harvardman--all one word: Harvardman. He should never be confused with the ordinary Harvard man--two words: Harvard man--who is simply a man who goes to Harvard.
What, then, is Harvardmanship? Briefly, it is the Art of Overwhelming Friends and Stupefying People. Many of you, of course, have been practicing this art unconsciously, overwhelming a friend here or stupefying a roommate there, by instinct alone. And the history of amateur Harvardmanship goes back many centuries to a bright spring day in 1641, when Abijah Winthrop appeared for a Latin lesson dressed in a toga, murmuring that he felt closer to the spirit of ancient Rome that way. This so unnerved his tutor that he failed to discover that Abijah had not prepared his lesson.
This article is the text of the Ivy Oration delivered at Class Day last June by the former Associate Editorial Chairman of the CRIMSON.
But this was amateur Harvardmanship. Only in the last two decades have we seen the rise of the systematic Harvardman. The earliest of these was James FitzJames who worked out of Lowell House in the middle thirties. His favorite device was to disappear suddenly from College midway through January Reading Period, just about the time his friends began studing in earnest. Then, on the day of his first exam, he would return, strolling into the examination room five minutes late, dressed in a light Palm Beach suit and heavily tanned. Sitting down next to a friend he would inspect his exam casually.
'Thought I Had an Exam'
FitzJames: I rather thought I had an exam today. Hmm...this doesn't look very hard...
Layman (awed): Where have you been?
FitzJames: Been? Oh, Bahamas Nice people...
Layman: Who?
FitzJames (absorbed in his exam): wonderful hosts the Duke and Duchess...Kept me going all the time...yacht...white tie quite crumpled...
The effect on his friends was doubled when he told them casually that he had received an A in the course. In point of fact FitzJames had been holed up in a miserable rented room in Boston, with a sunlamp and all the reading assignment including the optional books, and had been working like a dog for two weeks.
But FitzJames was really no more than a crude pioneer compared to P. J. Asquith, also of Lowell. Asquith maintained for four brilliant years the illusion that he never went to lectures, and made his name by affecting complete indifference to all exams. He went to great lengths to obtain lecture notes: reading those of his friends late at light when they were asleep, attending vital lectures in exotic disguises, and so forth. Thus he would be completely prepared when the inevitable friend broached the topic of the imminent hour exam.
'Exam? What Course?'
Roommate: You all set for the exam tomorrow?
Asquith: Exam? Why no. What course?
Roommate: (names course)
Asquith: How annoying. I have a date tonight...theatre...shan't have time to crack a book.
He would dress up neatly, and amble out--bound for an intense night of study in his Boston hideout. Returning at three in the morning, he would find his roommate still hard at work.
Asquith: Well, that was a lovely evening...Hullo, What are you doing?
Roommate: It's that hour exam tomorrow.
Asquith: Oh yes, that's right. (Yawns casually) Well...Good night, old chap.
At breakfast next morning he would play his trumps.
Roommate (haggard after working till 5): Gee, I hope I can pass that exam now.
Asquith: Oh yes. By the way, where does that course meet? I don't believe I've been to any lectures.
Roommate: No lectures!
Asquith: No, I don't believe so. Are they interesting?
Full Professor Today
We needn't follow Asquith's career any further. Suffice it to say that he is now a full professor, and safely on tenure. In an amusing note the other day he wrote: "I don't intend to do another stroke of work in my life." Such is the result of Harvardmanship.
Men of the old school, like FitzJames and Asquith, carried all before them in the academic field, but modern theory regards them as somewhat limited. They were famed as men of casual genius in their studies, but they worked so hard maintaining these reputations that they had no time for entertainment, or women, or anything else for that matter. They were no complete Harvardmen.
It was not until the advent of J. Hugh Gambit that the problem was solved. Gambit singlehandedly created the art of Sexmanship--he was the first and, I venture to say, the greatest Sexman, though others have indeed followed in his footsteps. His basic maneuver--which later came to be known as Gambit's Gambit--occurred to him one day quite by chance. He had been brooding about the problem in his Boston lair when his landlady, a Mrs. O'Reilly, came to collect the rent. It suddenly came to his mind that, although her person was not too charming, her voice could possibly be made to sound young and beautiful over the phone. After several trying months of elocution lessons this proved to be the case. Gambit contracted with Mrs. O'Reilly to make 50 phone calls a month to his College room in not less than ten and not more than fifteen different tones of voice. viz: weeping, gay world weary etc.
Gambit's Gambit
Once or twice a day for the rest of his college career, except one week when she had a touch of the flu, Mrs. O'Reilly would call Gambit's rooms. It is two in the morning; Gambit has just returned from a hard night of study. He is, however, wearing a tuxedo and he has traces of lipstick on his face. (Gambit had a huge assortment of lipsticks, in all shades--Lipstickmanship was another of his innovations.) The phone rings.
Roommate: It's for you Gambit. A woman...again. She's in tears.
Gambit: How annoying. I told her not to bother me. (takes receiver). Hello.
Mrs. O'Reilly: You owe me 25 dollars.
Gambit: Of course I love you, dear. Now stop crying.
Mrs. O'Reilly: Love schmove.
Gambit: Yes, yes, yes. I do love you. Now go to sleep.
Mrs. O'Reilly: Come on. Cut it short.
Gambit: Oh all right. I'll call you tomorrow if that's what you want. Good night. (Hangs up.) Always pestering me...ought to have the telephone taken out...
Weekly Viscount Proposals
For football weekends Gambit used supplementary techniques. He would send himself telegrams at the last minute: "Sorry cannot come darling. Viscount proposed last night and simply couldn't resist. Yacht sails for Capri tonight. Toujours gai, darling. Signed Mimi."
No doubt about it Gambit was the greatest Sexman of them all, a consummate artist. Only he could have capped off his program with that exquisite touch of realism. Once a year he actually took out a real girl.
The expert Harvardman, therefore, must be practiced in Studymanship and Sexmanship. He must also be a Cultureman, steeped in the arts, high above the common herd in aesthetic sensibility. The Cultureman must have a carefully selected library including several rather seedy books, "picked up in a tiny bookstall on the Seine." He should be able to talk convincingly about his experiences in far-off and exotic lands; he need not, of course, have done any traveling at all. James Astor, who hailed from somewhere in Illinois, built himself quite a promising reputation by painstaking research in travel books without ever having seen the sea, much less traveled. He was sweeping all before him in his senior year when disaster struck one day. He was telling a rapt circle about his experiences in Dijon--he had recently come across a guide book for the town.
Astor: That was my first trip...in '33. I returned in '38 and of course went straight back to see dear old Madame Champlain at "Le Coq Rouge."
Real Traveler: '38, you say.
Astor (unsuspecting): Why yes. I remember especially because there was an absolutely gorgeous vintage that year. Madame Champlain was in ecstacies.
Traveler: But she died two years before. In '36.
Astor (trapped): Died...'36...of course, of course...But I was speaking of the younger Madame Champlain. Marvelous how these family traditions go on. Still at the same old "Coq" as we used to call it affectionately.
Traveler: The place was sold in '36 to a man called Schmidt who turned it into a beer garden.
Harvardman Ruined
Astor left college immediately. It is rumored that he became a traveling salesman operating out of Peoria.
Probably even more important than Travelmanship is Clothesmanship. Consider the case of Maxwell J. Suave, the greatest Clothesman of our time. Suave usually wore pretty dingy-looking clothes, most of which he bought off a pipe rack in a cutrate Brooklyn clothing store, but he gave the impression that the finest tailors in the world tended to his wardrobe. He would mention casually that he was writing off for some more socks to his favorite haberdashery in Cannes. "They know my feet intimately," he would say, "and they do make different socks for each foot." He sent himself huge bills from imaginary shops in London and Paris, accompanied by long technical letters discussing the special pleats for his next hunting jacket, or the exact size of the handkerchiefs he was having made for the breast pocket of his tuxedo.
As a matter of fact, Suave may be sitting next to you in the audience. You will recognize him by his fantastically colorful cap and gown--even though he is only a graduating senior. If you ask him he will tell you that it is for a little degree he picked up the summer he spent in Florence. "They simply forced it on me," he will say, "though personally I can't bear that touch of puce on the inner fold."
I think that the outlines of Harvardmanship are now clear. But you ask: How does Harvardmanship fit into the Greater Scheme of Things? What use is it to men who are leaving Harvard? The answer is that Harvardmanship is a vast life-encompassing science which cannot be affected by Commencement. When he graduates the Harvardman becomes a Harvardclubman--all one word, of course: Harvardclubman. So, for those of you who have not been Harvardmen while undergraduates, it is not too late. You still have most of your lives ahead of you: I urge you to embrace this science while you still have time.
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