Eck has a story for nearly every artifact we pass. The grandfather clock in her foyer is an 1819 gift from Robert Gay Hooke. “It’s an old Tiffany clock,” she says, pointing for evidence to the “Tiffany & Co.” inscribed on its face. The clock is dark, slender, and imposing, the painted human face atop its clock face drawing one’s gaze to the corner in which it stands. Until the early 2000s, the clock used to be tended by Harvard’s keeper of the clocks. “It’s a particular task that this really eccentric old man fulfilled for a while,” Eck says. His name was Charles Ditmas, and according to an article in The New York Times, he had a penchant for checkered suits, interrupting meetings, and behaving as if nothing mattered more than time. “After we moved in, he came and knocked at the door one day, and we asked, ‘Well, who would you be?’ And he said, ‘Well, I’m the keeper of the clocks,’” Eck says. After informing them that their clock had spent 25 years without the appropriate attention, he was quick to cart it off. It is unclear whether he interviewed the House Masters, as The New York Times noted he had a habit of doing, to see if they were deserving of the clock they had, and therefore of his services. He did, however, return the clock restored to working order.
LEARNING FROM THE PAST
It is dinner time, and Lowell Dining Hall is bustling with students. Eck, weaving her way between them, tells us the stories of the various Lowells on the walls: Percival, the astronomer who discovered “the late, great planet Pluto”; Abbott Lawrence Lowell, the University president who was “a bit of an anti-Semite”; Amy Lowell, his sister who “smoked cigars and…was a lesbian.” As she tells the story of each, the portraits change. They become monuments to history rather than mere pictures of long-dead and rather pale-looking people. As Eck puts it, “It’s important to have that sense of history. Harvard is built on history and tradition and, of course, change.” In a way, [the portraits] add to the sense of what Harvard was, what it stands for, and what it is.
Later on, Harrington echoes this as we stride through Pfoho. “I quite like our feisty history. It’s a non-pretentious history, it’s a history of rising from a place of somewhat marginalized status to one of full integration, and I think that’s a worthy history,” she says.
This brings up the question, then, of having characters like President Lowell in the dining hall or the Masters’ residence. “He’s one of the people who lobbied to have a Jewish quota in the ’20s...and he was one of the people who presided over...well not he himself, but his dean—over the Secret Court that expelled homosexuals.” When asked whether it was a problem to have someone who did such things hanging above students who must eat in his company three times a day, Eck replies, “Absolutely…. If he weren’t there, we wouldn’t get to talk about him. And if we took down all the portraits of all the people we disagreed with, then most of the portraits in the university would be gone.”
While Eck speaks about the value of such artifacts’ ability to inspire conversation about the mistakes we have made in the past, it remains a question whether keeping such portraits in their place serves as more of a reminder to examine our faults or a memorial to the people within the golden frames. “People should know…who they’re eating with and what their story is,” Eck says. Perhaps, then, part of what the House Masters are entrusted with is to serve as living interpreters of these artifacts, to keep the history of each House alive not only by holding or curating its properties but also by knowing and sharing their stories. If they do not, can the portraits, pictures, busts, and posters serve their purpose?
MIRROR MIRROR
Towards the end of our tour of Pfoho, Harrington steps into the role of living interpreter when she pauses by an elevator, where Chelsea C. Grant ’15 is waiting to return to her dorm.
“Do you have any mirrors upstairs?” Harrington asks.
“Yes,” Grant replies.
“Do you know why they’re there?”
“I have no idea.”
“Because back when this was a Radcliffe dorm, it was so the girls could make sure they looked good before they met their boyfriends in the parlor downstairs. And some rooms have hooks [to prop open the doors], because when you entertained visitors in your room you had to have the hook up so nothing would happen.”
Grant laughs incredulously. “Really? Are you serious? How do you know this stuff?”
“Well, because I’m the House master.”
—Staff Writer Keerthi Reddy can be reached at kreddy@college.harvard.edu. Staff Writer Indiana T. Seresin can be reached at tseresin@college.harvard.edu.