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30 August 1837, Wednesday; ca. 10:30 a.m.
Cambridge, Massachusetts; Harvard College, First Parish Meeting House
"The Commercial Spirit of Modern Times, Considered in Its Influence on the Moral
Character of a Nation"
[Back to Calendar of Lectures]
NARRATIVE OF EVENT: In 1837 Harvard College
graduated forty-seven seniors with Bachelor of Arts degrees, but at the commencement
exercises only twenty-two of the Bachelor’s degree candidates had parts, which they
had been assigned on the basis of their class standing.1 The higher the senior’s rank in his class, the more
prominent and strategically placed his part was in the exercises. Top-ranked seniors
delivered their own orations, while lower-ranked seniors either delivered individual
disquisitions or participated in two- or three-part discussions or conferences. The place
of each of the speakers in the order of exercises was also fixed on the basis of his class
standing. The strategic placement of speakers was dictated by three musical interludes,
which divided the commencement exercises into four segments. The following chart shows the
order of exercises, the type of exercise, and the class standing of the candidate assigned
to a particular part:
Order Type of Exercise (Speaker, Hometown)
Rank
1. Salutatory
Oration in Latin (Charles T. Russell, Princeton, Mass.)
4
2. (First)
Conference
A. (Daniel Wight, Natick,
Mass.)
22
B. (William P. Williams,
Baltimore, Md.)
21
3. Essay
(John F. W. Lane, Boston, Mass.)
17
4. (Second)
Conference
A. (Charles W. Rice,
Brookfield, Mass.)
20
B. (David H. Thoreau,
Concord, Mass.)
19
C. (Henry Vose, Dorchester,
Mass.)
18
5. Literary
Disquisition (Samuel A. Kendall, Utica, N.Y.)
16
(Musical Interlude)
6. Dissertation
(Clifford Belcher, Farmington, Me.)
6
7. Philosophical
Disquisition (Samuel Treat, Portsmouth, N.H.)
15
8. Literary
Discussion
A. (William A. Davis, Boston,
Mass.)
14
B. (Nathaniel Holmes,
Peterborough, N.H.)
13
9. Dissertation
(Richard H. Dana, Boston, Mass.)
5
10. Philosophical
Discussion
A. (Charles Hayward, Boston,
Mass.)
12
B. (Henry Williams, Boston,
Mass.)
11
(Musical Interlude)
11. English
Oration (Charles H. A. Dall, Baltimore, Md.)
3
12. Forensic
Disputation
A. (Manlius S. Clarke,
Cambridge, Mass.)
10
B. (John Bacon, Boston,
Mass.)
9
13. English
Oration (Charles S. Wheeler, Lincoln, Mass.)
2
14. Deliberative
Discussion
A. (Samuel T. Hildreth,
Gloucester, Mass.)
8
B. (Horace Morison,
Peterborough, N.H.)
7
(Musical Interlude)
15. English
Oration (John F. Eustis, Charleston, S.C.)
1
David Henry Thoreau had ranked nineteenth in his
graduating class and, as a consequence, had been assigned the second of three parts in the
second conference, on "The Commercial Spirit of Modern Times, considered in its
Influence on the Political, Moral, and Literary Character of a Nation." Charles Rice
had ranked twentieth in the class, so he was scheduled to open the conference by speaking
about the influence of the commerical spirit on the political character of a
nation. Similarly, Henry Vose had ranked eighteenth in the class, so he would close the
conference by speaking about the influence of the commerical spirit on the literary
character of a nation. Thoreau’s assignment, then, was to speak on the influence of
the commerical spirit on the moral character of a nation. In the overall order of
exercises, he was scheduled to be the sixth speaker.2
Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the morning of 30 August 1837
was probably not a pleasant place: the streets were muddy because rain had fallen in
sheets the night before, and the rain continued to fall intermittently during the morning.3 Nonetheless, just before 10:00 a.m. the
two hundred or so members of the commencement procession had assembled in the Harvard
College Library.4 Fortunately, the
rain began to slacken at 10:00 a.m., when the Harvard College Band struck up, and Harvard
President Josiah Quincy and Massachusetts Governor Edward Everett led the long procession
out of the Library and toward the First Parish Meetinghouse, which had been opened earlier
that morning to accept arriving guests. The various dignitaries and faculty members at the
front of the procession filed into the Meetinghouse first, followed by the candidates for
degrees, who were themselves followed by distinguished visitors and members of the college
staff. Of the twenty-two Bachelor’s degree candidates scheduled to speak during the
commencement exercises, only eighteen were on hand, each with the manuscript of his part
rolled up in his left hand. Of the four who were absent, one had previously been excused
because of illness, two had just become ill and had to be omitted from the exercises at
the last minute, and one was simply "looked for."5 As it happened, three of those absent were scheduled to speak before
Thoreau, and one of those four was Charles Rice, who was to have delivered the first of
the three parts in the second conference, the one Thoreau was to participate in. So
instead of speaking sixth in the order of exercises, Thoreau would speak third.
The meetinghouse into which the procession filed had just
been built three years before and was eighty-six feet long and seventy feet wide, spacious
enough to accommodate all who wanted to attend the commencement, apparently, but also
"crowded by a highly respectable audience."6
A "commodious stage" had been erected at the front of the Meetinghouse,
extending in front of and on both sides of the pulpit. The dignitaries, distinguished
visitors, and scheduled speakers, including the degree candidates, took their places on
the stage, and "After a voluntary on the organ, Dr. Ware, Senr., opened the exercises
with a short & solemn prayer."7
Ranked fourth in his class, Charles Russell of Princeton, Massachusetts, delivered the
salutatory oration in Latin, which one of the auditors, the Reverend John Pierce, thought
"was well written and delivered, but spoken, as if he were disappointed in not having
one of the English Orations."8
Because both of the participants in the first conference were ill, John Lane of Boston
spoke next, delivering his essay on "The Effect upon Literature of a Belief in
Immortality."
Thoreau then stepped to the pulpit to deliver his paper.
Like all the speakers, he had committed his text to memory and only carried his paper in
case memory failed and he needed prompting. Judging from the length of his paper, he was
able to finish his speech in about five minutes. Then Vose spoke, and the exercises
continued, punctuated by musical interludes, until 2:30 p.m., when the procession reformed
and moved to the Common Hall, where an early dinner was served with wine and cider.
According to Reverend Pierce:
There was pretty good order till the President and suite
retired. Afterwards "certain lewd fellows of the baser sort" congregated in the
North Hall, and choosing a drunken moderator, they continued for a long time to exhaust
the remaining bottles which had not been emptied by the regular company. They sang songs,
clapped hands, and shouted, so to expose themselves, and the credit of our University, to
the notice of some strangers of distinction who were within hearing of such disorders.9
Very likely Thoreau did not join in the after-dinner festivities at North Hall.
ADVERTISEMENTS, REVIEWS, AND RESPONSES: Announcements
of the Harvard College commencement exercises appeared in most of the Boston daily
newspapers the day before and on the day of the event, and on those days at least two of
the newspapers, the Boston Daily Advertiser and Patriot and the Boston Evening
Transcript, published the commencement programme in its entirety, listing Thoreau in
the process, of course, and thereby constituting one of the earliest appearances of his
name in print.
At the conclusion of the exercises, the Reverend Pierce,
who had attended fifty-two previous commencements at Harvard College, assessed the
performances he had heard on 30 August 1837 in the following fashion: "This
Commencement I should rank above mediocrity. The parts in general were well sustained. The
speakers were mostly heard. None had a prompter. For the first time they carried their
parts rolled up in their left hands. Two or three only were obliged to unrol[l] them to
refresh their memories."10
There is no indication if Thoreau was one of those two or three who needed to unroll his
manuscript.
The day after the Harvard commencement the Boston Daily
Advertiser and Patriot claimed that at the commencement "The performances
generally were highly creditable to the respective parties and to the institution. The
style of the elocution was improved as compared with former exhibitions and some of the
parts were remarked as extremely well spoken." Again, there is no indication if
Thoreau’s was one of the parts referred to.
DESCRIPTION OF TOPIC: The authoritative text of
Thoreau’s part in the second commencement conference is "The Commerical Spirit
of Modern Times Considered in Its Influence on the . . . Moral . . . Character of a
Nation" in The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau, ed. Walter Harding et al., 11
vols. to date (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971- ), Early Essays and
Miscellanies, ed. Joseph J. Moldenhauer et al. (1975), pp. 115-18.11 Thoreau’s reading-draft
manuscript at MH (HUC6836.50) consists of five leaves and a title page that reads:
"IV A Conference. ‘The commercial spirit of modern times considered in its
influence on the Political, Moral, and Literary character of a Nation.’ Rice.
Thoreau. Vose." Also at MH are the reading-draft manuscripts of Thoreau’s two
fellow conferees—and, indeed, the other participants in the commencement exercises
that day, those who were absent as well as those who were present.
Notes
1. We derived our
information for how Harvard College organized its commencement exercises by combining data
gathered from the printed programme’s for the commencements of 1835-40 and from the
class-standing manuscript sheets for the students who graduated during that five-year
period. These documents are in the Harvard University Archives, Pusey Library, MH. The
programme for Thoreau’s graduation is "Order of Exercises for Commencement, XXX
August, MDCCCXXXVII," MH. For a reprinting of the first page of the programme, see
Milton Meltzer and Walter Harding, A Thoreau Profile (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell,
1962), p. 34. For facsimile reproductions of documents pertaining to Thoreau’s
Harvard years, see Kenneth Walter Cameron, "Chronology of Thoreau’s Harvard
Years," Emerson Society Quarterly, no. 15 (1st Quarter 1959): 2-108. [Back to Text]
2. For a latter-day assessment
of the three parts in the conference that Thoreau was scheduled to participate in with
Rice and Vose, including some interesting remarks about the historical and idealogical
background for the three parts, see Morton Berkowitz, "Thoreau, Rice and Vose on the
Commercial Spirit," Thoreau Society Bulletin, no. 141 (Fall 1977): 1-5. [Back to Text]
3. These and the facts that
follow in this and the following paragraph were documented by the Reverend John Pierce,
who attended the commencement exercises at Harvard College in 1837 and, indeed, had
attended Harvard’s commencement exercises for each of the preceding fifty-two years
and had recorded the commencements for the preceding thirty-three years. Pierce’s
records of the commencements are in his MS journal, 1803-43, MHi, and have been reprinted
with some omissions in Charles C. Smith, "Some Notes on the Commencements at Harvard
University, 1803-1843," Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society,
2d ser. 5 (January 1890): 167-237. [Back to Text]
4. We derive our estimate of
the number of people in the commencement procession from the first page of the
commencement programme and from Pierce’s journal entry for 30 August 1837 (see note 3
above), which together indicate that in the procession there were, in addition to the
College Band members, at least seven dignitaries, twenty-nine College overseers,
thirty-five College faculty members and tutors, an unspecified number of College staff
members, an unspecified number of state senators and congressmen, an unspecified number of
clergymen, forty-three candidates for advanced degrees, and forty-three candidates for
Bachelor of Arts degrees. [Back to Text]
5. An eight-page manuscript
written entirely in Latin, possibly by Josiah Quincy, who would have hosted the exercises,
is laid in with the commencement programme at MH and summarizes the entire commencement
exercises. Written in pencil under the first conference is "valitudinis causa
omittitus," or "illness caused [the two conferees, Daniel Wight and William
Williams] to be omitted." In pencil under the second conference is "Rice causa
valitudinis excusabes est," or "Rice was excused because of illness." In
pencil under the first dissertation is "est desiderata," or "[Belcher, the
scheduled speaker] is looked for." In his journal, Pierce wrote, "There were but
4 failures in performance, two in the first conference, one in the second conference, and
one dissertation" (Pierce, MS journal, entry of 30 August 1837, in Smith,
220)—which, together with the Latin manuscript, indicates conclusively, we believe,
that Wight, Williams, Rice, and Belcher did not speak during the commencement exercises. [Back to Text]
6. This fact is mentioned in
Pierce’s MS journal entry of 27 August 1834, in which he records the Harvard College
commencement for 1834, in Smith, 213n1. [Back to Text]
7. Pierce, MS journal, entry
of 30 August 1837, in Smith, 219. [Back to Text]
8. Pierce, MS journal, entry
of 30 August 1837; omitted in Smith. [Back to Text]
9. Pierce, MS journal, entry
of 30 August 1837, in Smith, 221. [Back to Text]
10. Pierce, MS journal,
entry of 30 August 1837, in Smith, 220. [Back to Text]
11. Hereafter cited in the
text and notes as EEM. Other volumes in the Princeton Edition of The Writings of
Henry D. Thoreau that will be cited in the text and notes are: Walden, ed. J.
Lyndon Shanley (1971), cited as W; The Maine Woods, ed. Joseph J.
Moldenhauer (1972), cited as MW; Reform Papers, cited as RP, ed.
Wendell Glick (1973); Cape Cod, ed. Moldenhauer (1988), cited as CC; Translations,
ed. K. P. Van Anglen (1986), cited as Transl; Journal 1, 1837-1844, ed.
Elizabeth Hall Witherell et al. (1981), cited as PEJ1; Journal 2, 1842-1848,
ed. Robert Sattelmeyer (1984), cited as PEJ2; Journal 3, 1848-1851, ed.
Sattelmeyer et al. (1990), cited as PEJ3; and Journal 4, 1851-1852, ed.
Leonard N. Neufeldt and Nancy Craig Simmons (1992), cited as PEJ4. Quotations and
references to Thoreau’s journal entries after 27 April 1852 will be from The
Journal of Henry D. Thoreau, ed. Bradford Torrey and Francis H. Allen, 14 vols.
(Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1906), and will be cited in the text and notes as J. [Back to Text] |