The Story of Wellesley [6]
for him there was no gray." He was impatient of mediocrity. "He could not suffer fools gladly."
No archangel this, but unquestionably a man of genius, consecrated to the fulfillment of a great vision. It is no wonder that the early graduates living in the very presence of his high purpose, his pure intention, his spendthrift selflessness, remember these things best when they recall old days. After all, these are the things most worth remembering.
The best and most carefully balanced study of him which we have is by Miss Charlotte Howard Conant of the class of '84, in an address delivered by her in the College Chapel, February 18, 1906, to commemorate Mr. Durant's birthday. Miss Conant's use of the biographical material available, and her careful and restrained estimate of Mr. Durant's character cannot be bettered, and it is a temptation to incorporate her entire pamphlet in this chapter, but we shall have to content ourselves with cogent extracts.
Henry Fowle Durant, or Henry Welles Smith as he was called in his boyhood, was born February 20, 1822, in Hanover, New Hampshire. His father, William Smith, "was a lawyer of limited means, but versatile mind and genial disposition." His mother, Harriet Fowle Smith of Watertown, Massachusetts, was one of five sisters renowned for their beauty and amiability; she was, we are told, intelligent as well as beautiful, "a great reader, and a devoted Christian all her long life."
Young Henry went to school in Hanover, and in Peacham, Vermont, but in his early boyhood the family moved to Lowell, Massachusetts, and from there he was sent to the private school of Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Ripley in Waltham, to complete his preparation for Harvard. Miss Conant writes: "Mr. Ripley was pastor of the Unitarian Church there (in Waltham) from 1809 to 1846, and during most of that time supplemented the small salary of a country minister by receiving twelve or fourteen boys into his family to fit for college. From time to time youths rusticated from Harvard were also sent there to keep up college work."
"Mrs. Ripley was one of the most remarkable women of her generation. Born in 1793, she very early began to show unusual intellectual ability, and before she was seventeen she had become a fine Latin scholar and had read also all the Odyssey in the original." Her life-long friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson, writes in praise of her: "The rare accomplishments and singular loveliness of her character endeared her to all. . . . She became one of the best Greek scholars in the country, and continued in her latest years the habit of reading Homer, the tragedians, and Plato. But her studies took a wide range in mathematics, natural philosophy, psychology, theology, and ancient and modern literature. Her keen ear was open to whatever new facts astronomy, chemistry, or the theories of light and heat had to furnish. Absolutely without pedantry, she had no desire to shine. She was faithful to all the duties of wife and mother in a well-ordered and eminently hospitable household wherein she was dearly loved. She was without appetite for luxury or display or praise or influence, with entire indifference to triffles. . . . As she advanced in life her personal beauty, not remarked in youth, drew the notice of all."
There could have been no nobler, saner influence for an intellectual boy than the companionship of this unusual woman, and if we are to begin at the beginning of Wellesley's story, we must begin with Mrs. Ripley, for Mr. Durant often said that she had great influence in inclining his mind in later life to the higher education of women.
From Waltham the young man went in 1837 to Harvard, where we hear of him as "not specially studious, and possessing refined and luxurious tastes which interfered somewhat with his pursuit of the regular studies of the college." But evidently he was no ordinary idler, for he haunted the Harvard Library, and we know that all his life he was a lover of books. In 1841 he was graduated from Harvard, and went home to Lowell to read law in his father's
No archangel this, but unquestionably a man of genius, consecrated to the fulfillment of a great vision. It is no wonder that the early graduates living in the very presence of his high purpose, his pure intention, his spendthrift selflessness, remember these things best when they recall old days. After all, these are the things most worth remembering.
The best and most carefully balanced study of him which we have is by Miss Charlotte Howard Conant of the class of '84, in an address delivered by her in the College Chapel, February 18, 1906, to commemorate Mr. Durant's birthday. Miss Conant's use of the biographical material available, and her careful and restrained estimate of Mr. Durant's character cannot be bettered, and it is a temptation to incorporate her entire pamphlet in this chapter, but we shall have to content ourselves with cogent extracts.
Henry Fowle Durant, or Henry Welles Smith as he was called in his boyhood, was born February 20, 1822, in Hanover, New Hampshire. His father, William Smith, "was a lawyer of limited means, but versatile mind and genial disposition." His mother, Harriet Fowle Smith of Watertown, Massachusetts, was one of five sisters renowned for their beauty and amiability; she was, we are told, intelligent as well as beautiful, "a great reader, and a devoted Christian all her long life."
Young Henry went to school in Hanover, and in Peacham, Vermont, but in his early boyhood the family moved to Lowell, Massachusetts, and from there he was sent to the private school of Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Ripley in Waltham, to complete his preparation for Harvard. Miss Conant writes: "Mr. Ripley was pastor of the Unitarian Church there (in Waltham) from 1809 to 1846, and during most of that time supplemented the small salary of a country minister by receiving twelve or fourteen boys into his family to fit for college. From time to time youths rusticated from Harvard were also sent there to keep up college work."
"Mrs. Ripley was one of the most remarkable women of her generation. Born in 1793, she very early began to show unusual intellectual ability, and before she was seventeen she had become a fine Latin scholar and had read also all the Odyssey in the original." Her life-long friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson, writes in praise of her: "The rare accomplishments and singular loveliness of her character endeared her to all. . . . She became one of the best Greek scholars in the country, and continued in her latest years the habit of reading Homer, the tragedians, and Plato. But her studies took a wide range in mathematics, natural philosophy, psychology, theology, and ancient and modern literature. Her keen ear was open to whatever new facts astronomy, chemistry, or the theories of light and heat had to furnish. Absolutely without pedantry, she had no desire to shine. She was faithful to all the duties of wife and mother in a well-ordered and eminently hospitable household wherein she was dearly loved. She was without appetite for luxury or display or praise or influence, with entire indifference to triffles. . . . As she advanced in life her personal beauty, not remarked in youth, drew the notice of all."
There could have been no nobler, saner influence for an intellectual boy than the companionship of this unusual woman, and if we are to begin at the beginning of Wellesley's story, we must begin with Mrs. Ripley, for Mr. Durant often said that she had great influence in inclining his mind in later life to the higher education of women.
From Waltham the young man went in 1837 to Harvard, where we hear of him as "not specially studious, and possessing refined and luxurious tastes which interfered somewhat with his pursuit of the regular studies of the college." But evidently he was no ordinary idler, for he haunted the Harvard Library, and we know that all his life he was a lover of books. In 1841 he was graduated from Harvard, and went home to Lowell to read law in his father's