faculty members were as badly misrepresented to the general public as were college students. Actually they were a pretty timorous folk, exceedingly sensitive to social disapproval. That they occasionally spoke out fearlessly was all the more to their credit.
All of which of course reflected society’s slow-dying tendency to view teachers not as educators but as vestal virgins of a sort, living sacrifices on the altar of respectability, housed in suitably grim buildings and judged on the basis of a far stricter moral code than that applied to businessmen and housewives. And in their vestal-virgining, their virginity counted much more than their tending of the feeble flame of imaginative curiosity and honest intellectual inquiry. Indeed, for all most people cared, the flame might safely be let go out, so long as the teachers remained sitting around it in their temple — inviolate, sour-faced, and quite frozen testimonials to the fact that somebody was upholding moral values somewhere.
Norman thought wryly: Why, they actually want us to be witches, of a harmless sort. And Linade Tansy stop!
The irony tickled him and he smiled.
His good humor lasted until after his last class that afternoon, when he happened to meet the Sawtelles in front of Morton Hall.
Evelyn Sawtelle was a snob and a fake intellectual. The illusion she tried most to encourage was that she had sacrificed a great career in the theater in order to marry Hervey. While in reality she had never even been able to wrangle the directorship of the Hempnell Student Players and had had to content herself with a minor position in the Speech Department. She had an affected carriage and a slightly arty taste in clothes that, taken along with her flat cheeks and dull black hair and eyes, suggested the sort of creature you sometimes see stalking through the lobby at ballet and concert intermissions.
But far from being a bohemian, Evelyn Sawtelle was even more inclined to agonize over the minutiae of social convention and prestige than most Hempnell faculty wives. Yet because of her general incompetence, this anxiety did not result in tactfulness, but rather its opposite.
Her husband was completely under her thumb. She managed him like a business — bunglingly, overzealously, but with a certain dogged effectiveness.
“I had lunch today with Henrietta… I mean Mrs. Pollard,” she announced to Norman with the air of one who has just visited royalty.
“Oh say, Norman —” Hervey began excitedly, thrusting forward his brief case.
“We had a very interesting chat,” his wife swept on. “We talked about you, too, Norman. It seems Gracine has been misinterpreting some of the things you’ve been saying in your class. She’s such a sensitive girl.”
“Dumb bunny, you mean.” Norman corrected mentally. He murinured, “Oh?” with some show of politeness.
“Dear Henrietta was a little puzzled as just how to handle it, though of course she’s a very tolerant, cosmopolitan soul. I just mentioned it because I thought you’d want to know. After all, it is very important that no one get any wrong impressions about the department. Don’t you agree with me, Hervey?” She ended sharply.
“What, dear? Oh, yes, yes. Say Norman, I want to tell you about that thesis I showed you yesterday. The most amazing thing! Its main arguments are almost exactly the same as those in your book! An amazing case of independent investigators arriving at the same conclusions. Why, it’s like Darwin and Wallace, or —”
“You didn’t tell me anything about this, dear,” said his wife.
“Wait a minute,” said Norman.
He hated to make an explanation in Mrs. Sawtelle’s presence, but it had to be done.
“Sorry, Hervey, to have to substitute a rather sordid story for an intriguing scientific coincidence. It happened when I was an instructor here — 1929, my first year. A graduate student named Cunningham got hold of my ideas — I was friendly with him — and
All of which of course reflected society’s slow-dying tendency to view teachers not as educators but as vestal virgins of a sort, living sacrifices on the altar of respectability, housed in suitably grim buildings and judged on the basis of a far stricter moral code than that applied to businessmen and housewives. And in their vestal-virgining, their virginity counted much more than their tending of the feeble flame of imaginative curiosity and honest intellectual inquiry. Indeed, for all most people cared, the flame might safely be let go out, so long as the teachers remained sitting around it in their temple — inviolate, sour-faced, and quite frozen testimonials to the fact that somebody was upholding moral values somewhere.
Norman thought wryly: Why, they actually want us to be witches, of a harmless sort. And Linade Tansy stop!
The irony tickled him and he smiled.
His good humor lasted until after his last class that afternoon, when he happened to meet the Sawtelles in front of Morton Hall.
Evelyn Sawtelle was a snob and a fake intellectual. The illusion she tried most to encourage was that she had sacrificed a great career in the theater in order to marry Hervey. While in reality she had never even been able to wrangle the directorship of the Hempnell Student Players and had had to content herself with a minor position in the Speech Department. She had an affected carriage and a slightly arty taste in clothes that, taken along with her flat cheeks and dull black hair and eyes, suggested the sort of creature you sometimes see stalking through the lobby at ballet and concert intermissions.
But far from being a bohemian, Evelyn Sawtelle was even more inclined to agonize over the minutiae of social convention and prestige than most Hempnell faculty wives. Yet because of her general incompetence, this anxiety did not result in tactfulness, but rather its opposite.
Her husband was completely under her thumb. She managed him like a business — bunglingly, overzealously, but with a certain dogged effectiveness.
“I had lunch today with Henrietta… I mean Mrs. Pollard,” she announced to Norman with the air of one who has just visited royalty.
“Oh say, Norman —” Hervey began excitedly, thrusting forward his brief case.
“We had a very interesting chat,” his wife swept on. “We talked about you, too, Norman. It seems Gracine has been misinterpreting some of the things you’ve been saying in your class. She’s such a sensitive girl.”
“Dumb bunny, you mean.” Norman corrected mentally. He murinured, “Oh?” with some show of politeness.
“Dear Henrietta was a little puzzled as just how to handle it, though of course she’s a very tolerant, cosmopolitan soul. I just mentioned it because I thought you’d want to know. After all, it is very important that no one get any wrong impressions about the department. Don’t you agree with me, Hervey?” She ended sharply.
“What, dear? Oh, yes, yes. Say Norman, I want to tell you about that thesis I showed you yesterday. The most amazing thing! Its main arguments are almost exactly the same as those in your book! An amazing case of independent investigators arriving at the same conclusions. Why, it’s like Darwin and Wallace, or —”
“You didn’t tell me anything about this, dear,” said his wife.
“Wait a minute,” said Norman.
He hated to make an explanation in Mrs. Sawtelle’s presence, but it had to be done.
“Sorry, Hervey, to have to substitute a rather sordid story for an intriguing scientific coincidence. It happened when I was an instructor here — 1929, my first year. A graduate student named Cunningham got hold of my ideas — I was friendly with him — and
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