Scholarly Pursuits

by M. Louisa Locke

  Caro tried once more to strike up a conversation about Grace with one of the other juniors in the political science class. This time she didn’t get past bringing up that she’d gotten her degree from the University of Nebraska before the woman glanced quickly over at Willie Caulfield, who had just come into the classroom, and then politely but firmly ended their conversation. She couldn’t help but notice that the other women in the class had then become less welcoming than they were before. Not wanting to raise suspicions about her real reasons for being at the university, she’d remained polite, keeping to very safe topics when she chatted with them in the few minutes before class.

  However, she saw all this as confirmation that her suspicions were correct—something of note had happened to Grace last fall—something connected to her engagement with Mr. Caulfield. She hoped Laura’s conversation with Ned Goodwin would shed some light on everything. Meanwhile, she was determined to be more subtle in her conversation with Elvira Stokker, establish some sort of common ground with the woman over their mutual interest in the sciences before mentioning Grace.

  Two hours later, Caro looked over at Miss Stokker, who was carefully cutting up a doughnut covered with brown sugar into neat, bite-sized chunks, and congratulated herself in having successfully gotten the woman to join her for tea at the restaurant connected to the Golden Sheaf Bakery.

  Elvira appeared to be slightly older than most of the Berkeley students, a tall, raw-boned sort of woman who reminded Caro of the strong farm women she knew in Nebraska. Yet her dark maroon cashmere suit was well-tailored, her gloves and handbag of fine leather, and her diction quite precise and cultured. Miss Beck thought she’d had a teaching career back east but had moved west to live with a brother who worked in San Francisco.

  After carefully chewing her first bite of doughnut, Miss Stokker said, “So, Miss Sutton, you are thinking about attending the university’s medical college, across the bay at Toland Hall?”

  “Yes, and Miss Beck said that you might be able to give me some idea of how women are treated there.”

  “I can say this…it’s not for the faint of heart.”

  “At least they permit women to attend, unlike so many other medical schools.”

  “Permitted doesn’t mean welcome.” Elvira looked pointedly at Caro. “I’m good friends with Lucy Wanzer, the first women to graduate from there with a medical degree. I can tell you, she faced a good deal of hazing her first term.”

  “Hazing?”

  “Mostly silly stuff, you know. All the men would cluck like hens every time she entered the classroom, knock her notebooks onto the floor, corner her in the dissection lab, and blow smoke in her face. Faculty didn’t do much to stop them, and one instructor announced that if she wanted to study medicine she should have her ovaries removed.”

  Caro thought of old Doc Rachetter telling Grace’s parents that he feared that if her cousin returned to the university it would make her incapable of having children and said, “That’s outrageous.”

  Elvira smiled. “Lucy told him that if that were true, perhaps the male students needed to have their testicles removed.”

  “Brave woman,” Caro said. Or foolhardy. From her own experience, she knew that the immediate satisfaction of saying what she thought was often followed by the realization she’d just made the situation worse…particularly when dealing with an arrogant man like her own father.

  “Lucy said that, over time, her male classmates began to treat her better. They were impressed by both her brains and her willingness to take their abuse without running to the authorities. She said the turning point came when she didn’t give into the pressure by the school director to tell who’d been involved in locking one of the male students in the dissecting room all night with a cadaver.”

  “Ah, yes,” Caro said. “She demonstrated loyalty, a characteristic they could admire. Has that made it any easier for the women who have come after her? Or does every woman have to prove herself?”

  “I think that at least the faculty are now more supportive. There are currently two women I know finishing up their degrees this term. Both seem to have avoided anything worse than the usual first year joshing. Of course, one of them is Emma Sutro, who is not only from an enormously wealthy family, but it can’t hurt that her fiancé has been attending medical school with her at the same time.”

  Caro thought about her own wealthy father, who had no intention of supporting her career plans, and her expectation that her future held no future husbands to fight her battles. She wondered if Willie would have been willing to fight any battles for Grace. She doubted it. She said, “I imagine, Miss Stokker, you must have faced some of the same sort of unkind treatment by a few of the men in your science classes. How have you handled that?”

  Elvira shrugged and said, “I’ve got four brothers and a thick skin. And I get the highest grades in my classes, so when exam time comes, I’m suddenly everyone’s best friend. But yes, there are some immature men who just can’t help from making fools of themselves.”

  “And the male professors? I have noticed that Professor Moses hasn’t once called on any of the female students to recite in these first weeks of classes.”

  “I’ve always suspected Moses is one of those professors who feel it is a waste of time to pay any attention to female students, who, in their estimation, are simply waiting around until marriage. Not that this discourages the some female students from swooning over his good looks, thereby reinforcing his prejudices.”

  Caro nodded, having her own ideas about Moses confirmed. She quite liked Elvira Stokker and her sardonic view of the world. “What of Sanders? Since I’m only sitting in on his lecture series, the question of student recitations hasn’t come up.”

  “Oh…Sanders…yes, he’s got the reputation of being a women’s rights man. I’ve heard him speak quite eloquently about how the world would be a better place if women ran everything.”

  Noting a hint of sarcasm in this last comment, Caro said, “Exactly how does he think this is going to be accomplished?”

  “He is a little vague on this, but you have to excuse Sanders. He’s a poet, don’t you know? Head in the clouds. Writing long love sonnets to his young wife, I imagine. I can tell you I find the idea of women like her running the world a frightening proposition.”

  “Is his wife a striking blond…ample…endowments?”

  Elvira gave a short hoot and said, “I see you have met Mrs. Sanders.” Then she sighed. “I had such hopes for him my freshman year…until one day when he introduced me to his wife. How could she be his model of superior womanhood? To top things off, he told her I was planning a career in domestic science. I assume that when the man heard I was majoring in chemistry, the only thing he could imagine was that I was going to mess around with the perfect formula for bread.”

  “I suppose if he learned I was going into medicine he’d assure me I will make a perfect lying-in nurse.”

  For a moment they both laughed, then Elvira said, “To be honest, the poor dear does treat the women in his classes with far more respect than most of the other professors, encouraging them in their literary endeavors. And he even helped us fill out the form to apply to be a chapter of the Kappa Kappa Gamma fraternity.”

  Caro found her heart speed up, realizing that now was the time to get serious and shift the conversation. She said, “Is that a female fraternity? I don’t believe I knew there was one on campus.”

  “Yes, we got our official charter last May, and we have seven members. Three of them you would have met in Moses’ political economy class, because they are juniors: Annie Edmonds, Carrie Swyney, and Ella Bailey.”

  “What about the other faculty? I only ask because I know there was some movement to start fraternities at the university I attended, but I heard most of the faculty were opposed.”

  “Yes, well, there were some unfortunate events my freshmen year that prompted the faculty to pass a resolution that all freshmen coming in the next year would have
to sign a pledge not to join any secret societies. However, this caused such an uproar among some of the local alumni that the Regents forced the faculty to reverse their votes, which they did at the beginning of last spring term.”

  “And that’s when you all got your charter? Were the male fraternities on campus supportive?”

  Caro noticed a slight stiffening at this question and wondered why. She also wondered exactly what those unfortunate events were that had prompted such a controversial decision on the part of the faculty. While Grace had written a number of times in her letters to Caro how disgusted she was with the ritual of freshmen and sophomores beating each other up in what was called a “cane rush,” and the periodic drunken beer “busts,” she’d never mentioned this anti-fraternity vote.

  Elvira finally replied. “Some of the anti-fraternity editorials on campus implied that the Zeta Psi and Chi Phi fraternities were behind the decision by our founding members to apply for a charter. Ridiculous. Fact is, a lot of the fraternity men on campus are against women having their own secret societies. They seem to think that somehow we’ll make fraternities less appealing to real men.”

  Caro nodded. “I can see that. At the University of Nebraska, there was even some resistance to women participating in the literary societies.”

  “University of Nebraska? That’s where you got your bachelor’s degree?”

  “Yes, I’m from Chicago, but I went to school in Lincoln and have been teaching there. Why do you ask?”

  “Oh, there was a student in my class, Grace Atherton, from Nebraska.”

  “Yes, I believe she’s no longer attending the university. Did you know her well?”

  “I don’t know that I would say I knew her well…but we certainly had a mild rivalry going our freshman and sophomore years over which of us would get the top grades in our exams. Like me, she didn’t mind being known as a grind. Unlike me, this didn’t seem to frighten away the men. She certainly could be counted among Professor Sanders’ proteges.”

  “Was she asked to join your female fraternity?”

  “No! I mean, I think she would have turned us down if we had asked. Much too busy doing her good works and such. Good heavens, look at the time. I really must be going.”

  Chapter 13

  Friday morning, January 21, 1881

  Berkeley

  “‘University men don’t approve of co-eds,’ she said, and smiled.” 920 O’Farrell Street, Harriet Lane Levy

  As Caro Sutton opened the attic door for Laura, she said, “I got Miss Stokker to have tea with me, and she acted just as spooked as Miss Beck did when Grace’s name came up. Up until then, I thought very highly of her…but when I asked if the female fraternity she belonged to had invited Grace, she got very flustered and practically sprinted out of the restaurant.”

  As she followed Caro up the stairs, Laura smiled, thinking how like Caro…no polite formalities…right to the point.

  Taking off her cloak, Laura went over to put her satchel down next to the table near the window that was partially covered with books and papers. She said, “So Miss Stokker belongs to the Kappas? That’s interesting. After talking to Ned, I’m pretty sure Grace was the target of harassment by some of the fraternity men on campus. I wonder what the female fraternity members thought of that?”

  Caro handed Laura a cup of tea the color of mahogany and said, “What exactly did Mr. Goodwin tell you?”

  “As I hoped, as soon as I brought up the subject of Grace, telling him how uncomfortable Willie seemed when I asked if he knew why she left campus, he confirmed that Willie and Grace were no longer engaged. And, in his opinion, their break up was all Grace’s fault. He said that she complained whenever Willie had a fraternity event he had to attend, yet she didn’t think twice about abandoning him to spend all of Sunday going to church and doing her charity work at the Deaf and Blind Institute.”

  “What fraternity events?”

  “Ned said these were special duties that every ‘newly-inducted brother’ had to do but that he couldn’t reveal what those duties were, given that everything was ‘secret’ in a secret society. Got quite pompous with me, although from what I’ve read in the student paper, the Berkeleyan, most of these special duties are to get blind drunk and tip over out-houses and let chickens loose in town. But I do think he was telling the truth when he said Willie believed Grace was jealous of his new friendships in the fraternity…wanted him all to herself.”

  “From what Grace wrote me, she wasn’t jealous; she was worried that he was neglecting his studies.”

  Laura poured a generous dollop of cream from the jug on the table into her tea, adding a spoonful of sugar, hoping this would counteract the acidic taste of tea that appeared to have been brewing for some time. “Ned said that Grace had become a terrible nag, remarking that the last thing Willie needed was another mother, that he’d moved into the fraternity house to get away from his own mother’s constant complaining.”

  Caro pushed her spectacles up her nose and nodded. “This fits in with Grace’s own opinion that moving into the fraternity house this fall seemed to have changed him. I had actually gotten rather irritated with her paeans of praise for him the summer she returned home from her freshman year. All she could talk about was this sweet boy she’d met. How he shared her distaste of the crass, thoughtless behavior of most of young men on campus, and that he didn’t mind being teased for being studious. She also mentioned he’d been sickly as a boy and that he was embarrassed he couldn’t always keep up during the weekly cadet drills, which is why he’d started going to the gymnasium in his sophomore year.”

  Laura took a sip of her tea, pleased that the cream and sugar had made it palatable. “He certainly didn’t seem sickly when I met him the first week of classes, and from what I saw during the term, he appeared to be one of those men who positively reveled in forming battalions and marching around campus with the other cadets every Wednesday and Friday.”

  These weekly drills were a sore point for Laura. Seth had been given a pass on them because of his work schedule and, Laura suspected, because he had actually served in the Union army. However, she knew that men who didn’t show up to drill were judged to be faking physical illnesses and were subjected to rather unkind comments by some of the other students.

  The second week of school, one of the North Hall loafers, dressed in his silly uniform, whispered coward when Seth and she walked past. Laura had started to berate the boy, but Seth unceremoniously pulled her away, telling her in no uncertain terms that he could fight his own battles, thank you very much. He said this particular battle wasn’t worth fighting because he didn’t care what a bunch of want-to-be soldiers playing dress-up thought of him.

  Seth was probably right; it just made her mad that anyone would misjudge him this way. However, it appeared that Willie’s response to this sort of teasing had been quite different, because he did want to fit in.

  She said, “Sounds to me as if Grace might have mistakenly thought that the attitudes and behavior of a spoiled mamma’s boy represented his true values, but as he got more involved with his male classmates, the two of them stopped seeing eye-to-eye.”

  “That’s what I thought. And he wouldn’t be the first young man who chaffed at what he would see as female interference. That is one of the reasons I thought Grace was wrong to pin her faith on women being moral beacons to men. We need our rights because it is our due, not so we can reform men…a hopeless task, in my opinion.”

  Laura repressed a smile at how worked up Caro had gotten and said, “According to Ned, the problems between Grace and Willie came to a head on Junior Exhibition Day, which was at the end of October. Did they have that at the University of Nebraska? An event when selected juniors read essays and poems they have written? Anyway, Ned said Grace and Willie were supposed to attend the dance that is held in the afternoon, but Ned said later that she failed to show up. When Grace didn’t appear, Willie decided to stay for the dance anyway and spent the afternoon ente
rtaining a certain Miss Sephronia Sinclair.”

  “Ah, did Mr. Goodwin know what happened next?”

  “He said Grace confronted Willie about this, an argument ensued, and the result was they mutually agreed that the engagement was at an end.”

  “If it were mutual, then the broken engagement couldn’t be responsible for her decision to leave the university nearly three weeks later.” Caro put down her tea cup with a bang.

  “Precisely!” Laura took another sip of her tea, wishing it hadn’t gone so cold. The attic was really quite chilly.

  Caro said more quietly, “I wonder why Grace didn’t go to the dance? If I remember correctly, she wrote to her mother that she was on the decoration committee for the day’s events. Maybe she was just tired.”

  “I vaguely remember hearing there was some problem with the decorations. I didn’t pay much attention at the time, because the Junior Exhibition event was on a Saturday, when I was working. But I can ask Kitty. I think she at least went to the ceremony in the morning.”

  Caro took off her glasses and cleaned the lenses, then carefully put them back on before speaking. “All of this confirms that Willie and Grace had been having difficulties all term and that Willie may have already had his eye on Miss Sinclair before the engagement was officially ended. It doesn’t, however, explain why the girls I’ve talked to seem so uncomfortable when her name comes up.”

  “I agree. Couples form and then break up all the time at this age. I’m not even sure their engagement was common knowledge…there wasn’t a ring or anything. I did think it was interesting that Ned felt it was important to stress that Willie and Miss Sinclair had just met for the first time at the Junior Exhibition dance. Yet Grace never struck me as the kind of woman whose whole identity is wrapped up finding a man to marry, so it is hard to imagine her being devastated when the engagement ended.”