"Kitty"

Now this thought--that life and love and happiness are transitory--is, with Chaucer, a commonplace reflection. The lecturer glances at his watch. It is an element in his nature. The lecturer gathers up his papers, slips them into the green cloth bag which marks him as a Harvard professor. It beats in his heart and flows in his veins and. . . . Every eye in the class watches with fascination as the lecturer removes his pince-nez, stretches it at arm's length, lets it snap back on a spring winding device to his lapel. . . . catches in his throat and hammers in his head. The lecturer puts on rubbers, hat, overcoat, picks up his cane. Whether Chaucer saw life whole, I do not know. The lecturer is going up the aisle. One thing I do know. The lecturer pauses with his hand on the doorknob. He saw it steadily. Cheerily the lecturer waves his hand, steps from the room as the bell in Harvard Hall clangs the hour.

To two generations of Harvardmen such perfectly timed classroom exits identify Professor George Lyman Kittredge, topflight authority on Shakespeare and Chaucer. "Kitty's" English 22, which requires memorization of great chunks of Shakespeare, is one of Harvard's hardest courses. "Kitty"' wears pearl-gray homespun suits and wing collars. "Kitty'' possesses the snowiest beard at Harvard, is widely supposed to keep it so by dippings in laundry bluing. "Kitty" has his special tables in Boston's best restaurants. "Kitty" stays up half the night devouring the detective stories of J. S. Fletcher. Last week "Kitty" dropped a casual remark: "Having reached a certain age, I shall retire in September." "Kitty" is 75.

Among Harvard professors only "Copey" ('Professor-emeritus Charles Townsend Copeland) is the subject of more stories than "Kitty." Whereas "Copey's" fame rests on his ability to teach young men to write decent English, ''Kitty" is primarily a scholar. His scholarship is confined chiefly to the classroom, where he lectures by the hour on single lines in Shakespeare. To the public he is known more for his Witchcraft in Old and New England than for works on his specialty. Pursuit of a bothersome detail once took him to Oxford where he was informed: "There is only one man who can tell you that. He is a Harvard professor and his name is Kittredge." When twitted for his lack of a Ph. D., he always demands to know: "Who would examine me for it?"

Meticulously Victorian in the drawing room, Professor Kittredge insists upon his rights on the sidewalk. Persons so careless as to walk in front of him sometimes find themselves pushed into the gutter. Almost daily Professor Kittredge throws the traffic of Harvard Square into confusion by stepping smartly off the sidewalk, raising his cane, marching straight across the Square. The unfailing Kittredge aplomb was put to its greatest test when, in pacing up & down his lecture platform, he stumbled off the edge. He picked himself up, observed: "This is the first time I have ever fallen to the level of my audience."

In his classes the professor brooks no coughing, shuffling or other disturbance. At the first noise he will call time out for students "with no nervous control" to cough, sneeze, sniffle, blow noses or leave the room. Afternoons he delights in tramping through the stacks of Widener Library, knocking off all feet which he finds on desks.

'"Kitty's" supreme contempt, however, is reserved for proponents of the Baconian theory. Once at a Yale dinner he listened to a clever speaker "prove" that Shakespeare's plays could have been written by no one but Sir Francis Bacon. At the end "Kitty" arose, picked up the menu, gravely announced: "Gentlemen, I shall now prove that this menu was written by John Keats."

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