Marine for Poet

He never intended to be a dean; he wanted to be a poet. As a student at the University of Michigan, Christian Gauss (rhymes with mouse) was a prominent athlete and Phi Beta Kappa scholar, dressed in velveteen jacket and flowing tie a la Gilbert's Bunthorne. He worked his way through college in three years, could recite the Inferno from start to finish in Italian by the time he graduated. He sailed off to Paris, to the Latin Quarter and versifying. Michigan lured him back with the offer of a teaching job, made more attractive by the fact that the girl he wanted to marry (and later did) was waiting in Ann Arbor.

Woodrow Wilson, then President of Princeton, called Gauss to Old Nassau in 1905 as a part of his famed pioneering preceptorial system. Within eight years Preceptor Gauss became head of the department of Modern Languages, There he stayed until 1925 when the job of Dean of the College opened. Everybody thought of capable Gauss. The students sang:

Oh, here's to Gauss, who knows his stuff

We liked him though his course was

tough;

But when he's Dean we shall delight

In hating him with all our might.

That threat was never carried out. Gregarious, ironic, mercurial Dean Gauss genuinely liked his charges. His compassion and understanding made his discipline tolerable, himself adored. He found time to write some half-dozen books, poems, and many a judicious magazine article on the U.S. educational scene, meanwhile encouraging such literary talents as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edmund Wilson.

This week, after two years of leave of absence on special tasks, 67-year-old Christian Gauss gave up his deanship to have more time for teaching and literature. His successor: Marine Captain Francis R. B. "Frisco" Godolphin, Princeton '24. Godolphin had left his quiet spot as head of Princeton's Classics Department to spend two years in the Marines, saw action on Saipan, Tinian, and Kwajalein. His job: going well ahead of the fighting lines to direct bombers by radio.

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