“A MASTER AND HIS PUPILS.
ON the 28th of November, at the Tavern Club in Boston, a dinner was given to Professor William R. Ware by those of his former pupils within reach. It was in every way so enjoyable an occasion to those who were present and brought out so much of interest in the way of reminiscence that the Committee in charge feel sure that Mr. Ware’s many pupils throughout the country who were unable to be present at the dinner will be glad to read even a belated account of it. Much of the proceedings, indeed, were of general interest, relating as they did to the beginnings of architectural education in this country; and the fact that the after-dinner speakers now indulged in humorous reminiscenses and again in all seriousness acknowledged the depth of their obligations to their one-time master, is at once a tribute to the many-sidedness of his character and gives an idea of the character of the occasion.
After the dinner Mr. Peabody, who presided, read the following address : —
MR. PEABODY’S ADDRESS.
It was with some misgivings that I accepted my invitation to this dinner. Had I really been a pupil of Mr. Ware’s? True, I had been a student in his office, but during his absence abroad; and though we lived together in Paris, it always seemed as if it was as comrades rather-than as pupil and teacher. But the other day on looking over some old letters I came across a whole packet that he had written me, and I found that all my studies and plans, just as I carried them out were, to a great degree, outlined for me there. More than that, these letters were affectionately addressed to ” Mon cher” and “Mon cher petit Bob” and “Mon cher Bobpebodi” so that I recognized anew the kindly spirit that inspired them and felt I could fairly enroll myself as an early child of a great family, perhaps the earliest.
For at that time Mr. Ware had not begun to be a teacher. He was preparing to be one; and these letters were all about the beginning of the School of Architecture at the Institute, his museum collections, his books, his evening class, his problems, his pupil that came every week from Worcester. And when they were not about the Institute, they made clear the arguments that vexed us then, the great question of the English Gothic School or the French Classics, so alive then that one longed to have been born in either pale and so to have escaped the burden of a choice, so dead now because many of us think the same great principles underlie both schools. Then we found that in the country of Street and Scott and Burges and Shaw, the country that seemed most like home to us, practically nobody was doing any Classic work, and, that, on the other hand, across the Channel the work of these great men earned scarcely a glance. It was pretty and pleasing, the Frenchman said, but not architecture.
Amid such discussion and with few pupils, but under the care of a devoted teacher, was the Institute School founded. [I did not find in my letters that Mr. Ware then had any lady pupils. Perhaps he agreed with Mr. Fitzsimmons, the pugilist: You remember that he called a friend into a private room where he was having a conference with Mrs. Fitzsimmons just before his great fight. ‘You see,’ says Mr. Fitzsimmons, ‘my wife wants very much to be present at the fight, but I tell her it is no place for a lady.’ However, Mrs. Fitzsimmons thought otherwise, and it gave her the opportunity for that remark which has survived her and which made her husband fight to win:’Think of our dear home and the little ones to Hoboken, Fitz, and tickle him in the slats.’ Whether the ladies reached the School in Mr. Ware’s time or not I am not sure, but they finally did get there and ever since have done themselves and the School credit.
Since the time when that old packet of letters were written how many “cher petits Bobs ” has our friend guided in the ways of architecture! Wave after wave of the youth of our profession has rolled up the beach before him, quiet and boisterous, grave and gay, only to roll backwards into the surges where one tossing sea, perchance, raises its crest higher than its neighbors, or ends its career in a greater glory of foam. That is the reward we architects can gain by our toilsome life; a passing glint of sunlight on our wave, perhaps a grander thunder as we are hurled on the rocks and then the turn comes for the next advancing, joyous and tumultuous line.
Mr. Ware himself is not a stranger to this great restless ocean waste. I remember the buildings that he designed before he was Mr. Van Brunt’s partner, all his own and uniformly a scholar’s work; well studied and well carried out, at a time when people did not have skilled assistants. You do not know them and never will. An unkindly fate, that has spared many works by a man that I know far better than I ever knew Mr. Ware, — works that I should gladly have seen levelled to the ground, — has too soon laid its destroying hand on his graceful and well studied buildings and they have either been torn down or transformed.
Later when Mr. Van Brunt and Mr. Ware worked together we know that each influenced their joint work for good and that it was the best of their time. Their reputation as architects is secure. That is all that most of us can ever hope for. We must be satisfied with the cowboy elegy, ‘ He done his darndest; angels can do no more.’ But not so our friend. He does not rest his fame on himself or on his own productions. That is the glory and happiness of the teacher. He lives on in his pupils, and in all their art and their successes he can fairly claim a share. What does the wisest of our race say should accompany advancing years ? ‘Honor, love, obedience,’ but last and best, ‘ troops of friends.’ None of these are lacking to our master; least of all the latter. And it is above all as one of that troop that I come here to-night. It is as “ton cher petit Bob” that I welcome and greet you, and in the same spirit, I call on all ” tes bons petits camaraux,” the Franks and Neds and Georges and Johns to stand up and drink “rubis sur I’ongle,” ‘Long life and good health to our Master.’
Mr. Peabody then called upon Mr. George T. Tilden as representing the very first students at the Institute of Technology. Mr. Tilden gave the following amusing account of the conditions under which the school of Architecture at the Institute of Technology bad its beginning: —
MR. TILDEN’S REMARKS.
Foryt years ago this minute I found that I had been about six weeks in Mr. Ware’s office. It was then in the Studio Building where that structure now stands on Tremont Street. Our office windows were on Bromfield Street, and John Stearns was in command, as Mr. Van Brunt had not yet joined Mr. Ware. This was in 1863, and the whole country was up to its arm-pits in Civil War. I had just come down from Phillips Exeter Academy and made application to Mr. Ware for a position in his office. He said, in his kindly fashion, ‘ Well, George, what do you know ?’ I was, at that time, well up in the “proud lexicon of youth” and replied, with becoming modesty,’I know everything, Mr. Ware, except architecture, and if you will introduce me, please, to Palladio and Michael Angelo and Queen Anne and Charlie McKim, I’ll be much obliged.’ And he said, ‘You silly boy, go to Harvard College for four years and learn just a little something, and then come and we’ll give you a start ‘; but I said, ‘ No, Mr. Ware, I can’t do that, for here is gold up to 200 and more and flour about SI7 a barrel and every detail of my healthy appetite has been drawn out full size, and I must to work at once’ Then Mr. Ware said, ‘ But I have John Stearns, you see, and pray what more could mortal desire?’ ‘But,’ said I, ‘ you’ve been coaching John Stearns so long that now be is only a help to you, and what you need is a hindrance; you’ll get rusty if you don’t have a hindrance. Let me in as a hindrance ‘; and he, bringing that kindly but experienced eye of his to bear upon my countenance said, after a moment’s contemplation,’Well, George, judging from your door and window-finish, you look hopefully fireproof, or at least of fairly slow-burning construction, so you may come in. As a hindrance, you may be a help’
Into this Studio Building office came Frank Chandler, with his wit and wisdom, and Johnny Mitchell, with his wonderful facility at drawing the human figure, and he kept the blackboard lively with athletic cupids performing impossible feats on fantastic architecture. By this time Mr. Henry Van Brunt had become Mr. Ware’s partner and our office was moved up into Pemberton Square, the top floor of one of the old brick dwelling-houses, with its windows looking down Court Street and State Street and over the harbor, with no skyscraper to molest or make us afraid. Here our numbers were increased, and among those who came in as draughtsmen, or as students, I recall Frank Loring, and Dacre Bush, and Harry Richards, and, for a short time, Bob Peabody, who soon ran away to Paris, and there came Tom Rich and John M. Allen and Frank Howe . . . and others.
The most wealthy client, or at any rate the most conspicuous client to us young fellows, was a prominent clothing dealer whose money from the United States Government for the shoddy clothing which he was furnishing to the army of the Potomac used to come to his warehouse in Wintbrop Square in huge wagon-loads guarded by four well-armed United States soldiers. He wanted a fine house on Beacon Street, and two or three blocks of dwellings on different portions of the new Back Bay, and so his presence in the office was occasionally tolerated, but the skill with which Mr. Ware would conduct the campaign to evict him, when his stay had been beyond endurance, was evidence of unusual generalship. The way in which he would execute a flank movement to shy him off from the middle of the office, and would call his attention to the skylight in the outer entry, or caution him about the third step on the second flight down seemed to us more and more sublime the oftener it was repeated.
In spite of increasing business Mr. Ware would send us down every now and then to attend the lectures of Professor Kunkle, and some others who were starting the Institute of Technology with occasional talks in the rooms of the Charitable Mechanics’ Association on Chauncy Street, and when he became involved in the interior treatment of Huntington Hall, with its mechanical contrivances for hoisting and lowering the screens, etc., for the lecture illustrations, I remember Mr. Ware took the whole office down one afternoon to the stage-entrance to the Boston Theatre and had the stage-carpenter show us the ropes and reels and rigging, the wings and flies and footlights and all the complications and fascinations behind the scenes.
When Mr. Ware had partially inspired us with an interest in Classic work, he set us to reconstruct Pliny’s Villa, and for weeks we were upheaving and absorbing the whole Roman civilization, from Romulus all through the Cajsars, and while we were kept at this indefatigable research you must not suppose that he was idle. He was at work for us all the time. He did not limit himself to office hours. He was on the war-path night and day, and often, when I reached the office in the morning, I would find thumb-tacked onto my drawing-board a note something like this : ‘Dear Geo. It is now 2:30 A. M. and I have gone to the Parker House to get a little sleep. Have just found a fine description of Pliny’s boot-jack what you wanted to work into his vestibule mosaic. You will find it marked on page 73. W. R. W.’
Always quick to discern what was for our good, Mr. Ware was equally quick not to discern what would have been to our hurt, if he had seen it. One day John Allen had been corralled in the priva’e office, when Mr. Van Brunt was in New York, and Mr. Ware was away, presumably for the rest of the day. John Stearns and I were holding the door shut, by clutching the knob, while Allen was trying to pull it open on hiB side. Finding he had no show of success single-handed he ransacked the wardrobe and brought to his aid a pair of Mr. Van Brunt’s trousers, with the suspenders attached, and these he lashed to the knob and was soon shouting with glee, as he began to see victory through the crack of the door, when, suddenly, Stearns and I heard Mr. Ware’s quick, elastic step in the entry, and, dropping our hold, we strolled in an absorbed leisurely way towards our proper stations, while Allen rolled in a tangled heap on the floor, with a derisive howl of success. Mr. Ware passed into his office as tranquil as a June morning, with no recognition whatever of the rampant bedlam, and Allen, after untangling himself, brought out his victorious weapons and directed the office boy where to have them cleansed and pressed, and then went to his table at the front of the room and went to work vigorously upon Mr. Freeland’s frontelevation, apparently quite unconscious of his own rear elevation, which was a sight to behold! From the storm-swept thatch of his cupola (Jie never had it shingled) down to the grade line it was picturesquely kalsomined, done in a broad, sketchy manner, with wide expanses of deep rich browns and grays which softened off into the hazy background of hit office coat, or were enlivened by the greater brilliancy of his checkered pantaloons, in a manner which should have made Haberstroh envious.
We were all of us entitled to a week in the guard-house, on bread and water, but Mr. Ware, bless his kind heart, said never a word, but, while the dust of battle was settling in his office, and ” silence like a poultice ” was “healing the blows of sound ” in the draughtingroom. he rose from his desk and gently, noiselessly, closed the office door! Surely the chivalry of King Arthur’s Court can show nothing finer.
Nothing escaped Mr. Ware’s notice which he could bring to the interest of his boys. An enterprising agricultural journal offered a prize for the best design for a farm-barn of unusual dimensions, for 200 horses, 300 cows and 1,200 sheep, and Mr. Ware set me at it, and suggested that I look up, at the Public Library, such books as would help me. I knew something of the proper care of horses and cows but had little knowledge of the care of sheep, so when I came upon the book entitled ” Ruskin on Sheepfolds ” I revelled in the cheerful hope that our inimitable John Ruskin would pull the wool off my eyes, and show me, in his entrancing phrases, the whole nature and demands of sheep. Mr. Ware smiled as he saw the book I had, and said,’ Ha, ha! go ahead and see what he says.’ That Saturday afternoon I took that volume of Ruskin home with me and next day found it better Sunday reading than I had counted upon, for, as perhaps you all know, ” Ruskin on Sheepfolds ” is an ecclesiastical treatise on church government, with never a word about the woolly quadrupeds which I was expected to house.
And so, as you may suppose, I did not win the prize for the barn, and my carefully worked-out effort took its place at the bottom of quite a pile of what I came to call my ” rejected addresses.”
But perhaps it is not complimentary to Mr. Ware to mention these failures when he was trying so faithfully to bring us out on top, still in this company which knows Mr. Ware so well, we need not hesitate to name the defeats, as well as the victories, for whoever proved himself a truer friend in times of discouragement than he V Many of us know, not only those of us now still pegging away at the old game here, but some of us who have ceased to design earthly tabernacles, know full well that when any one of us was brought to earth by the snare of the fowler, and lay wounded and bruised, it was Mr. Ware’s hand that poured in the oil and the wine, it was his hand that led us to an inn and took care of us, and his purse that was left behind for our comfort and hope.
And, as Abraham Lincoln said, ‘Since we like that sort of thing that’s just the sort of thing we like,’ and that’s why we are here tonight.
Professor Chandler added to Mr. Tilden’s reminiscences of the early days in the offices of Ware & Van Brunt and spoke of the Institute of Technology as it is to-day, adding that they had never found occasion seriously to change the scheme of study as it was first laid down by Mr. Ware, and he spoke of what the Institute of Technology owed to him for his years of service in the beginnings of the school.
Mr. Warren was then called upon as representing the school of Architecture at Harvard and alluded to the fact that the reminiscences they had been listening to and the songs they had been singing, looked back to a time when the Institute of Technology was practically the only school in the country. Since then, as all knew, schools had sprung up in all parts of the United States and pupils of Professor Ware were now teaching in six of these schools. Two of these schools, the Institute of Technology and Columbia, Mr. Ware had himself founded, and he felt inclined to add a third, that of Harvard, so much had the school at Harvard owed to Mr. Ware’s encouragement and advice. It might be interesting to those present to know that the Committee having the lists of past students in their hands, had, on counting them, found that there were some 650 names, and as the lists were far from complete, it was safe to assume that at least 700 students of architecture must have passed under Mr. Ware’s hands.”
Reference Data:
American Architect and Architecture, Vol. 83-86,1904, pages 19-20
