Harvard Yard (28 page)

It had been thirty years since Peter had taken this path at breakfast, lunch, and dinner—from the old Freshman Union across Quincy Street, past the flat modern ugliness of Lamont Library. And nothing seemed to have changed . . . except himself.

Then he came to the flight of stairs that led into the Yard. Those stairs had not been there thirty years before, nor had Pusey Library, so skillfully tucked below grade. Change could be imperceptible, but it was relentless.

From the top of the stairs, he looked across the Yard and wondered what the eighteenth-century Wedges would think of all this. Back in 1764, the college had been clustered over near the Square: Harvard Hall, Massachusetts, Stoughton, Holden Chapel. On this side of the Yard, there had been nothing more than fruit trees, garden plots, a brewery, pigpens, sheep commons, and, of course, a row of outhouses, where the students, in the morning, waited their turn. . . .

Chapter Thirteen

1763-1764

“H
URRY UP,
Wedge. Take much longer in there, I’ll be shittin’ in my breeches. And what will your reverend grandfather say if I come to chapel stinkin’ like a dung pile?”

Caleb Wedge peered through a crack in the outhouse door. “He’ll say, ‘Better that thou shouldst stinketh than to come late to chapel.’”

In that the college bell rang at six in the morning, going late was an easy matter, especially if one slept too soundly. And a student who went late faced a tuppence fine. So Caleb Wedge was glad to feel his discharge at last, gladder still to be off the cold seat, pulling up his breeches, pushing open the door.

“Take some jalap, why don’t you?” said the next in line. “Loosen you up.”

Caleb did not stop to trade insults, because his grandfather was waiting, and the Reverend Mr. Abraham Wedge was not a man to disappoint.

Caleb hurried toward Holden Chapel, joining with those who were hurrying from Harvard Hall and Massachusetts Hall and Stoughton, too. Some were tucking shirts into breeches or buttoning waistcoats; others were flowing serenely along in the academic gowns they wore each day. Some went with a sure step; others seemed groggy and uncertain, as if blinded by the April dawn. Some, Caleb knew, believed themselves blessed by God that they studied at the School of the Prophets; others considered the college a trial to be gotten through, a set of rules to be circumvented, four years of academic imprisonment before they embraced freedom.

As for Caleb, his attendance at the college had been foreordained, his place on the college’s great chain of being guaranteed.

In that he was the son of a barrister who died before making a mark, Caleb should have been ranked below the sons of royal officials and rich merchants, above the sons of country ministers and tradesmen. But his great-grandfather had been John Wedge, respected judge and mercantile investor; and his grandfather was the Reverend Mr. Abraham Wedge, heir to those investments, holder of degrees from Harvard and Emmanuel College, colleague minister of the First Church of Cambridge.

All of this guaranteed Caleb a place near the top of his class. So he marched near the head of the line in processions. And he was expected to sit near the front in chapel, which made it difficult for him that morning to slip in unnoticed.

Reverend Abraham Wedge was already in the pulpit, his Bible before him, his slender height and translucent skin conveying an air of the ethereal, as though he were preparing to elongate himself into some spirit shape and ascend to heaven. He had been delivering morning prayer more often of late, as President Holyoke surrendered to ill health and exhaustion after twenty-six years in office.

The reverend cast his eyes at the latecomers. “We shall wait a moment so that those of you who prefer the softness of your pillows to the power of the Word may compose yourselves.”

Such remarks were meant to inspire fear or guilt, but most students had developed attitudes about morning chapel and skills for mockery that manifested themselves in fake coughs, scraping feet, and anonymous hooting from the back pews.

Reverend Abraham responded calmly to the noise: “Rest assured, gentlemen, that the tutors are noting your names and fines will be given out. Now, let us pray.”

Caleb bowed his head and pretended to piety. He knew nothing would come of his grandfather’s threats, because tutors seldom identified surreptitious troublemakers in a chapel crowded with two hundred students. He knew only that his grandfather would be in an angry mood the rest of the day, which would make things more difficult that night.

“You wish to go on an expedition?” said Reverend Abraham. “To where?”

“To Newfoundland, Grandfather. To observe the transit of Venus.”

“Venus? The Roman goddess of love?”

“The
planet,
sir.” Caleb fought an impulse to call his grandfather stupid; he knew that his grandfather only feigned stupidity about the ways of the world as a defense against them.

“Professor Winthrop has written a letter.” Caleb placed it on Abraham’s desk.

The reverend sat in his study, erect in his black suit and white collarbands, his extreme height emphasized by his extreme posture, his long face even longer in the candlelight, his white hair cropped close so that his wig would fit snugly. The wig itself sat on a head-shaped frame that cast a shadow nearly as formidable as that of the reverend himself.

“Winthrop is a man of science,” he said. “But we are men of faith.”

“Who better, then, to understand the differences and congruences between natural and revealed religion?” Caleb often used new words to please his grandfather;
congruence
brought a nod, so he went on. “By going to the northern latitudes, sir, to study the movement of the spheres, I shall be studying the glory of God’s solar system.”

“Well said,” answered Abraham, “but your commitment to revealed religion seems less serious than to Winthrop’s natural religion. Otherwise, you’d not have come late to chapel today.”

“I’m . . . I’m sorry, sir.” Caleb bowed his head.

“And you might have answered the derision of your classmates with an angry gaze instead of a bowed head. Feigned piety is worse than none at all.”

Caleb knew that his best response was to keep his head bowed.

“I expect
you
to uphold the name and the faith of our family.”

“Yes, Grandfather.”

“’Tis what your own father would have wanted . . . and your mother.”

Once, they had all lived there, in that fine house on the Watertown Road, a short walk from the Yard. But the loss of Caleb’s father at sea had followed a smallpox epidemic that carried his mother away, leaving Caleb and his sister in the care of their father’s widowed father. For twelve years, the children had been raised with a combination of coldness, formality, and discipline that they had come to know as Reverend Abraham’s best expression of love.

“Stay the course of Calvinism,” the reverend reminded him. “Beware of professors who consider their telescopes of greater import than their Bibles.”

“Let him go, Grandfather.”

Reverend Abraham turned to the girl appearing in the door. “Your opinion—”

“Is of no consequence. I know.” Lydia Anne Wedge, all of thirteen, crossed her grandfather’s study with the purposeful grace of a woman twice her age.

Caleb often wondered at the source of her self-assurance. She was an orphan and so had no mother to teach her. She was a younger child and so had a brother to taunt her. And yet, here she was, perching herself on a wing chair, her crimson dress a perfect complement to the buff and blue flame-stitched fabric, her brown hair pulled back simply, her posture as erect as her grandfather’s, her attitude seemingly as unyielding.

She said, “If I were a young man seeking to broaden my horizons, I should hope that my grandfather would let me go about it.”

“But you are a girl,” said Abraham. “Broadening horizons is not part of your future. Deepening roots is your task. So—”

“Is that reason to deny either of us?” she asked calmly.

“I deny you nothing”—Abraham rose to his full six feet—“not even your whims . . . not even the paper and ink you beg to scribble your poems.”

“Grandfather,” she said, “my poems are not whimsical.”

Caleb said, “May we return to the subject of me?”

“The subject is always you,” said Lydia.

“A better subject than you,” answered Caleb.

“It is not,” she said.

“It is . . .
indeed.
” Caleb thought that sounded more mature than “It is
so.
”

But Abraham seemed to think that none of it was mature or endurable. He slammed his hands on his desk, and both children fell silent. Then he dropped back into his chair and said, “All right. All
right.
He may go.”

And Lydia seized her chance. “But paper and ink, sir? Will you buy me more?”

“Only if you write more,” said the old man, “and talk less.”

Two weeks later, Caleb Wedge boarded the Massachusetts province sloop for the first true scientific expedition in the history of the American colonies.

Never before had he journeyed farther than fifty miles from home. Never before had he been exposed for so long to the brilliance of someone such as John Winthrop, Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, whose papers had been read before the Royal Society in London and whose reputation placed him first among America’s men of science.

Everything about Winthrop was solid, thought Caleb. His face was large and square, his chest barreled, his diction dignified yet relaxed, his manner of authority quiet yet unquestionable, whether he was speaking to sailors, students, or his slave, Scipio.

Winthrop brought his four brightest mathematics students on the voyage. By day, he taught them the use of the instruments: a timepiece, two telescopes—refracting and reflecting—and an octant. By night, he held forth on mathematics, astronomy, and earthquakes, which he considered part of an intricate system of causes and effects, not “scourges in the hand of the Almighty, as some preachers would have you believe.”

And for a boy of sixteen—taller than most, a bit more blemished, with a nose awaiting the maturation of the rest of his face—it was a memorable adventure.

On his return, Caleb told his grandfather that he hoped to become a man of science. He would learn the principles of fluxion, which some called calculus. Or he would buy a telescope and study the cold stars, to puzzle out the causes and effects that put them in the sky. Or he would examine animalcules through a microscope to determine why they existed and what they meant to man.

“And where does God stand in all this?” asked Abraham.

“At the heart of Creation,” said Caleb, knowing that it was the best answer.

“Never forget that, no matter what thoughts Winthrop pours into you.”

“There is also much to know of the human heart,” said Lydia from the chair by the fireplace. “I would devote my life to knowing it. But who will pour ideas into me?”

“A husband,” said Reverend Abraham, “someday.”

“Why won’t the fathers of Harvard College take it as their task?”

“To educate girls?” Abraham laughed out loud. “We have enough trouble educating boys. You are a most troublesome and rebellious generation.”

“What generation does not say that of the next?” she asked. “Your own father exiled your brother for putting on plays in Massachusetts Hall.”

“My brother exiled himself,” said Abraham. “Where he went, we never learned. His performing manifested a restless spirit and an unsettled soul.”

“But, sir,” said Caleb, “these days, student groups put on plays.”

“And are punished for breaking college rules.”

“Grandfather,” said Lydia, “even I have read
Macbeth
at my dame school.”

“A story of witchcraft and regicide,” said the old man.

“I found it exciting,” she answered. “And
Romeo and Juliet
made me cry.”

“Made you cry?” Abraham shook his head. “Trifles make you cry?”

“As you’ve told me, sir, I am a girl.”

Caleb could not suppress a smile at such well-placed sarcasm.

But their grandfather did not smile. He said, “I allow you to pursue your science and your poetry, but plays are for low-class reprobates, like the debauchers who’ll soon arrive for commencement. It goes without saying that neither of you are to attend any commencement event outside the college.”

Caleb and Lydia did not argue, for that would surely have raised his suspicions.

ii

There was only one true holiday in Massachusetts.

It was not Christmas, which Congregationalists saw as their Puritan ancestors did: a Romanist sham linking Christ’s birth to the pagan celebration of the solstice. Nor was it any other holy day, for the Puritans had believed in devoting every day to the glory of God, and Scripture decreed that only the Sabbath was specially set aside. However, the old Puritan colony was also home to Anglicans, whose ritual and calendar resembled that of the Romanists, and most royal governors were Anglican, so the Congregationalists could not prohibit holidays altogether. And there was one holiday that Anglican and Congregationalist could agree upon: the Harvard commencement.

Harvard College had existed nearly as long as the Great and General Court itself, and every class of graduates symbolized the colony’s continued favor in the eyes of the Lord. From the beginning, commencement had been an occasion of ceremony and celebration, drawing those whose prayers blessed the school and whose taxes supported it. Some came for the spectacle of the academic processions. Some sought seats in the First Church so that they might witness the drama of disputations. Others hoped only to drink at a punch bowl in some student’s chamber or join the feasting in the college hall.

And year by year, they came from farther and farther away, and the more that gathered, the more raucous commencement became.

And there was nothing a good minister could do.

On the third Tuesday of July 1763, Reverend Abraham Wedge climbed into the cupola atop Harvard Hall and looked out.

It was high summer. Sunlight gilded the slate rooftops of the college and the distant steeples of Boston and the green landscape all around. Brilliant white clouds floated across the sky. And columns of dust hung above every road leading to Cambridge . . . because they were coming.