Jessie
Louise & Mittie
Mount Holyoke College
South Hadley, MassachusettsDepartment of Physiology
Women's Faculty Club
University of California
Berkeley, California
December 2, 1940Dear Friends,
I must not live longer in this great university without putting down a few impressions of it, else it will become so accustomed that some of the fine flavor will be lost. It is doubtful anyway whether I can get that fine flavor down on paper at all! Of course I have the slenderest connection with the university anyhow - officially the institution never has heard of me. I do not even know where any of its essential offices are nor who presides over them, but that is of course no reason at all for not writing about it, for am I not on its campus, in one of the perfectly respectable buildings of the same? And I have been here two weeks today, quite long enough to have material for even a whole book, by some standards. I read not so long ago some of the Kipling essays about San Francisco and America, and he did not require any such time for observation.
Many of you have been here and know that the campus is right in the city though it touches the foothills at one side. I think the university has some holdings up these particular hills else they would be having streets laid out on them as farther along. The slopes are about as steep as Bare [sic] Mountain yet they build on them. I heard the other day that the cost of a house on these slopes is increased by some $6,000 for the necessary foundation to hold it in place and even then the garden frequently leaves in a rain storm. It might be the rainy season even now, but nothing much has happened - one rain while I was in San Francisco and a few mild showers, but nothing to start the houses sliding down the hillsides as yet this fall, rather a succession of sunny days, some hazy, with fog in San Francisco, many very clear. The campus is as yet not crowded, it has good open stretches, with many fine buildings and lots of little miscellaneous structures which make me think of our old carpenter shop, once the rink. There are trees enough to conceal these pretty well, I think anything will grow as fast here as Mr. Kinney's quick-growing willows. Parking places are likewise inconspicuous, but present though not adequate. The largest university building I ever saw, I think, is the Life Sciences Building, in which are housed botany, zoology, bacteriology, home economics, physiology, medical anatomy, biochemistry (a biological science, you note), nutrition, a department for Prof. Evans title unknown to me, and probably several I have not as yet learned, probably histology is separate, too. The first year of medicine is included for one trifle. They number the rooms on a floor by thousands instead of hundreds, first floor 0 - 1000, second 1,000 - 2,000 and so on. There are directories conveniently placed and numbers on the corners so one does not get lost. It is a hollow square, with protuberances both at the ends and into the court. It is made of cement, with rather elegant deisngs ornamenting it on the outside.
Down beyond this, i.e. away from the hills, is he Eucalyptus Grove. Of course that extraordinary tree is everywhere, but this grove is extra tall and special. In it is a huge fireplace, and also a place where the leaders of the tribe might take counsel together, huge seats made of tree trunks and arranged in a circle. I shall take its picture, for the light come[s] in well under the tall trees. Mrs. Agnes Fay Morgan (home economics) says they have a picnic there each fall - I do not know who else uses it, but it and an adjacent grove of live oaks are very ornamental, and of suitable size for the institution.
The Women's Gymnasium was given by Mrs. Hearst, and is a joy. I wish we had one as efficient and as attractive. Three swimming pools, open-air, but water warmed, used all the year, and quite beautiful. Plenty of playing fields about the place, three huge floors, and lots of smaller places for smaller groups. Also a section for research, with a fine physiological laboratory. There is a course for training physical educators and Miss Marshall - once with us anda [sic] fine person - says the number of students, now 140, is about equal to the California demand for teachers. [margin note: "3000 +/- elect gym work - no requirement, about 1/2 the women in the univ."] It is in this place that the young woman works who has been so kind to me, Pauline Hodgson, who is doing the same general kind of fine research done at Wisconsin by Frances Hellebrandt. In both places there is the full cooperation of the university department of physiology. That department here has an introductory course open to various groups and required of physical ed. and home ec. students numbering some 550, of whom 350 are taking the laboratory work. You can see the need for space in the Life Sciences Building. This is of course not the course given to the medical students.
The Cemistry [sic] School has a whole flock of buildings, and I know nothing of them, so of engineering and mining, agriculture, law, and of course huge buildings for the ordinary undergraduate courses in the literary fields, history, and such. Yesterday Cornelia Coulter and I went to the Christmas concert given by the University Chorus in the Men's Gymnasium, another very huge place, for which the finely trained chorus was altogether too small. They sang some classical things, some church thingsnotably [sic] a Gregorian chant a capella, some American ballads notably one composed last year for the Harvard club, and last a group of Christmas things, three very old ones in Latin, Arcadelt, Palestrina, and at the end the only one I knew, the Wassail song. The audience may have been a couple thousand but it did not count for much in that space. The chorus included both men and women and would have been just fine in our Student Alumnae Hall. The Greek Theatre I have not seen in action but I might have gone to a student rally the other night before the football hame [sic], when they had a big bonfire in it in a circular place before the stage. It is most effectively placed in the hills right near this house where I am now living. I go out our walk and up the hill a little way to the right and there is the huge Stadium, to the left, and there is the Theatre, and if I turn on leaving the house in the other direction I arrive almost at once at the Campanile, which same is the best thing on the campus. It is some 300 feet high I think, straight and white, with an elevator to a view platform a little below the top, from which the whole region lies before you, including SanFrancisco [sic] Bay and the Bay Bridges, the Golden Gate straight in front and all those lovely hills about the Bay. The cities and towns are not so good, except the towers of S.F. but atnight [sic] the lights climbing up the hills are lovely, and the curving lines of lights on the bridges.
One institution is the Students' Union which has everything in it including a lunch counter - very many day students - and a book shop with diversified stock. It is a cooperative, but its principles I do not know. Two activities have amused me, one a kiosk just outside, with perhaps six faces on each of which is an ink-pot. The whole is planted on a cement base, much spotted. Above each ink pot is a broad cotton ribbon for wiping the pen! The roof of the kiosk projects a little over the open ink containers, but not much - it just does not rain often here. Whether they take the things in then I have not found out. Inside the book-shop in one accessible corner is a powerful punch, operated by foot lever. I saw a boy punch a whole thesis the other day at one push.
A few paragraphs back I should have spoken of the chines in the Campanile. They are played three times a day, and the choice of tunes amuses me, for so many are the very old English ones and Scotch ones and even Clementine pealed forth this morning, though for only one stanza. Of course the season before the great game brought out the California songs, which leads me to that game. It was last Saturday and my first consciousness of it as an Event came on the preceding Monday when the Stanford crowd succeeded in painting the big C up on the hillside a bright red. This C is made of cement, it is large, you can see it way out on the Bay, and it is a California yellow, gold I suppose is the word. As the game approaches this is guarded to prevent the attacks of Stanford, but last week the red was there, though it stayed only a few hours. Thursday night the town was wild, there were bonfires the street corners, and shouting crowds everywhere. On Friday there was a huge parade beginning at three o'clock, many floats for the various frats and sororities, all kinds of groups. They were mostly rather slap dash, not very pretty, but applauded by thousands along the streets. Several streets cross the campus and there is a very neat way of shutting off any where traffic is not desired. There are little holes in the paving covered by square iron plates. If the plates are lifted posts may be stood in these holes and padlocked in by chains inserted in rings on the edges of the poles. So streets come and go most surprisingly. The parade, for instance, went through places I had never seen opened, and again, on the day of the game several streets were shut off to control the crowds. Thirty four students were arrested for illegal bonfires, for being drunk, &c. Many more made the nights hideous, but I did not seem to mind it much. The crowd for the "greatest-game-ever" was some over 80,000 in the stadium, with many more on the slopes above it. I went out along in the middle to see what it was like and met lots of folks coming down that slope with their binoculars. It is complained that the trees are growing so fast that there are only a few places from which folks can now look into the field! Stanford won, 13 - 7, but California was glad to score at all. Their best player was in the hospital with a sudden flu, high fever. There is an epidemic on, with beds in all possible and impossible places in the large infirmary. No severe cases, but a real epidemic. I am hoping a mild cold I had last week will protect me - but fear not. That had no elements of flu about it, to my knowledge.
The Faculty Club is very pleasant and comfortable. It is interesting of course to compare it with ours. Few suites with more than one room and a half bath. No fireplaces in rooms. Rooms furnished and cared for completely, though of course permanent residents add their own things. My room is a southwest corner one and I love it. Outside, redwoods and a huge rubber tree up to the third story. Just below, and reaching almost to my level a great big heliotrope growing as a vine. Many shrubs and plants near the house, some of them cared for by folks in the house for love, no formal gardens. It is unceasingly wonderful to me to see so many things growing now. Today was about like late September in temperature, no frosts as yet and perhaps not all winter. Palms of several kinds, and such a wealth of shrubs and trees with berries of different colors, though more red than any other color. But the surprise is in the blooming things. There are just quantities of them, shrubs like azaleas, mimosas, vines like plumbago and bougainvillaea (sp?), little things like newly set out pansies, violas, young nasturtiums, snow-drops, day lilies, campanulas, alyssum white and yellow, little irises, callas, Chinese lilies, oh, I just can't tell how many. Yesterday I saw a bed of charming pink things as I went to church - they were oxalis, the loveliest I have ever seen. Every day I see new things. Oh, a very conspicuous one is a very big and lovely pink saxifrage (?). Habit of growth like a primrose.
To continue with the Faculty Club. It has a companion piece, the Men's Faculty Club almost next door and beyond that lies the "Faculty Glade" - now isn't that a mushy name? It is a sweet slope leading from some homely buildings down to a little stream which comes down through the campus from Strawberry Canyon. The slope has fine live oaks dotted over it and is a favorite place for sitting at noon time. A path across it approaches the student Union by the door near which is the Ink Dispensary. It is said that food in the women's club is much better than in the men's and a considerable number of men come here with their wives. The conspicuous successes of the club are the dining room, big and pleasant with delightful informality about seats, most anybody invites you to join them as folks come in gradually. Tables for four (can take six) or two, or more by putting tables together. Many special parties, some in other rooms. The house as a whole is no bigger than ours, but the dining room may be twice as large, with a big square serving table in the middle, decorated with branches and looking nice. Also there is a big reception or drawing room where people meet and stay to talk, with a library off it where there are as many books as we should have had had we never had auctions. Method of taking them as simple as ours. I have spent my half-awake hours of late in making over Faculty House as we once planned, giving up the suite near the front door to enlarge the dining room, and now I have made a fine drawing room out of Miss Blakely's suite. There are coat-rooms for men and women, the kitchenette becomes a serving pantry for the drawing room, etc. It could be done!
I've gotten to know the way about the Physiology library, or the location of those books in the Life Sciences Library to be accurate, and I have had one dinner invitation with the head of the Physiology department, Prof. Olmsted whom I have known some for years, a perfect dinner in a most interesting house, probably showing Spanish influences. I have no idea where these queer but interesting houses come from! Tomorrow night I go to another party with Mrs. Agnes Fay Morgan, made especially for Prof. Howard Lewis of Michigan and wife. She is head of home economics and I first saw her in Copenhagen and took her to Krog's Fisk [sic] Restaurant.
I have hopes that my back is really better - I seem to have more endurance. There was even a jaunt to san Francisco to hear a blind pianist one evening, a social occasion quite as much as a musical one> I have one more date with the M.D. about December 12 but I hope he will say I can go on soon thereafter to the south, via Stanford( a few days only) and Santa Barbara. I should then get to Grace Berry before Xmas, perhaps the 23rd. My address there will be - for I hope to get there anon anyhow - 353 West 11th Street, Claremont, California. Length of stay just as uncertain as every other thing I have done. My own idea would be to make her a little visit, then go to some inn - I think there is one - and make that a headquarters for such trips as it seems best to make in southern California. Mollie Bayley and her husband still think of going to Tucson, but perhaps not as early as last year, maybe about Feb.1. I shall hope to join them if they go, though there are those who say the desert can only be seen - now here - now there! And one never knows when the desert will blossom as the rose, it all depends on those rains, which sometimes come early, sometimes late, sometimes not at all.
Much love to you all. I shall think about you at Xmas.