Earliest Years at Vassar: Personal Recollections

by Frances Ann Wood

Dr. Avery began her medical studies in 1857 at the Pennsylvania Medical College, and finished them at the New England Medical College in Boston, taking her degree from that institution. She seemed to take, in the practice of her profession, an antagonistic attitude as granted, and, indeed, she had much reason for doing so. None of us would have dared to approach her professionally out of her office hour, or to make the slightest personal wish as to treatment. She was as inflexible to her peers as to the students in her uncompromising adherence to discipline and hygienic regulations. Her seat at table was next to Miss Mitchell, who asked at dinner one day what to do for an inflamed eye. Without looking, the Doctor replied, "My office hour is at half past two." "Oh, come now," said Miss Mitchell, "you don't mean that you would make an old woman like me go way up to the fourth floor to your office hour?" The answer came same as before. "My office hour is at half past two," and that closed the incident.

To those who came to know her well she showed a lovable human side, a big heart, capable of most generous affection. She upheld the cause of woman as zealously even as Miss Mitchell, and their personal relations were most friendly and pleasant. She was passionately fond of flowers and an expert in their cultivation. Under her direction the Floral Society was established and the flower garden laid out and carried on.

Three years after Miss Lyman's death the Doctor resigned to go to practice her profession in Denver, later removing to California. With her death last September, and that of Professor Knapp quite recently, has gone the last one of that first Board of Faculty and Instruction, over forty years ago.

Professor Backus.

Truman J. Backus succeeded Henry B. Buckman as head of the English department in 1867, and for sixteen years held this position. It was said of him, "He is a born educator," and this was true. He had been educated for the ministry, but had never been ordained, and his first sermon was preached in the college chapel.

TRUMAN J. BACKUS
1867

He was only twenty-six years old when appointed to this post, had little or no experience, claiming only great enthusiasm and love for the work of his choice. If age has the courage of convictions, there is also the indispensable courage of youth. Unhampered by ruts of traditional methods of education, he dared to try experiments hazardous often in the estimation of his older, more conservative colleagues, and much of the progressive, far-seeing policy that insured the success of that early period is due in large measure to him. There were no smooth paths beaten out for safe walking in the higher education of women in the beginning of his career, and President Raymond relied a good deal for counsel and help on this youngest member of the Faculty, who was quick to see and quick to act. Professor Backus appreciated this trust, and always warmly acknowledged it.

He felt the restraint of constant association with others so much older than himself, and a certain whimsical humor would sometimes break out, defying all convention, putting him often in a place to be severely criticised, and which he rarely troubled himself to explain away.

He had a genius for discovering latent and unsuspected talent and the best work that one could do, and never grudged generous recognition when another overtopped him. He had a dislike for the obvious answer to the obvious question; liked to mystify, keep you in doubt as to his real opinion. An essay was once brought in at department meeting with great pride by one of the critics as especially clever, and far above the average in grace and felicity of diction. Perhaps the teacher showed too plainly her counting upon his approval, for he read the paper aloud, slowly, critically, without the faintest sign of appreciation, rather as if deadly bored. At the end, when her enthusiasm had ebbed and she supposed herself entirely mistaken, he remarked, "If I could write as well as that girl writes, I should be proud, and I would never do another stroke of teaching as long as I lived."