Fordham: A History and Memoir, Revised Edition

3 Brownson, Hughes, and Shaw

3. Brownson, Hughes, and Shaw Little Robert Gould Shaw is mad. He’s a fiery, precocious, headstrong young fellow with, at thirteen, a strong sense of right and wrong—particularly when he feels that he himself has been wronged. This October 20, 1850, he’s sitting in the St. John’s College study hall, his head down over his work, writing the obligatory weekly letter to his mother. All the other boys are fooling around: they’re stamping their feet and letting out those whoops and yells that boys know make the prefect mad, especially when the prefect is a young and nervous Jesuit without the force of personality that intimidates bad boys. The other boys are being bad and Robert is going to be blamed. Worst of all, Robert hates Fordham, as St. John’s was commonly called from the earliest days. The son of a very wealthy Boston Protestant family, he is stuck in the Bronx because his uncle, Coolidge Shaw, who had converted to Catholicism and joined the Jesuits, had talked his parents, Francis and Sarah, into sending him here. The family could easily afford the $200 tuition that St. John’s was now charging (though the average laborer’s wage at the time was about $300 a year), so they delivered Robert in June with all the equipment the catalog prescribed: three winter and three summer suits, six shirts, 43 16950-02_Fordham_043-081 6/4/08 11:42 AM Page 43 six pairs of pants, six pairs of stockings, six handkerchiefs, six ties, three pairs of shoes or boots, a hat and overcoat, a silver spoon, and a drinking cup marked with his name. He has 114 fellow students, some of them—the well-behaved ones—seminarians from St. Joseph’s, and many from the deep South and Latin America. They all live under a French and Victorian disciplinary system calculated to protect their virtue and, as a by-product, instill resentment as well. No one may leave the grounds without a prefect. Parents from the New York area may visit only once in three months and are warned to make their visits as rare as possible. Mail from persons other than the student’s parents may be opened by school administrators; books, papers, and periodicals other than those approved by the Jesuits are forbidden. There is a Christmas vacation, but no spring or Easter break. Years later, many students from the same time will remember St. John’s fondly—the long walks on the beautiful, wooded grounds, swimming in the nearby Bronx River, skating on the campus ponds in winter, and the games of handball, cricket, and an early form of baseball called rounders. Robert is not one of them. His first letter home, June 3, 1850, says plainly, “I wish I hadn’t been sent here at all. . . . I’m sure I shan’t want to come here after vacation, for I hate it like everything.” The other boys broke the bridge and strings of his beloved violin. A neighbor’s farm dog attacked him as he returned to the campus from an excursion to New York to meet his mother. He abhors the thought of being whipped, especially when the punishment is unjust, and he often dreams of running away, inspired by a classmate who ran away and got a job working on a Hudson River sloop for a month. Sometimes Robert’s homesickness makes him break down and cry in front of the other boys, many of whom he despises because they are lazy, and when they don’t do their homework, the teacher blames and chastises the whole class. Nothing angers Robert more than being punished for something he didn’t do. So today, when he asks the prefect’s permission to leave the room and the prefect replies, “Go and don’t come back,” Robert is indignant. He didn’t do anything and he’s being thrown out. Wandering the corridors, he bumps into Fr. Thebaud, who asks why he isn’t in class and sends him back to the study hall. The prefect, feeling his authority 44 F O R D H A M 16950-02_Fordham_043-081 6/4/08 11:42 AM Page 44 has been challenged or that Robert is lying, sends Robert back to Thebaud for a note. Thebaud is not in his office, but Robert encounters him on the grounds. See Fr. Regnier...